Where will the conference take place?

The conference will be held in Heidelberg, DEU.

What is the primary focus of this annual conference?

The conference focuses on the interconnections between crisis, war, and critique within critical security studies.

Annual Conference of the “Critical Security Studies” Working Group of the German Political Science Association (DVPW) – Crisis, War, Critique

Name: Annual Conference of the “Critical Security Studies” Working Group of the German Political Science Association (DVPW) – Crisis, War, Critique
Start: 2026-11-05T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-11-06T00:00:00Z
Location: Heidelberg

Nov 5–6, 2026Heidelberg, GermanyIn-person

Registration open

The Annual Conference of the “Critical Security Studies” Working Group of the German Political Science Association (DVPW) will convene in Heidelberg, Germany. This gathering focuses on the intricate relationships between crisis, war, and critique within the realm of security studies. It offers a platform for scholars to engage with contemporary global challenges through a critical lens, examining how traditional security paradigms are being reshaped by ongoing conflicts and evolving theoretical frameworks.

Committees & topics

Topics
Crisis as a Category of Security Politics · War and the Return of Interstate Conflict · Critique as Method in Security Studies · The Field of Critical Security Studies · Political Science and the Study of Security · International Relations and the Crisis of the Liberal Order · Criminology, Policing and the Security–Crime Nexus · Sociology of Security and the Social Production of (In)Security

Why it matters

In an era marked by persistent global instability, understanding the critical dimensions of security is more vital than ever. This conference provides a crucial forum for dissecting the underlying assumptions and power dynamics that shape international security discourse. By bringing together diverse perspectives, it aims to foster a deeper, more nuanced comprehension of how crises and conflicts are defined, managed, and resisted.

The discussions will likely delve into the theoretical underpinnings of critical security studies, exploring its evolution and application to current events. Participants will have the opportunity to challenge conventional wisdom and propose innovative approaches to global security challenges, moving beyond state-centric views to consider broader societal and human security concerns. The insights generated from this conference can inform policy debates and academic research, contributing to more effective and ethically sound responses to complex security issues.

How to prepare

For those preparing to engage with the conference themes, a robust understanding of critical security theories is essential. Familiarity with concepts such as the securitization theory, post-structuralist approaches to security, and the role of discourse in constructing security threats will be highly beneficial. Participants should also consider how these theoretical frameworks apply to current geopolitical events, such as the conflict in UKR or other ongoing crises, to contribute meaningfully to the discussions.

Attendees should also consider the broader implications of critical security studies for international relations and diplomacy. Reflecting on how critical perspectives can inform practical policy decisions and engagement strategies will enhance the value of participation. Understanding the various hidden stakeholders and their roles in shaping security narratives, as well as engaging in dynamic analysis of evolving threats, will be key to a productive experience. The conference provides an opportunity to refine analytical skills and contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of global security.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Germany

As the host nation, DEU plays a central role in fostering critical academic discourse on security, reflecting its own complex historical and contemporary security policies.

Role in topic

DEU's academic institutions and political landscape provide a significant environment for the development and application of critical security studies, often engaging with issues of peace, conflict resolution, and international cooperation.

Ukraine

The ongoing conflict in UKR offers a poignant case study for critical security analysis, highlighting the human cost of traditional security paradigms and the complexities of international intervention.

Role in topic

The situation in UKR serves as a critical empirical reference point for discussions on crisis, war, and the limitations of conventional security frameworks, prompting re-evaluation of concepts like sovereignty and intervention.

United States

The USA's role as a global superpower and its extensive military and security apparatus make it a frequent subject of critical security analyses, particularly concerning its foreign policy and interventions.

Role in topic

Critical security scholars often examine the USA's influence on global security architectures, its strategic interests, and the discursive construction of threats that justify its security policies.

China

CHN's rising global influence and its unique approach to security, encompassing both traditional and non-traditional threats, present a significant area for critical examination.

