Magnus Ekengren is Professor of Political Science at the Swedish Defence University in Stockholm.

Magnus is a former Swedish diplomat and was previously Deputy Director at the Policy Planning Unit of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, where he dealt with EU enlargement and institutional reform, the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Common Security and Defence Policy. Professor Ekengren briefed senior government officials in Sweden and abroad, spoke at the European Parliament as an expert on European disaster response and lectures regularly at European universities and think tanks and within the European External Action Service. He also served in the Swedish Representation to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg and in the European Commission in Brussels. Professor Ekengren was a Visiting Professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto and the College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium. He is a member of the Foundation Board of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs and the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences. He studied at Uppsala University, the College of Europe, and Johns Hopkins University Bologna before obtaining his PhD from Stockholm University.

Magnus Ekengren specializes in the foreign and security policy of the European Union. He writes on the value of EU “experimentalist governance” as a way to understand how governments should build capacity to manage transboundary crises. Professor Ekengren is currently using practice theory to explain the driving forces behind EU foreign policies and the transformation of the European security community. Recent research projects include a study of EU crisis cooperation practices and the way they foster a new type of security community based on mutual assistance. His current projects deal with long lasting ‘creeping crises’ such as global warming, pandemics and cyber vulnerabilities, and the question of how early detection of threats can lead to actions that stop them from developing into acute crises.

More generally, Professor Ekengren’s research interests include the temporal dimension of EU governance, integration theory, crisis management and transnational communities of practice. His latest books are The EU as Crisis Manager – Patterns and Prospects (Cambridge University Press, 2013, with A. Boin and M. Rhinard), and Explaining the European Union’s Foreign Policy – A Practice Theory of Translocal Action (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Understanding the Creeping Crisis (Palgrave: Macmillan 2021, with A. Boin and M. Rhinard). 

His publications include “Extending experimentalist governance in crisis management”, in J. Zeitlin (ed.) Extending Experimentalist Governance? The European Union and Transnational Regulation (Oxford University Press, 2015); “What Can EU Civil Security Governance Learn from the Common Security and Defence Policy and the European Defence Agency?”, in R. Bossong and H. Hegemann (eds), European Civil Security Governance: Diversity and Cooperation in Crisis and Disaster Management (Palgrave, 2015); “Managing Transboundary Crises: The emergence of European Union Capacity”, Journal of Crisis and Contingency Management (2014, with A. Boin and M. Rhinard); “Transboundary Crisis Governance”, in J. Sperling (ed.) Handbook of Security and Governance (Edward Elgar, 2014, with A. Boin and M. Rhinard); “A return to geopolitics? The future of the security community in the Baltic Sea region” (Global Affairs 2018); “Explaining the European Union’s Security in Practice (Journal of Common Market Studies 2019), “Hiding in Plain Sight: Conceptualizing the Creeping Crisis” (Risk, Hazards, & Crisis in Public Policy 2020 with A. Boin and M. Rhinard) and “Why are we surprised by extreme weather, pandemics and migration crises when we know they will happen? Exploring the added value of contingency thinking” (Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 2023).