Kati Katajisto, PhD, is principal investigator at the University of Helsinki on the project State Committees Institution in Finland and Sweden: A Case for Inclusive Democracy and Good Quality Policy Preparation? Her research has dealt with the history of politics and democracy at various levels and in a broad range of fields. Her doctoral thesis dealt with the changing identity of the political-administrative elite in the Finnish region in the early 19th century, when Russia conquered the Finnish region from Sweden. Since then, she has studied the history of parties and individuals during the Cold War and how the implementation of municipal democracy contributed to reconciliation after the civil war.
Her current research project focuses on how the committee system has served as an arena for broadly participatory, knowledge-based, inclusive and compromising law and policy-making in civil society, and as a forum for seeking solutions to large and difficult social issues. In Finland and Sweden, the simultaneous participation of a strong state and a strong civil society in the preparation of public policy and also laws has historically taken place precisely through the committee system. International scholarship has often argued that a free, pluralist and democratic society requires, on the one hand, a sovereign state and its laws, but also a civil society that is participatory and strong enough to control the political and administrative actors at the top level involved in state management and administration.
As a historian, Katajisto is interested in how historical research in particular can serve as a prism for examining the temporally and structurally complex causes of different conflicts and their resolutions; how, for example, institutional, identity-based and global economic path dependencies, change and continuity, and the influence of individuals and groups, have played a role in the past and how their impact is still felt in the present.
Kati Katajisto joins the board of Historians without Borders in 2025.