Role in topic

Discussions may explore CHN's security strategies, its impact on regional and global stability, and how its internal and external policies are framed within critical security discourse.

Russia

RUS's actions on the international stage, particularly in relation to its neighbors, provide a critical case study for understanding state-centric security concerns and their implications.

Role in topic

The conference will likely analyze RUS's security doctrines, its role in international conflicts, and how these actions are interpreted through critical lenses that question power, sovereignty, and intervention.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Crisis as a Category of Security Politics

The concept of 'crisis' has become a central organizing category of contemporary security politics, used to frame phenomena ranging from financial collapse and pandemics to climate breakdown, migration, and energy supply. Critical scholarship traces the term's modern lineage through Reinhart Koselleck's work, which showed how 'Krise' shifted from a medical and theological term to a structural feature of modern political time, signalling moments of decision in which the future appears radically open. Since the 2008 financial crisis, the 2015 'refugee crisis,' the COVID-19 pandemic, and the cascading shocks following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, crisis-talk has proliferated in both political discourse and academic analysis. For critical security studies, the core dispute is whether crises are objective ruptures requiring exceptional measures, or whether the very act of naming a situation a 'crisis' is a political move that legitimises emergency governance, suspends ordinary deliberation, and reallocates resources. Scholars in the tradition of the Copenhagen and Paris schools have shown how crisis framings feed securitisation, while Marxist and feminist critics argue that 'permanent crisis' has become a mode of governing late capitalism. In Germany specifically, debates around the 'Zeitenwende' announced by Chancellor Scholz in February 2022 have reignited questions about how crisis declarations reshape defence budgets, civil-military relations, and democratic oversight. Today the issue stands at the intersection of theory and policy: how should analysts distinguish genuine emergencies from manufactured ones, and how can democratic publics retain agency when politics is conducted in a near-continuous register of urgency? The working group's engagement with 'crisis' addresses both the empirical proliferation of crises and the conceptual inflation of the term itself.

Key players

War and the Return of Interstate Conflict

After three decades in which Western security debates were dominated by counter-insurgency, peacekeeping, and the 'war on terror,' interstate war has returned to the centre of European political analysis. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Israel–Hamas war ignited by the 7 October 2023 attacks and the ensuing campaign in Gaza, and ongoing conflicts in Sudan, the Sahel, Myanmar, and the South Caucasus have unsettled the post-Cold War assumption that great-power war in Europe was obsolete. The German Bundeswehr's planned expansion, the 100-billion-euro special fund, and renewed debates on conscription mark a substantive reorientation of German security policy. Critical scholarship on war asks not only why wars occur but how war is conceptualised, narrated, and rendered legitimate. Drawing on figures such as Carl von Clausewitz, Hannah Arendt, Mary Kaldor (new wars), and feminist theorists of militarism, the field interrogates the boundaries between war and peace, combatant and civilian, front and home front, and increasingly between kinetic and cyber or informational violence. Debates about 'hybrid warfare,' drone strikes, autonomous weapons, and AI-enabled targeting—visible in Ukraine and Gaza—have further blurred these distinctions. The issue today stands at a juncture where empirical realities of protracted war coexist with normative and legal frameworks (UN Charter, IHL, ICC jurisdiction) under significant strain. Critical security scholars probe how war is being remade as a political, technological and discursive practice, and what role academic critique can play when arms expenditures and martial vocabularies expand across European societies.

