Modern transnational and global history, internationalism, anti-fascism, anti-racism and resistance to the extreme right and right-wing populism. 

Kasper Braskén is currently Academy Research Fellow in Political History at the University of Helsinki and associated to the Minority Research Profile at ÅAU. 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” funded by the Research Council of Finland (Project number 355478; 2023–2027).

Braskén completed his PhD in general history at Abo Akademi University in 2014 on a thesis analysing the transnational solidarity campaigns organised by the International Workers Relief in Weimar Germany (1921–1933). Braskén has specialized in transnational and global history, left internationalism, international communism, ethnic history, monirities and liberal, socialist and communit anti-fascism in European and global contexts.

Braskén has been visiting researcher at Freie Universität Berlin (2014–2015 & 2017–2019), Royal Holloway University of London (2016), University of Cape Town (2023), and Queen Mary University of London (2024).

Braskén's research has been funded by Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, the Swedish Society for Literature in Finland, the Academy of Finland (Research Concil of Finland), the Kone Foundation, and the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

Between 2020 and 2023 Braskén participated in the research project "Finland-Swedish Antifascism" (Den finlandssvenska antifascismen) that analyses the history of anti-fascism in Finland from the 1920s to the 1940s and how anti-fascism functioned as a cohesive and dividing force for ethnic minorities. 

Published co-edited volumes/special issues include:

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)

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

Teaching and Supervising

I am currently co-supervisor to two PhD-students who are investigating Nordic fascism and anti-fascism. My teaching has focused on 19th and 20th-century history, global and transnational history, the history of genocide and the Holocaust, fascism and anti-fascism, and the history of famine and famine relief.

For my latest research activities and publications, see: https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/kasper-brasken

Global history; revolutions; protest movements, international communism, antifascism, fascism