Rikard Westerberg, Director of the Center
Westerberg was awarded a PhD by the Stockholm School of Economics in 2020 for his doctoral thesis Socialists at the Gate: Swedish Business and the Defense of Free Enterprise 1940-1985. His main research area concerns business and state relations during the Cold War. At SSE he teaches economic history, the history of economic ideas and applied history. Rikard is a member of SSE’s Distinguished Educators' Network. Currently working on a biography on Thede Palm, head of Sweden's secret military intelligence agency T-kontoret between 1946 and 1965.
Carl Ritter, Senior Research Fellow
Ritter was awarded a PhD in media and communication studies from Stockholm University in 2020. His research foci are narrative communication and the cosmopolitan tradition in political philosophy. Ritter currently works on a project about strategic narratives and the use of history in political propaganda. He has taught and directed courses on communication theory, media economics, global media studies, and a variety of other topics. Ritter is responsible for CSSC's educational program.
Mara Bălașa is a PhD Fellow researching the green transition with a focus on industrial policy. With a background in economics and political science, she calculates the costs associated with the decarbonisation of the steel industry and analyses state support schemes such as carbon contracts for difference. At SSE, she teaches a module on the applied history of climate change.
Ksenia Rundin, Postdoctoral Fellow
Rundin will complete her PhD in Business Administration at the Stockholm School of Economics in 2024. Her research interests are situated at the confluence of marketing communication and sociohistorical propaganda analysis, with a specific focus on unraveling the complexities of propaganda in the digital era through social media platforms. Rundin’s postdoctoral research seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the changing dynamics of the propaganda techniques, originally developed during the Cold War era and now enhanced by the unpredictable power of social media development.
Ronan Mainprize, Postdoctoral Fellow
Mainprize was awarded a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick in 2024. His research focuses on the role of intelligence services in the creation and implementation of strategy and grand strategy. At CSSC, Mainprize is working on a project which analyses President Lyndon B. Johnson’s use of CIA intelligence to manage the global Cold War.
Pontus Rudberg, Affiliated Researcher
Rudberg is an Associate Professor of History and an Affiliated Researcher at the Center for Statecraft and Strategic Communication. His research focuses on modern political history, particularly Sweden and the Holocaust, humanitarianism and relief work during the Second World War, civil diplomacy, and Jewish history. He is the author of The Swedish Jews and the Holocaust (2017) and has co-edited Early Holocaust Memory in Europe (2021) and Advances in Holocaust History and Education (2026).
His current research examines the history of Swedish intelligence and its relationship to diplomacy, statecraft, and strategic decision-making. Together with Martin Neuding Skoog, he studies the development of Swedish intelligence practices from the seventeenth century to the early twentieth century, focusing on how intelligence was gathered, organized, and communicated and how it interacted with diplomacy, technology, and the strategic needs of the state.
Anna Jeglinska, Postdoctoral Fellow
Jeglinska was awarded a PhD in Political Science from Uppsala University in June 2025. Her dissertation examined how states actively construct and reshape their diasporas as political target groups, using Poland as the primary empirical case.
Jeglinska’s postdoc project will focus on diaspora politics from the angle of its geopolitical importance.
Per Ekman, Postdoctoral Fellow
Ekman was awarded a PhD in Political Science from Uppsala University in September 2024. His dissertation examined the foreign policies of Ukraine and Georgia from independence until 2021 and included interviews with key decision-makers. Ekman’s postdoctoral project will focus on the use of diplomacy and strategic narratives in times of war. Specifically, he will analyze Ukrainian diplomacy and strategic narratives used during Russia’s 2022 invasion. Ekman has been a visiting scholar at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University.
Serge Poliakoff, Postdoctoral Fellow
Serge Poliakoff’s research examines malign strategic communication, authoritarian information influence, and the organisational and technological infrastructures through which propaganda and disinformation are produced, governed, and circulated.
A substantial part of his scholarship forms a sustained research programme on Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late Wagner Group founder, media tycoon, and leader of the 2023 mutiny against the Kremlin. His research asks how authoritarian influence systems adapt to political, technological, and regulatory change across borders.
Gustaf Reinfeldt
I'm currently the Deputy Mayor of Sundbyberg City, where I also live. Before working with politics full time I worked as a Research Assistant at the Stockholm based research institute Ratio Institute. Previous to that, I lived in New York and studied a Master of International Affairs at Columbia University. During my time in the US I also worked at the political risk analysis consulting firm Eurasia Group, at the think tank Council on Foreign Relations, and as a Teaching Assistant at Columbia University. I’ve also worked as a Research Assistant at the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels. I received my bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Uppsala University and I have a background as a public affairs consultant, as a speechwriter, and as an editorial writer at the daily business newspaper Dagens Industri.
Sofia Fransson, Project Manager
Fransson is an experienced event coordinator and social media manager. With a background in English literature, she brings a strong understanding of storytelling and communication to her role. At CSSC, she utilizes her expertise in events and outreach to contribute to exceptional experiences.
Henrik Borelius, Special Adviser, M.Sc.
Henrik Borelius is a special adviser to the Ax:son Johnson Institute and CSSC. He is an SSE alumnus with a long background in business and has extensive experience of getting new organizations started. He is also a board member of the Stockholm Institute of Transitional Economics at SSE.
Affiliated Researchers
Matt Hefler, Postdoctoral Fellow
Hefler was awarded a PhD in War Studies from King’s College London in November 2020. With research interests in international history and intelligence studies, his dissertation examined clandestine diplomacy in Franco-British relations during World War II. Hefler’s postdoctoral project examines secret intelligence and international diplomacy around the Middle East between the USA, Great Britain and France during 1945-1947.
Fredrik Sixtensson, Postdoctoral Fellow
Sixtensson was awarded a PhD in Ancient Greek from Uppsala University in November 2021. His dissertation examined the linguistic evolution of the Greek tripartite typology of constitutions, consisting of monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy, with special consideration of the Greek word dēmokratia. Sixtensson’s research focuses on the intersection between linguistics, political thought, and practical politics. His postdoctoral project examines the expression of controversial values and opinions in the ancient Athenian democracy.