Key players

Critique as Method in Security Studies

Critique, in the sense developed by the Frankfurt School and its successors, is more than fault-finding: it is the systematic interrogation of the historical, social and ideological conditions under which knowledge and power are produced. In security studies, the 'critical turn' beginning in the late 1980s—associated with Robert Cox's distinction between problem-solving and critical theory, Ken Booth's emancipatory security, and the Welsh, Copenhagen, and Paris schools—challenged the realist orthodoxy that treated states, threats, and military force as natural objects of analysis. The core dispute concerns the role and possibility of critique in a moment when liberal-democratic institutions, academic freedom, and public discourse are themselves under pressure. Some scholars argue that critique must remain a normative practice oriented towards emancipation and the dismantling of unjust security arrangements; others, drawing on Foucault, Butler, postcolonial and decolonial theory, emphasise genealogical analysis of how 'security' itself produces subjects and exclusions. A recurring question is whether critique risks complicity—either by providing intellectual scaffolding for state security practices (as in policy-oriented research) or by retreating into self-referential theory disconnected from political struggle. In the German context, where the DVPW Working Group on Critical Security Studies has organised these debates for over a decade, critique today must navigate a public sphere reshaped by war in Europe, climate emergency, the rise of the far right, and shrinking spaces for dissent on contested conflicts. The question of what critical security studies can and should do politically is therefore newly urgent.

Key players

The Field of Critical Security Studies

Critical Security Studies (CSS) emerged in the late 1980s and 1990s as a response to the perceived narrowness of traditional, state-centric and military-focused security studies. Foundational interventions—Richard Wyn Jones and Ken Booth on emancipatory security, Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde on securitisation, and Didier Bigo's sociology of (in)security professionals—broadened the referent object of security beyond the state to include human beings, communities, ecosystems, and the global poor. Subsequent waves drew on feminist IR (Cynthia Enloe, J. Ann Tickner), postcolonial and decolonial thought, queer theory, and science and technology studies, each pluralising what counts as a security issue and whose insecurity matters. The core disputes within the field concern its boundaries and political stakes: the relation between problem-solving policy advice and emancipatory critique; the risks and benefits of 'securitising' issues such as climate, migration or pandemics; how to handle the field's largely Western institutional location; and how to engage with rapidly evolving technologies and the resurgence of geopolitics. The DVPW Working Group has been a central node of these debates in German-speaking academia, producing the journal Sicherheit und Frieden contributions, edited volumes, and methodological reflections. Today CSS faces a paradoxical situation: its core concepts—securitisation, biopolitics of security, everyday security—have become mainstream, yet the political environment is increasingly defined by hard-power logics, rearmament, and contested public discourse. The field must therefore reflect on its conceptual toolkit, its institutional position, and its political voice.

Key players

Political Science and the Study of Security

Political science as a discipline has long had an ambivalent relationship with security. In the German tradition, the field grew out of post-war efforts to entrench democratic political culture (Politikwissenschaft als Demokratiewissenschaft), with peace and conflict research institutes such as HSFK, IFSH, BICC and PRIF playing a major role from the 1970s onwards. Internationally, security studies developed largely within IR sub-fields, often closely tied to defence ministries and strategic studies institutes, before being challenged and pluralised by critical, feminist, and constructivist approaches. The disciplinary dispute concerns how political science should engage with security politics in a period of war, polarisation and democratic erosion. Debates within the DVPW have addressed the politicisation of expertise, the role of policy advice (Politikberatung), gender and diversity in the profession, and the place of normative theory alongside empirical research. Calls for greater interdisciplinarity—engaging history, sociology, law, area studies and STS—coexist with pressures from funding agencies and governments for usable, security-oriented knowledge. The issue today is how political science can produce rigorous and critical knowledge about security without becoming a mere auxiliary of strategic policymaking, while also resisting retreat into abstraction. The DVPW Critical Security Studies Working Group occupies a distinctive position in this landscape, insisting that political science can and should be a site of public reasoning about war, crisis and order.

