Democratising Security in Turbulent Times (2020-2024)

In this new Graduiertenkolleg, which is a shared project by the University of Hamburg, the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, Helmut Schmidt-University Hamburg and the GIGA Institute Hamburg, research will be conducted on questions concerning democratic security policy.

How is security provided in today’s turbulent times and how does this affect the relationship between democracy and security? The interdisciplinary graduate programme examines fundamental reconfigurations of the relationship between security and democracy against the backdrop of growing political and societal polarisation in the face of a global pandemic and the rise of antidemocratic forces, the advent of new digital technologies and the rescaling of security to arenas below and beyond the state.

As established ways of resolving conflicts or planning for the future have come under stress, new modes of ordering beyond established rules and processes emerge, yet with often transitionary outcomes and conflictual potential. Unequal dynamics of resource concentration and abandonment shrink political spaces for providing security in line with core democratic principles: what the promise of security entails, how it is imagined, for whom and at what price, is an increasingly divided matter — a tendency which has dramatically deepened in the turbulent times of a global pandemic.

At the intersection of international relations, political theory, sociology, criminology and communication studies, the graduate programme investigates emerging security configurations in turbulent times and contributes to understanding their governability as well as the democratic dilemmas and opportunities that arise.

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Funding: Landesforschungsförderung Hamburg