NORWEGIAN RISK FORUM 2025
OCTOBER 24
OSLO
Speakers & Panelists
Arne Elias Corneliussen
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
NRCI
Arne Elias Corneliussen is a geopolitical advisor and global strategist who supports business leaders, financial companies, and policy makers. He is a political scientist and he studied in the US, Egypt, and Chile. He possesses a broad and deep global understanding of geopolitical and strategic events and dynamics. He is the founder and chief executive officer of NRCI – a geopolitical advisory firm he established in 2010.
Arne traveled to more than 125 countries, and he conducted a wide range of long overland fact-finding expeditions alone by bus, train, and car across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America where he mapped geopolitical, strategic and economic dynamics. These overland fact-finding expeditions gave him extraordinary geopolitical, strategic, and business insights, and a unique global perspective. He conducted 11 fact-finding expeditions to 42 countries on the African continent, and he traveled by public bus across 28 countries in western, southern, and eastern Africa. Furthermore, he also traveled on a fact-finding expedition by train, bus and car from Shanghai to Istanbul across China, Central Asia, and the Caucasus to map infrastructure developments, logistics clusters, and the geopolitical landscape along One Belt One Road, also called the New Silk Road, which China develops.
In the fall of 2022, he traveled by bus and train across 19 countries in eastern, southern, and western Europe and assessed geopolitical and strategic dynamics in Europe, and more broadly he assessed the future of Europe. Moreover, in 2023 and 2024, he traveled on a 5-month fact-finding expedition in southern and eastern Africa to assess geopolitical dynamics, and investment and business opportunities. His global on the ground experience assessing geopolitical, strategic, and economic developments, combined with managing NRCI for 15 years, make him uniquely experienced and highly knowledgeable about geopolitical events, global affairs, and the global economy. Arne Elias Corneliussen maintains close dialogue with a global network of informed contacts on all levels in academia, business, diplomacy, and governments. NRCI hosts Norwegian Risk Forum, an annual geopolitical conference, for which Arne is program chair, conference host, moderator, and keynote speaker. NRCI hosts the 15th annual Norwegian Risk Forum in 2024.
Faisal Devji
Professor of Indian History
St Antony’s College, University of Oxford
Dr Faisal Devji is Professor of Indian History and Director of the Asian Studies Centre at St Antony´s College at the University of Oxford.
Dr Faisal Devji held faculty positions at the New School in New York, Yale University and the University of Chicago, from where he also received his PhD in Intellectual History. Devji was Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University, and Head of Graduate Studies at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, from where he directed post-graduate courses in the Near East and Central Asia.
He is a Fellow at New York University’s Institute of Public Knowledge and Yves Otramane Chair at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. He authored several books among them, The Impossible India: Gandhi and the Temptation of Violence.
Dr. Devji travelled widely in East Africa and South Asia and he is interested in Indian political thought and followed Indian politics closely for many years, and while he teaches at the University of Oxford, he travels regularly to India.
Ferenc Németh
Research Fellow
Hungarian Institute of International Affairs
Ferenc Németh is a Research Fellow at the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs and a Ph.D. candidate at the Corvinus University of Budapest. Previously, Ferenc served as a lecturer at Eötvös József College and the Advanced College for Security Policy, was an editor at the Balkán Expressz column of the Figyelő newspaper and biztonsagpolitika.hu, and worked at the Press Office of EULEX Kosovo. Most recently, he was a Denton Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, DC and participated in the Transatlantic Security Initiative of the International Republican Institute.
Ferenc holds a master’s degree in international relations from Corvinus University of Budapest and pursued post-graduate studies at the universities of Graz and Belgrade as part of the Joint Master’s Program in Southeast European Studies. With a decade of experience with applied research, advocacy and journalism, Ferenc has been a panellists in international events (Belgrade Security Conference, Budapest Balkans Forum, Tirana Connectivity Forum) and academic conferences at UC Berkeleyand Rutgers University. His areas of expertise include the Western Balkans and Central Europe, Euro-Atlantic enlargement, and security studies.
Francesco Sassi
Researcher in Energy Geopolitics and Markets
Ricerche Industriali ed Energetiche (RIE)
Francesco Sassi is a researcher in energy geopolitics and markets at RIE, Ricerche Industriali ed Energetiche. Against the background of increasingly volatile energy markets and transition towards low-carbon energy systems, his main duties include analysing energy security, transition policies and strategies of the main global actors. This includes an in-depth analysis of energy diplomacy and how energy interdependencies become a source of power in bilateral relations. Prior to joining RIE, Francesco was a researcher at the University of Pisa, where he obtained his PhD (with honour) in Political Science – Geopolitics with a research project the Sino-Russian gas interdependence.
Also, Dr. Sassi works as a researcher for the energy security unit at the Observatory of International Politics of the Italian Parliament and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation. He has authored several peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and has a significant consulting experience on energy geopolitics, energy markets and geopolitics.
Bojana Zorić
Political Analyst on Balkan Affairs
Dr. Bojana Zorić is a policy analyst and researcher with more than 10 years of experience working in and on the Western Balkans. She works as an Associate Analyst for Western Balkans at the EU Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) in Paris, where she leads the analysis of policy and security developments in the Western Balkans, particularly in the context of enlargement, transatlantic relations, third-party influence and other day-to-day developments that affect Euro-Atlantic security infrastructure.
She holds a PhD in Political Science with a specialisation in Security Studies from Masaryk University. She also completed an MA in European Union-Russia studies at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at University of Tartu, an MA in Russian Philology and Pedagogy at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at University of Zagreb. As part of her academic journey, she also studied at KU Leuven, Saint Petersburg State University, and Tallin University.
Bojana contributed to book volumes published by Routledge and Springer Handbook of Political Science and International Relations and has published in several peer-reviewed journals focusing on security developments in the Western Balkans, including in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Kosovo.
Yang Xiaotong
Research Manager
Grandview Institution, Beijing
Yang Xiaotong is research manager at the international cooperation department and an assistant researcher at Grandview Institution – a renowned Chinese independent think tank, in Beijing. He graduated with an M.A. in geopolitics from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Yang lived in Saudi Arabia and Oman for a decade, where he experienced the Arab Spring.
He wrote a report for the World Wildlife Fund titled “Challenges and Opportunities for Chinese NGOs to Participate in Renewable Energy in Africa”. In addition, he wrote reports for the Chinese Academy of Social Science, the Beijing Institute of Technology, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Central Foreign Affairs Commission. He also published various articles for Asia Times, Russian International Affairs Council, and China-United States Exchange Foundation among others.
His research interests include Sino-Arab relations, Sino-Iranian relations, Sino-American competition in the Middle East and North Africa, China’s dealing with Middle Eastern armed non-state actors, counter terrorism and political Islam. Yang is based in Beijing.