Program Activities

The Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security (ACDIS) is a multidisciplinary venture at the University of Illinois that facilitates objective basic research, education and outreach on international security issues. A central objective is to disseminate the findings to the policymaking community, academia, educators, and students. The strength of the Program rests in its ability to integrate insights generated by engineers, natural scientists, social scientists, and scholars of the humanities to produce comprehensive analyses that do not reduce security issues to singular and simplifying explanations. International security challenges are approached as complex phenomena that can only be understood through an examination of multiple causes and impacts.

The Program facilitates the pursuit of interdisciplinary research initiatives, especially through targeted proposals for extramural funding, and assists in the dissemination of the relevant findings to the policymaking community through a series of publications and the organization of policy briefing events. The Program's mission to make people aware of the multiple causes underlying international security issues extends to a commitment to educate students and the general public through the organization of workshops, conferences, and colloquia, complemented by a presence in University of Illinois undergraduate and graduate curricula.
 
Our current topical areas of specialization include:

• Nuclear proliferation
• Weapons systems
• Biosecurity
• Cybersecurity
• Energy security and climate change
• The diffusion of inter and intra-state conflict
• Historically-based reexamination of war
• Ethnic conflict
• Regional security and peacekeeping
• Ethics, morality, and culture of war
• Evolution of global security regime