Key players

International Relations and the Crisis of the Liberal Order

International Relations (IR) as a discipline has organised itself around recurring 'great debates'—realism vs. idealism, positivism vs. post-positivism, and most recently debates over global IR, decoloniality, and the end of the so-called liberal international order. The post-1945 architecture of multilateral institutions, alliance systems, and norms of sovereignty and human rights, anchored by US power, is now visibly contested by Russia's revisionism, China's rise, the assertiveness of middle powers in the Global South, and internal challenges within Western democracies. For critical IR scholarship, the dispute is not only about which states win or lose but about the categories through which we understand world politics. Concepts such as anarchy, the state, the international, and 'the West' have been subjected to sustained critique from feminist, postcolonial, decolonial, Marxist and practice-theoretical perspectives. The 'global IR' agenda associated with Amitav Acharya and others has pressed for greater inclusion of non-Western traditions, while debates on race, empire and capitalism have re-emerged with renewed force. Today IR confronts simultaneous wars in Europe and the Middle East, a contested transition in the global order, climate breakdown, and erosion of arms control. For critical security studies within IR, the challenge is to analyse these dynamics without collapsing back into great-power realism, and to articulate the connections between systemic transformations and everyday experiences of (in)security.

Key players

Criminology, Policing and the Security–Crime Nexus

Critical criminology and critical security studies increasingly converge around the recognition that the lines between crime control and security politics have blurred. The 'crimmigration' literature, scholarship on counter-terrorism and radicalisation, work on policing and racialised surveillance, and analysis of border regimes (notably Frontex and the EU's external borders) all show how state responses to migration, dissent and organised crime mobilise both criminal-law and security logics. Didier Bigo's 'field of (in)security professionals' has been particularly influential in mapping how police, intelligence, military and customs agencies now operate in overlapping space. The core disputes concern the legitimacy and effects of this convergence. Critics argue that the security–crime nexus produces racialised and class-based exclusions, expands surveillance and pre-emptive policing, and erodes due-process protections—visible in counter-terror legislation across Europe, predictive policing technologies, and the criminalisation of solidarity with migrants. In Germany, debates over §129 prosecutions, climate-movement policing, and the NSU complex highlight how criminological and security questions intertwine with democratic accountability. The field today asks how critical criminology and CSS can jointly analyse phenomena such as far-right violence, organised crime, digital surveillance, and protest policing, while avoiding reproducing state categories of dangerousness. Engagement with abolitionist, feminist, and decolonial criminology offers further resources for rethinking the security–crime nexus.

Key players

Resources

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Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Media & Press Relations

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

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Germany November 2026

By committee

Frequently asked questions

Annual Conference of the “Critical Security Studies” Working Group of the German Political Science Association (DVPW) – Crisis, War, Critique

Nov 5–6, 2026Heidelberg, GermanyIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Crisis as a Category of Security Politics · War and the Return of Interstate Conflict · Critique as Method in Security Studies · The Field of Critical Security Studies · Political Science and the Study of Security · International Relations and the Crisis of the Liberal Order · Criminology, Policing and the Security–Crime Nexus · Sociology of Security and the Social Production of (In)Security

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Germany

As the host nation, DEU plays a central role in fostering critical academic discourse on security, reflecting its own complex historical and contemporary security policies.

Role in topic

Ukraine

Role in topic

United States

Role in topic

Critical security scholars often examine the USA's influence on global security architectures, its strategic interests, and the discursive construction of threats that justify its security policies.

China

CHN's rising global influence and its unique approach to security, encompassing both traditional and non-traditional threats, present a significant area for critical examination.

Role in topic

Discussions may explore CHN's security strategies, its impact on regional and global stability, and how its internal and external policies are framed within critical security discourse.

Russia

RUS's actions on the international stage, particularly in relation to its neighbors, provide a critical case study for understanding state-centric security concerns and their implications.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Crisis as a Category of Security Politics

Key players

War and the Return of Interstate Conflict

Key players

Critique as Method in Security Studies

Key players

The Field of Critical Security Studies

Key players

Political Science and the Study of Security

Key players

International Relations and the Crisis of the Liberal Order

Key players

Criminology, Policing and the Security–Crime Nexus

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for Annual Conference of the “Critical Security Studies” Working Group of the German Political Science Association (DVPW) – Crisis, War, Critique.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

West Bengal Voter Deletion Crisis 2026

West Bengal Voter Deletion Crisis

Delimitation Based on 2011 Census

Supreme Court Upholds Election Commission Dis

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses