Introducing the National Security and Defence Documents Dataset

In an era of rapidly evolving global challenges, understanding how states perceive and articulate their security priorities has never been more critical. In this online event, Professor Andrew Neal (University of Edinburgh) will introduce a new corpus and dataset of national security documents, and explain the insights these offer into the landscape of international security. The collection encompasses 575 documents from 113 countries, spanning the years 1987 to 2024. It represents the first-ever comprehensive corpus of public national security and defence documents on a global scale, providing a unique window into how countries across the world conceptualise and prioritise their security challenges. This session will consist of a presentation on the dataset and how it can be used, followed by an interactive Q&A.