China Research Day 2025: China’s global interests: From the Arctic to mediation

Dr Hiski Haukkala is the Director of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. He is also an Adjunct Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, Finland, and a Senior Research Associate at RAND Europe. Before joining FIIA in November 2024, he worked as a Professor of International Relations at Tampere University. Until spring 2024, Haukkala was the Secretary General and Chief of the Cabinet at the Office of the President of the Republic of Finland. Haukkala has previously held positions at the University of Turku, Tampere University, the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, as well as visiting positions at the University of Oxford, the Wilson Center in Washington D.C., the College of Europe in Natolin in Warsaw, the EU Institute of Security Studies in Paris, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London and the University of Stirling in Scotland. He is the author of numerous books and articles on EU foreign policy, Russia and international relations.

Dr Marc Lanteigne (林晏) is a Professor of Political Science at the Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, and an Adjunct Lecturer at Ilisimatusarfik University of Greenland. His teaching and research centres on the foreign and domestic politics of China, as well as the international relations and non-traditional security issues of Northeast Asia/Russian Far East, Europe, and the Polar Regions. He has previously taught in Canada, China, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, and has published numerous books and articles addressing various areas of Pacific Rim politics. He has also researched throughout the North American and European Arctic, examining various political and economic relations and more recently issues of hybrid threats. He was a recipient of the Taiwan Fellowship in 2025 and has recently been based in Taipei for a project on comparative economic diplomacy and human security.

Dr Johanna Ikävalko dissertated at the University of Helsinki in 1997 with hydrobiology/sea ice biology as her main field of research. She has lived and done research abroad, e.g. in Germany (Institute for Polar Ecology), Australia (Australian Antarctic Division) and US (University of Santa Cruz, California). Polar field campaigns took her sailing twice to the Antarctic, the North Pole and several voyages in the frozen Baltic Sea. After her active career in science, she has moved more to implementation science based knowledge. In 2009-2013 she was affiliated as the Head of Environment at the Finnish Farmers’ and Forest Owners’ Association, after which she was the Head of Marine Research Unit, Finnish Meteorological Institute. Johanna has also served as a ministerial adviser at the Ministry of Transport and Communications. During Finland’s presidency at the Arctic Council in 2017-2019 she led successfully the priority “Meteorological Cooperation”, after which she worked as an expert for the Arctic Council working group Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme Secretariat. Dr. Johanna Ikävalko has been directing the Arctic Centre of the University of Lapland since the beginning of 2021.

Kalle Kankaanpää is the Ambassador for Arctic Affairs and Senior Arctic Official since September 2025. Kankaanpää returned to Helsinki from Zagreb, where he served as Ambassador of Finland to Croatia, the Holy See (Vatican) and Bosnia and Herzegovina for four years since April 2021. Prior to his assignment in Zagreb, Kankaanpää worked as Director of the Unit for Northern Europe in the Foreign Ministry from 2015 to 2021, covering also the Arctic Affairs. In the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, he has also worked in the Unit for Russia and has held positions relating to regional cooperation. His career in the Diplomatic Service includes posts at the Embassy of Finland in Vilnius and at Finland’s Permanent Representation to the European Union in Brussels, where he also served as national specialist in the European External Action Service (EEAS). He graduated from the University of Turku in 1998 as a Master of Political Science.

Dr Elina Sinkkonen is a Senior Research Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and holds the Title of Docent in East Asian Studies, specifically East Asian Politics, at the University of Turku. Her research interests include great power relations, authoritarian regimes, regional security in East Asia, Chinese nationalism, public opinion issues in China and domestic-foreign policy nexus in IR theory. Sinkkonen’s ongoing research focuses on technology in the great power struggle and more precisely understanding China’s innovation ecosystem, technological advancement, tech financing, and regulation.

Dr Xiaoyu Lu is an Assistant Professor at School of International Studies at Peking University and was a Research Fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University. He received MSc and DPhil degrees in Politics at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, and previously worked at the United Nations Development Programme. He is the 2022-2023 Berggruen China Centre Fellow, and his research focuses on conflict and peace, with field experience in Palestine, Ukraine, Syria, Lebanon, Myanmar and Colombia. He is the founding director of PeaceLab that promotes conflict and peace studies and mediation dialogues in China.

Dr Sarah S. Stroup is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and a political science professor at Middlebury College (Vermont, USA). From 2022-2025, she was executive director of the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Collaborative in Conflict Transformation. Stroup holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), humanitarian relief, democracy promotion, and human rights. She is author of Borders Among Activists (Cornell, 2012) and co-author with Wendy Wong of The Authority Trap (Cornell, 2017), which the 2019 Outstanding Book award in Nonprofit and Voluntary Action Research by ARNOVA. She was co-investigator on “The Rise and Demise of NGOs,” a five-year project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada), and has conducted hundreds of interviews with NGO staff and partners around the globe. Her recent publications include an article with Sarah Bush in International Theory on human rights and democracy promotion and a book chapter on inequality in the humanitarian sector. Stroup is trained in reflective structured dialogue, basic mediation, and basic restorative practices. She is former co-director of the Engaged Listening Project (2018-2021), a dialogic practice initiative for higher education supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Minna Kukkonen-Karlander is a Senior Manager in CMI’s Asia Programme since August 2021 with focus on Northeast and Southeast Asia. Prior to this she served as a Manager and Adviser in several CMI’s mediation and conflict resolution activities in Sub-Saharan Africa and Indonesia. Between 2011 and 2018 she worked as Adviser to President Ahtisaari supporting him in his global initiatives and engagements related to conflict resolution, peacemaking and sustainable development. She has over ten years of experience in peace mediation and conflict resolution with policy advice and practical implementation. Ms. Kukkonen-Karlander holds a Master of Laws degree (LLM) from Uppsala University with specialization in Public International Law.

Dr Mikael Mattlin is a Research Professor and Head of the Center on Global Orders and China (CORD). He served as the Acting Director and Acting Deputy Director of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in 2024. He holds the Title of Docent in Political Science, especially East Asian Politics, from the University of Turku. Prior to joining FIIA, Mattlin worked as a Professor of Political Science, Senior Lecturer of International Politics and TIAS Collegium Researcher at the University of Turku, as well as Professor of Chinese Studies and University Lecturer in World Politics at the University of Helsinki. Mattlin also led the ForAc research project, funded by the Academy of Finland. Currently, he leads a Scientific Advisory Board for Defence (MATINE) project on China’s disruptive technologies and international security, and the Business Finland –funded project “Technical standards as critical intangible capital for Finnish companies in an era of strategic competition” (StandardEdge).