Sinikukka Saari
Leading Researcher- Russian foreign policy
- EU’s and Finland’s policy towards Russia
- post-Soviet conflicts
- Relations of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova with the EU and Russia
- foresight
Sinikukka Saari is Research Director at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. She works at FIIA’s Finnish Foreign Policy, Northern European Security and NATO programme and leads the cross-cutting theme Great Power Politics and Foresight at FIIA.
Saari’s fields of expertise include Russia’s foreign and security policy, Finland’s foreign and security policy as well as foresight in IR and Foreign Policy studies. She’s particularly interested in Russia’s relations with its neighbouring states and EU–Russia relations.
Prior to her current position, Saari worked as a Senior Researcher at FIIA, as an Analyst for the EU Monitoring Mission (EUMM) in Tbilisi, as a Senior Associate at EU Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) in Paris and as a Special Advisor for the Policy Planning and Research Unit at the Foreign Ministry of Finland. She has also served as a visiting scholar at the Moscow Carnegie Center and at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI) in Stockholm. Saari received her PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Social Sciences in 2007.
Degrees
Ph.D. in International Relations, The London School of Economics and Political Science (2007)
Language skills
Finnish, English, Russian, (Swedish, French)
Work experience
Dr. Sinikukka Saari is a Leading Researcher at FIIA. Her area of expertise is the post-Soviet region. She has worked for many years at the nexus of research and strategic policy planning nationally and in the EU. Previously she has worked, for instance, at the EU Institute for Security Studies (Paris), the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Helsinki), EU Monitoring Mission (Tbilisi). She holds a PhD from the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics.