Katja Karjalainen is a senior researcher at the University of Eastern Finland. Dr. Karjalainen obtained his PhD in private international law and comparative law in 2016 from the University of Helsinki. Her research addresses vulnerabilities using comparative law approaches in the field of private law and private international law. Her previous research and teaching activities have addressed, among other things, equality rights and the family law instruments of the Hague Conference on Private International Law and the European Union. Dr. Karjalainen served as Secretary of the Finnish Branch of ILA between 2013 and 2016, and since 2017, she has been a member of the board of the Branch.
Iina Tornberg conducts doctoral research in the Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki, Finland. Her doctoral research deals with EU competition rules and their application in international commercial arbitration. Ms. Tornberg has lectured on private international law and arbitration at the University of Helsinki and been a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg. Ms. Tornberg was a secretary of the Finnish Branch of the International Law Association during 2017–2019 as well as a board member of the Finnish Committee of the International Academy of Comparative Law (IACL) and International Association of Legal Science. She works currently as a court of appeal referendary at the Helsinki Court of Appeal, Finland.
Aleksi Pursiainen, LLM (Helsinki), is the founder and CEO of Solid Plan Consulting Ltd., a leading Finnish boutique law firm focused on international sanctions and export controls, where he regularly advises many of the largest Nordic exporters, financial institutions, and technology companies on a comprehensive range of legal and policy issues related to compliance with trade regulations. His publications include Kansainväliset pakotteet ja vientivalvonta (International Sanctions and Export Controls Alma Talent, 2021), the first Finnish textbook on this topic. Before private practice, Mr. Pursiainen was head of Trade Compliance at Nokia Corporation’s legal division, and before that he was head of the sanctions team at the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and a member of Finland’s delegation to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).