CGSC and EJIS Conference 2023: Security in a Time of 'Polycrisis'

The Centre for Global Security Challenges and the European Journal of International Security are pleased to announce the 2023 Conference will be taking place on 18-19 May, 2023 at the University of Leeds.

The term ‘polycrisis’ has gained prominence over recent years as a way of articulating the sum of the multiple, intersecting crises of our contemporary world. Interlocking environmental disasters, a global pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the potential for nuclear conflict are happening within entrenched and often entrenching structures of militarisation, exploitation and inequality. We live, according to this discourse, in an age of potential plural catastrophe. This age of polycrisis emphasises the importance of understanding how these multiple crises intersect and affect each other.

‘Security’ as a logic through which to comprehend and respond to this circumstance has been increasingly stretched while also becoming inescapable. As a concept, security rests on the drawing of lines between security/not security and security/insecurity. These lines have been critiqued for producing and reproducing imperial, gendered, racist, violent and exclusionary structures. But does an age of polycrisis dissolve even the ability to make the distinctions on which security as an organising logic relies?

The Centre for Global Security Challenges, Leeds and the European Journal of International Security are organising a two-day, in person conference to engage with these issues.

The programme can be viewed via the registration page.