SVENSKA HANDELSHOGSKOLAN

Their core work

Hanken School of Economics is a Finnish business school that brings behavioral science, risk perception, and crisis management expertise to EU research. Their work focuses on understanding how people and systems respond during emergencies — from pandemic behavior and disinformation spread to disaster resilience in vulnerable communities. They bridge economics and social science with practical crisis response, analyzing supply chain disruptions, safety culture, and public communication failures during large-scale emergencies.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Hanken started with humanitarian logistics (iTRACK, 2016–2019), contributing to systems for tracking and coordination in civilian missions. From 2020 onward, their focus shifted sharply toward pandemic and crisis behavior — likely catalyzed by COVID-19 — with HERoS examining pandemic preparedness and CORE addressing broader societal resilience. The trajectory shows a clear move from operational humanitarian support toward behavioral and social science dimensions of crisis management.

Hanken is positioning itself as a social-science authority on crisis behavior, disinformation, and societal resilience — expect continued work on how communities respond to compound emergencies.

How they like to work

Hanken operates as both coordinator and partner, having led HERoS while contributing to two other projects. With 37 unique partners across 17 countries from just 3 projects, they participate in large, diverse consortia rather than small focused teams. This breadth suggests they are comfortable in multi-disciplinary settings and bring a specific social-science angle that complements technical and policy partners.

Despite only 3 projects, Hanken has built a wide network of 37 partners across 17 countries, indicating participation in large pan-European consortia. Their reach spans well beyond the Nordic region.

What sets them apart

Hanken is a business school — not a medical institute or engineering lab — which gives them a distinctive lens on crisis research: economic behavior, supply chain logic, and organizational decision-making under stress. This makes them a rare partner for security and health projects that need behavioral economics and risk perception expertise rather than purely technical solutions. For consortium builders, they fill the "human factors and socioeconomic analysis" seat that many crisis-response proposals require.

Highlights from their portfolio

• HERoS
  Hanken's only coordinator role, addressing pandemic preparedness with the largest single-project funding (EUR 413K) — directly COVID-era relevant.
• CORE
  Broad societal resilience project covering cascade events, vulnerable groups, and youth education — extends Hanken's crisis work beyond health into security.