Areas of expertise: European security; Estonia’s foreign, security and EU policy; EU foreign and security policy; EU-Ukraine relations; EU-Russia relations; Finland’s foreign and security policyLanguages: English, Finnish, Estonian; passive skills: Swedish, German, French, Russian
Dr Kristi Raik is the Deputy Director and Head of the Foreign Policy Programme of the International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS) as of 1 January 2023. She is also an Adjunct Professor of International Relations at the University of Turku. From 2018 to 2022, she was the Director of the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute at the ICDS, and prior to that served as a Senior Research Fellow and Acting Programme Director at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in Helsinki and an official at the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union in Brussels. Kristi has published, lectured and commented widely on European security and EU foreign policy, including the EU’s relations with Russia, Ukraine and other Eastern neighbours. Kristi is also an expert of the foreign and security policies of the Baltic states and Finland. She has provided expert contributions to the Estonian, Finnish, EU and NATO institutions. Kristi has a PhD from the University of Turku.
Positions of responsibility:
- Member of the Board, Trans European Policy Studies Association
- Council Member, European Council on Foreign Relations
- Member of the Advisory Council, German Council on Foreign Relations
- Member of the Academic Advisory Board, Institut für Europäische Politik
Latest publications:
- Don’t Be Afraid of a Russian Collapse, Foreign Policy, December 2022.
- (with Martin Hurt) Building European Security Against Russia – A View From Estonia – ICDS, ICDS Policy Paper, November 2022.
- (with Margarita Šešelgytė) “Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania”, in Thierry Tardy (ed.) The Nations of NATO: Shaping the Alliance’s Relevance and Cohesion. Oxford University Press, 2022.
- Time to Downgrade the Eastern Partnership and Refocus on Enlargement, Guest Commentary No. 11, 2022, Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies.
- Connectivity of the EU’s Eastern Partnership region: contestation between liberal and illiberal approaches, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, published online 12 April 2022.
