AJI Intelligence and Security Digital Seminar Series
It is designed as an online hub for intelligence specialists, scholars or general public interested in issues of security and statecraft, and a place where researchers and current and former intelligence practitioners can interact. Most of all, the seminar is a forum for the study of intelligence and security in the Nordic countries and across the transatlantic AJI more broadly.
The digital seminar takes place the third Tuesday of every month during the academic year, at 10:00 EST / 15:00 GMT / 16:00 CET. Those interested in attending the seminar should register here.
Seminar Leads:
Convenor:
Dr. Matthew Hefler, Stockholm School of Economics
Co-Convenors:
Dr. Rikard Westerberg, Stockholm School of Economics
Dr. Kristin Ven Bruusgaard, Norwegian Intelligence School, NORIS
Dr. Tony Ingesson, Lund University
Dr. Clément Renault, Institut de Recherche Stratégique de l'Ecole Militaire (IRSEM)
John Sipher, Atlantic Council, Former Senior Intelligence Officer
Marc Polymeropoulos, Former Senior Intelligence Official
Dr. Ronan Mainprize, Stockholm School of Economics
Dr. Niklas Rossbach, Swedish Defence University (Försvarshögskolan)
Professor Hans Jörgensen, Umeå University
AJI Intelligence and Security Digital Seminar Series, 2026-2027
Upcoming Seminars:
15 September 2026 – 11:20 EST / 16:20 GMT / 17:20 CET: The Honourable Bob Rae
Former Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations
Canada and the United States in a Changing World
Bio:
Bob Rae is currently serving as the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy on Humanitarian and Refugee Issues. He is Senior Counsel at Olthuis Kleer Townshend LLP, a law firm that focuses on indigenous issues, and teaches at the University of Toronto as a Professor of Public Policy in the Munk School, the Faculty of Law and Victoria College.
Elected eleven times to the House of Commons and the legislature of Ontario, he served as Ontario’s 21st Premier as well as Interim Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. Rae is the author of 5 books – most recently editing the forthcoming volume: Reclaiming Canadian Sovereignty in a Ruptured World.
Bob Rae is a Companion of the Order of Canada, a member of the Order of Ontario, a Privy Councillor and a King’s Counsel. He is a Senior Fellow of Massey College and of the Forum of Federations, an international NGO which he co-founded in 1998.
20 October 2026 – 10:00 EST / 15:00 GMT / 16:00 CET: Professor Marina Henke
Professor of International Relations at the Hertie School and Director of the Centre for International Security
Intervention Entrepreneurs: Revisiting Power and Process in US Intervention Decision-Making
This book project advances our understanding of agency in intervention decisions: what types of actors advocate for military interventions, and what techniques do they use to push their intervention proposal? The book focuses on intervention entrepreneurs, which I define as individuals or groups that strategically promote the launch of a specific military intervention. These actors set up constraints for other decision makers to operate in by, for example, creating and spreading a powerful narrative for intervention, establishing faits accomplis that create a slippery slope toward intervention, and building domestic and international political coalitions in favor of intervention. These constraints modify the parameters of the decision-making process and often move the needle toward intervention at critical political junctures when intervention plans are put in doubt. The book draws from historical and contemporary cases to illustrate this theory including the Gulf War, the Iraq War, NATO intervention in Kosovo and NATO intervention in Libya.
Bio:
Marina Henke is Professor of International Relations at the Hertie School and Director of the Centre for International Security. She researches and publishes on grand strategy, nuclear security and European security and defence policy. Before joining the Hertie School, she was an Associate Professor (with tenure) at Northwestern University, specialising in international relations, as well as at Princeton University where she was a Lecturer and Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
She holds a PhD in Politics and Public Policy from Princeton University, a Double Master of Science in Development Studies and International Political Economy from Sciences Po Paris and the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics, Politics and Latin American Studies from Sciences Po Paris. Her book “Constructing Allied Cooperation” published with Cornell University Press in 2019 won the prestigious 2020 Lepgold Best Book Award, the ISA 2020 Diplomacy section Best Book Award, and the APSA 2020 International Collaboration section Best Book Award.
17 November 2026 – 10:00 EST / 15:00 GMT / 16:00 CET: General Michael V. Hayden (Ret.)
Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency
The Five Eyes: American Intelligence Alliances in a Changing World
Bio:
General Michael V. Hayden is the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Before becoming Director of CIA, General Hayden served as the country’s first Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence – and was the highest-ranking intelligence officer in the armed forces. Earlier, he served as Director of the National Security Agency (NSA).
He is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at George Mason University. He is also founder of the Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy and International Security at George Mason. In 2014 he was the inaugural Humanitas Visiting Professor in Intelligence Studies at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.
His book, Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror, was a New York Times best-seller and was selected as one of the 100 most notable books of 2016. His most recent work, The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in an Age of Lies, was also a New York Times best seller and addresses the impact of a post-truth world on the intelligence enterprise.
8 December 2026 – 10:00 EST / 15:00 GMT / 16:00 CET: Professor Phillips O’Brien
Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St. Andrews
Analyzing Wars: Why Have We Failed So Spectacularly And What Can We Do About It?
The analytical and academic communities face a crisis in their analysis of war. Over the previous 75 years, as analytical organizations have multiplied and Intelligence communities have become vast, arguably our analysis of war has become worse. It is hard to think of a greater failure in strategic analytical history than the total lack of understanding in early 2022 about the Russian military, the Ukrainian military and what a war between them might resemble. This paper will try to understand why such failure have if anything gotten worse and how they might be corrected.
Bio:
Professor Phillips O’Brien is the Chair of Strategic Studies and Head of the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews. He has published widely on issues of conflict, politics, war and strategy in the 20th and 21st centuries. Amongst his earlier books are: How the War was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and The Second Most Powerful Man in the World: The Life of Admiral William D. Leahy, FDR’s Chief of Staff, (Penguin/Random House 2015). In 2024 he published a new multi-archival study of grand-strategy making in World War II with Penguin/Random House, entitled: The Strategists: How Churchill, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and Roosevelt were Made by and Made War and in 2025 he published his latest book, War and Power: Who Wins Wars and Why. He has also published multiple articles in major journals including Foreign Affairs, Diplomatic History, the Journal of Strategic Studies, and, Past and Present.
Professor O’Brien has been particularly active as an analyst and commentator during this most recent phase of the Russo-Ukraine War. He has been appointed as a Senior Adviser (non-residential) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC and has worked with scholars and analysts in Ukraine and much the rest of Europe and across the Atlantic to try and digest some of the lessons of the war. His commentary has been published most regularly in The Atlantic, and also in The Times, The Spectator, The Telegraph and other major newspapers and journals, while he has made media appearances for outlets in more than 15 countries, including MSNBC, CNN, NPR, BBC, DW and L’Express.
