Jarmo Seppälä appointed as Director of the Coherent Security Research Programme

Jarmo Seppälä, PhD, will start as Research Programme Director on 17 March.

News12.3.2025

Jarmo Seppälä, PhD, has been appointed to the position of Research Programme Director of Laurea's Coherent Security research programme. In his new position, he will lead the research programme and will be responsible for its strategic direction, content development, scientific excellence and accountability.

Seppälä has a PhD in Economic History from the Department of History and Ethnology at the University of Jyväskylä in 2018. His dissertation dealt with the ideological attitude of Finnish trade groups towards the large-scale unitisation of trade in the 1960s and 1970s. He is also a Laurea alumni, having graduated from Laurea in 2004.

Before becoming Research Programme Director, Jarmo Seppälä has been working as a grant writer in Laurea's RDI services since June 2021. As a grant writer, his work focused on project preparation for the security research programme, in particular for applications under the "Public Security in Society" cluster of Horizon Europe.

Before joining Laurea, he worked at the University of Jyväskylä in various positions, most recently (2018-2021) as a research professor at the University of Jyväskylä School of Economics.

– Over the past years, I have gotten to know the people working on security issues at Laurea and I am very happy to continue working with them. Thanks to them, Laurea is a well-known and respected partner in the European security RDI field, says Seppälä.

– I look forward to new challenges and the opportunity to lead Laurea's successful security research programme.

Laurea is an established security research and development institution in Finland and Europe. Most of the funding for projects in Laurea's Coherent Security research programme comes from the European Union's Horizon Framework Programme. The funding for Laurea's security-related projects that were ongoing in 2024 amounts to approximately EUR 6 million over the life cycle of the projects.

Find out more about the projects in the Coherent Security research programme