Roundtable: “Revisiting Critical Security Studies: the conditions and challenges of being critical of security today”

Time: 18 April 2023 — 17:15-18:45

Location: Queen Mary University of London (GC 101) and online

In 1997 Michael Williams and Keith Krause published an edited volume that coined Critical Security Studies. They opened their preface with: “This book emerged out of a desire to contribute to the development of a self-consciously critical perspective within security studies. Intellectually, the rationale for this is straightforward: security studies (however broadly defined) has been among the last bastions of orthodoxy in International Relations to accept critical or theoretically sophisticated challenges to its problematics.”

A lot has happened since 1997. Critical security studies has become itself one of the bastions of research in IR. New security events have emerged at regular intervals and have been scripted into research agendas. Critique has been put under critique. Today is not a particularly special moment to revisit the meaning, conditions and challenges of critically engaging with security. And yet, it is not an insignificant time to do so either. We have come out of a global pandemic to land in a war in Ukraine with global ramifications. Racialising practices and identity concerns continue to put security studies and democratic politics in turmoil. Outspoken intensifications of geopolitical readings of security combined with expectations of a looming planetary catastrophe sustain imaginations of living in end-times while raising issues on how to engage the international and planetary simultaneously in critical security studies.

The roundtable seeks to contribute to ongoing reflections on what it might mean today to be critical of security. In doing so, it invites debate on key theoretical challenges for Critical Security Studies that emerge in light of both contemporary security practices and recent developments in security studies.

The venue is to ensure the event is widely attended in person, but should you be unable to travel, you can join online. Tickets are available on Eventbrite, at the following link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/doing-ips-roundtable-revisiting-critical-security-studies-tickets-591527684227

Chair:

Alvina Hoffmann (Queen Mary University of London)

Roundtable participants:

Rita Abrahamsen (University of Ottawa)

Claudia Aradau (King’s College London)

Jef Huysmans (Queen Mary University of London)

Michael Williams (University of Ottawa)