Ice berg in the water

Research themes

21st Century Security 

National Security and Defense 

Conventional and Unconventional Warfare

Human Rights and Development 

21st Century Security

Shifting global contexts and emerging security challenges and opportunities, such as the Arctic energy, security and environments, climate change, cybersecurity, autonomous weapons and enhanced soldiers, health, migration and citizenship

Key Points

  • Differentially devastating impacts of local and global physical, social and political climates, and disparity in resources to address resulting security threats.
  • The borderless impact of threats, and issues of control, response and governance in the face of threats.
  • The reconfiguration of global power, and the emergence of China as an economic superpower and global peer competitor.
  • Radical changes in the nature of conflict, from developments in technology and information mobilization, to cyberthreats, to the advent of semi-autonomous weapon systems and technological enhancements of human soldiers.

National Security and Defense

National security, security institutions, and defense policies and processes. Includes civil-military relations, domestic and hemispheric security (Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa), and both Canadian and United States policy, politics, and military history.

Key Points

  • Diplomatic, military, and economic strategies.
  • Policies and practices securing national values, freedoms, wealth, and territories.
  • Governments, institutions, international organizations and non-state actors which provide security for the state and others from internal and external threats.
  • The role of both multilateral and unilateral initiatives play in pursuing national security goals.

Conventional and Unconventional Warfare and Conflict

Military history, theory, practice and strategy, as well as asymmetrical non-state violence, laws of armed conflict, seapower, strategic thought, and atrocity crimes.

Key Points

  • Conventional warfare and conflict involving the use of or threat of the use of armed forces in combat with each other.
  • Unconventional (asymmetrical) warfare and conflict involving militaries or other actors employing alternative strategies and tactics to secure an advantage or desired political outcome.
  • The legal regimes that regulate the resort to, and conduct in, interstate and intrastate armed conflicts.
  • The degeneration of conflicts into the perpetration of war crimes, crimes against humanity, atrocity crimes, and genocides.

Human Rights and Development

Upholding fundamental rights and preventing human rights violations, ethics and morality in conflicts, peacebuilding, and development. Policies, institutions and processes to build and sustain peaceful and inclusive societies.

Key Points

  • Rapid humanitarian responses to ongoing crises, as well as medium and longer-term efforts to support institutions, policies and practices that create peaceful and inclusive societies.
  • Canada’s long-term interests and threats associated with conflict, instability and poverty.
  • Addressing security threats through global progress on human rights, development, and democratic institutions.
  • Examining long-term solutions to cycles of violence and human rights abuses while supporting reconciliation, the rule of law, and peaceful and sustainable economic and political institutions.