Juha Mäkelä, a General Staff officer and Doctor of Military Sciences, has been appointed as the next Director of the Finnish Institute in the Middle East (FIME). He has 20 years of experience in research on Middle Eastern security and foreign policy. Mäkelä has previously served, among other roles, as a visiting researcher at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, as well as a defence attaché in Turkey and Lebanon.
Mäkelä will retire from his position as an officer in the spring and will assume his new post in Beirut on 1 June 2026. He has been involved in the activities of the Finnish Institute in the Middle East for nearly twenty years and has participated in courses organized by the institute. Mäkelä has also served as a member of the board of the institute’s foundation in 2025–2026.
“I am humbly grateful for my selection as director of FIME and at the same time excited about this new role, in which I can make use of my diverse language skills, my previous expertise on the Middle East, and my strong leadership and managerial experience. In this new position, I will view the Middle East from a different perspective, placing even greater emphasis on a deep understanding of Middle Eastern societies, cultures, and the region’s languages,” Mäkelä says.
The term of the current Director of the Finnish Institute in the Middle East, Docent Susanne Dahlgren, will continue until the end of May 2026.