Leena Rikkilä started her political work with the 1980s solidarity movement for South Africa and with Finland's Nelson Mandela Reception Committee in the 1990s.She is former secretary-general of Finland's Advisory Board for Relations with Developing Countries, KESU, which monitors and assesses issues related to Finland's development relations and global policy. Prior to KESU, she worked at the University of Tampere. She is a former chairperson (2001-2002) and current board member of Network Institute for Global Democracy (NIGD). Among her roles at NIGD, she co-ordinated projects promoting North-South dialogues on democracy and globalization and was involved in the World Social Forum process. She has also worked for the MOST (Management of Social Transformations) programme at Unesco, Paris. Her most recent publication, From a Global Market Place to Political Spaces (Helsinki May 2002), co-edited with Katarina Sehm-Patomäki, discusses Southern views on initiatives on global democracy. She has also written on matters related to gender and politicized religion in violent conflicts, especially in South-Asia. During 2004 she co-ordinated IDEA’s project on constitutional dialogues in Nepal.
Education:
Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Tampere, Finland
