Event details

Join LISD’s Seminar on Global Diplomatic and Security Challenges (GDSC) for a session with Prof. Lawson Brigham, CAPT, USCG (ret.), and Prof. Tomas Ries, Stockholm, on "Environmental Security Challenges and the Arctic." The seminar will address environmental protections and regional military interests in the Arctic. GDSC is a yearlong interactive seminar for graduate and undergraduate students led by Founding Director, Wolfgang Danspeckgruber. This session is open to the public and rsvp is required. 

About the Speakers

Lawson W. Brigham is a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC and a research faculty member at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF).  He is currently a member of the National Academies Polar Research Board. Captain Brigham was a career U.S. Coast Guard officer and commanded four ships including the polar icebreaker Polar Sea on Arctic & Antarctic expeditions; he also served as the Coast Guard’s Chief of Strategic Planning in Washington, DC.  During 2004-09 he was chair of the Arctic Council’s Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment and Vice Chair of the Council’s Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment Working Group. Brigham has been a Marine Policy Fellow at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; a faculty member of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Naval Postgraduate School, and UAF (as Distinguished Professor of Geography & Arctic Policy); and, Alaska Director of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission.  He is a graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, a Naval War College distinguished graduate, and holds graduate degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (MS) and Cambridge University (MPhil & PhD).  His research interests have focused on the Russian maritime Arctic, Arctic climate change, polar geopolitics, and strategic planning. Captain Brigham was a 2008 signer of the American Geographical Society’s Fliers’ and Explorers’ Globe, the Society’s historic global of exploration, in recognition of Polar Sea’s 1994 voyages becoming the first ship in history to reach the extreme ends of the global ocean. Brigham is an elected member of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society and the Council on Foreign Relations. He was elected to the Norwegian Scientific Academy for Polar Research in 2013.  A central peak in the Gonville & Caius Range, Victoria Land, Antarctica was named Mount Brigham in January 2008 by the U.S. Board of Geographic Names.

Tomas Ries is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor in the US) in Security and Strategy at the National Defence College, Stockholm, Sweden. Dr. Ries has worked with security studies since 1979. His three main interests are: (1) The globalizing security environment and future trends; (2) The epistemological and practical challenges of the new security environment; and (3) The essence of strategy and security. During the Cold War (1979-1992) he focused on the US-Soviet strategic nuclear relationship in the Arctic, Soviet military interests and grand strategy in the north, Nordic security, and Finland’s security policy. From 2005-2010, Ries served as Director of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Stockholm. Prior to that, he served as Deputy Director of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy from 1996 to 1997 and Director of the International Training Course in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1992 to 1996. Ries holds various honorary positions including as an Atlantic Council Member (Washington DC); Adjunct Professor Åbo Akademi; Adjunct Professor Baltic Defense College; Royal Academy of Military Science (Stockholm); Royal Naval Society (Stockholm); Finland’s Academy of Military Science, plus several boards, expert advisory groups and networks. Ries holds a B.Sc. (Econ) from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Ph.D. from the Graduate Institute of International Studies at Geneva University.