European Societal Security Research Group member Louise Bengtsson has been awarded her doctorate, with a thesis titled ‘The Politics of Health Security in the European Union’. Louise’s work looks at the agents, practices, and materialities of securitization in European health cooperation.

From her abstract: The emergence of ‘health security’ as an area of European Union (EU) cooperation is one of the most notable trends in European integration of late. This doctoral dissertation traces and problematizes this development, using older and newer variants of securitisation theory to understand its practical and normative consequences. The study, consisting of five independent papers and an introduction, is based on extenstive field work at the European Commission and the EU Agency for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). Collectively, the thesis explains how different security perspectives shaped empirical developments and permeated the process in different ways. The results not only explain practical outcomes but also further theoretical developments in critical security studies.

The thesis is available Open Access, on the Stockholm University website, here. Congrats Louise!