ACDIS Team Receives Focal Point Grant for Interdisciplinary Security Studies
Published: July 23, 2009
A group of graduate students and staff from the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security (ACDIS) have been awarded a grant for the 2009-2010 academic year from the University of Illinois Graduate College through its newly established Focal Point program.
The group, led by ACDIS Director Colin Flint (Geography), Associate Director Matthew Rosenstein, and Geography Ph.D. student Richelle Bernazzoli, includes Geography Ph.D. students Steven Radil and Sang-Hyun Chi, and Political Science Ph.D. students Shweta Moorthy and Todd Robinson.
Their project, entitled Science, Technology, & Security: New Institutions to Manage Global Security in the 21st Century, is a new initiative of ACDIS aimed at fostering stronger interdisciplinary ties between graduate students and faculty members on the Illinois campus—and beyond—in the study of international security.
The Graduate College Focal Point program "seeks to catalyze the formation of intellectual communities made up of faculty and graduate students around topics that undergird important issues and problems of our times." With the initiative, the Graduate College hopes "to engage faculty and inspire graduate students to advance knowledge in areas of critical national and human need" towards solutions that "encompass multiple disciplines and require innovative thinking."
The ACDIS project has two major components: a graduate seminar and an interdisciplinary graduate student conference, both focusing on existing and emerging institutions necessary to manage present-day problems in global security.
The seminar will feature lectures during the fall 2009 semester by University of Illinois faculty from diverse disciplines, covering topics such as international relations, biosecurity, nuclear weapons proliferation, terrorism, and peacekeeping. The lectures and discussions will expose participating graduate students to areas of security studies well beyond their own fields and introduce them to the questions being asked and approaches taken to answering them in a variety of theoretical and methodological contexts.
ACDIS Director Colin Flint notes, "This seminar will continue the ACDIS tradition of bringing together scholars from across the humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, and engineering to tackle pressing issues of international security. The seminar hopes to stimulate graduate inquiry that considers perspectives from different scientific traditions and in so doing prepares students for careers in which integration of diverse forms of knowledge is required."
The lectures and discussions will be videostreamed and made available to the public on the project website and the ACDIS website.
The interdisciplinary graduate student conference, planned for the spring 2010 semester, will bring together graduate students from Midwestern universities who specialize in various aspects of international security. The goals of the conference are to: 1) consider the diverse methodological and theoretical approaches currently being applied to security studies; 2) establish an ongoing dialogue between scholars working on divergent aspects of security within varying disciplinary contexts; and 3) identify new and cutting-edge perspectives from which security-related topics are being explored.
If the conference generates sufficient interest, the team plans to seek external funding in order to sustain it as an annual event, as well as to facilitate the development of focused research projects based on new ideas emerging from the 2009-2010 initiative.