Joakim Palme

Joakim Palme served as Chair of the UNRISD Board from July 2017 through June 2021. He had previously served as an UNRISD Board Member from July 2013 through June 2017.

At the time of serving as Board Chair, Mr. Palme was Professor of Political Science at the Department of Government, Uppsala University in Sweden. He is also Honorary Professor at the University of South Denmark; Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities; and President of the Research Committee 19, Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy, International Sociological Association.

Mr. Palme collaborated with UNRISD for the project inception workshop for New Directions in Social Policy in 2014. For the workshop, he presented on "The Risks and Opportunities for Social Policy in the OECD." He was the External Research Coordinator (with Olli Kangas) of the UNRISD project "Social Policy in Late Industrializers: The Nordic Experience".

From 2002 to 2011, Mr. Palme was the director of the Institute for Futures Studies. His doctoral dissertation Pension Right in Welfare Capitalism was defended in 1990. Since then, he has continued to work on social policy in a comparative perspective and published analyses of the welfare state and redistribution, and of the public-private mix in social protection. Mr. Palme has further worked on social insurance and health, as well as on social policy reform and retrenchment in Sweden. From 1999 to 2001, He chaired the Welfare Commission appointed by the Swedish Government.