Description of research and teaching

Kasper Braskén is Academy Research Fellow in Political History at the University of Helsinki. He is the Principal Investigator of the research project “Locating Global Protest against the Extreme Right: Anti-Fascism, Anti-Racism and Internationalism in Multiethnic Metropoles” (LGP) funded by the Research Council of Finland (Project number 355478; 2023–2027). Please visit the LGP-website for the latest news about the project: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/projects/anti-fascism-anti-racism-and-internationalism-multiethnic-metropoles

Braskén has specialised in transnational and global history, including left internationalism, international communism, ethnic minorities, and various anti-fascist movements in European and global contexts. 

Braskén completed his PhD in general history at Abo Akademi University in 2014 on transnational solidarity campaigns in Weimar Germany. It was published as The International Workers’ Relief, Communism, and Transnational Solidarity: Willi Münzenberg in Weimar Germany (Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements).

Braskén has been visiting researcher at Freie Universität Berlin (2014–2015 & 2017–2019) and Royal Holloway University of London (2016), University of Cape Town (2023) and Queen Mary University of London (2024). During the ongoing LGP-project, Braskén will also function as visiting researcher in New York City, Chicago and Berlin.

Braskén has co-edited the following edited volumes & special issues:

Anti-Fascism and Ethnic Minorities: History and Memory in Central and Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2024)

Special issue "Anti-fascist resistance fighters, intersectionality and memory", Twentieth Century Communism 25, 2023

Special Issue of South African Historical Journal: Anti-Fascism in Southern Africa, vol. 74 (1) 2022. 

Anti-Fascism in a Global Perspective: Transnational Networks, Exile Communities, and Radical Internationalism (Routledge, 2021)

Anti-Fascism in the Nordic Countries: New Perspectives, Comparisons and Transnational Connections (Routledge, 2019)

Braskén has peer-reviewed original research articles for the journals Global Networks (Wiley), Contemporary European History (Cambridge UP), Scandinavian Journal of History (Routledge); Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies (Brill), Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography (Taylor & Francis), Twentieth Century Communism (Lawrence & Wishart), Journal of Transnational American Studies (University of California Digital Library), Esboços: histórias em contextos globais (Brazil), Irish Studies Review (Taylor & Francis), Journal of Women's History (Johns Hopkins University Press).

Braskén is an active book reviewer and his reviews have been published in such journals as American Historical Review, European History Quarterly, History: The Journal of the Historical Association, Twentieth Century Communism, Connections, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland, Finsk Tidskrift, International Newsletter of Communist Studies, and H-Net (H-Socialisms).

Braskén is editorial board member of Twentieth Century Communism and the journal's book reviews editor.

For more information about my activiteis and publications before September 2023, see: https://research.abo.fi/en/persons/kasper-brasken

Teaching and Supervision

I am currently co-supervisor to two PhD-students who are investigating Nordic fascism and anti-fascism. My teaching has focused on 20th Century global and transnational history, social movements, the history of genocide and the Holocaust, fascism and anti-fascism.