Louise Bengtsson
Senior Researcher in Political Science and Deputy Director
Louise Bengtsson is a senior researcher in political science. Her research focuses mainly on proposals for a European Health Union and the EU’s role in global health, including perspectives related to security and sustainable development.
Louise has an MA from the College of Europe in Bruges and defended her PhD in International Relations at Stockholm University in 2019 on the topic ‘Health security in the European Union: Agents, practices and materialities of securitization’.
She has been a visiting fellow at Copenhagen University as well as Jawaharlal Nehru University i New Delhi. As part of her field work, she was also a visiting scholar at the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm.
Louise has a background as a practitioner at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety in Brussels (2012–2014) as well as the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, where she served at the Department for Asia and the Pacific (2018–2022) and completed the diplomatic training program.
Selection of publications
Bengtsson, L., 2022. ‘COVID-19 and the EU’s Ability to Manage and Prevent Health Crises’, in Bakardjieva Engelbrekt, A. et al. (eds) Routes to a Resilient European Union. Palgrave Macmillan, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93165-0_5
Bengtsson, L., 2021. ‘COVID-19 och EU:s förmåga att förebygga och hantera hälsokriser’, in Bakardjieva Engelbrekt, A. et al. (eds) (2021) Vägar till ett uthålligt EU. Europaperspektiv 2021. Stockholm: Santérus Förlag.
Bengtsson, L., 2020. ‘Which crisis? The promise of standardized risk ranking in the field of infectious disease control’, in Olsen, O. et al. (eds) Standardization and Risk Governance. London: Routledge, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429290817
Bengtsson, L. & Rhinard, M., 2019. ‘Securitisation across borders: the case of ‘health security’ cooperation in the European Union’, West European Politics, 42(2), 346–368, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2018.1510198
Bengtsson, L., Borg, S. & Rhinard, M., 2019. ‘Assembling European Health Security: Epidemic intelligence and the hunt for cross-border health threats’, Security Dialogue, 50(2), 115–130, https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010618813063
Bengtsson, L., Borg, S. & Rhinard, M., 2018. ‘European security and early warning systems: from risks to threats in the European Union’s health security sector’, European Security, 27(1), 20–40, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2017.1394845
Bengtsson, L., 2019. Health security in the European Union: Agents, practices and materialities of securitization (PhD dissertation). Stockholm Studies in International Relations; 2, http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-167276