The York Centre for International & Security Studies (YCISS) will hold its annual two-day conference this week. New Directions: The Future of Canadian (In)Security Studies will involve over 30 researchers and scholars from across Canada who will present papers on a broad and diverse range of security issues.
The conference, taking place Feb. 4 and 5, seeks to bring scholars together to engage in questions of security, both Canadian and global, from a variety of perspectives and approaches. It will examine how concepts of Canadian security/insecurity and defence have been challenged, redefined and reimagined in the changing political and theoretical global environment of the last decade.
These challenges have been taken up and addressed by a growing number of scholars within Canada indicating a distinctive Canadian voice in security studies may now be emerging.
The conference will involve a round-table discussion on the “Future of Critical Security Studies in Canada”, open to all members of the York community and the public, which will bring distinguished scholars and practitioners working in the area of critical security studies together to discuss new approaches, critiques of existing approaches and future directions for the field, both theoretically and regarding the practical development of this area of research.
The round table will include David Mutimer, YCISS deputy director; Professor Barbara Falk (MA ’86, PhD ’99) of the Canadian Forces College's Department of Defence Studies; Professor Mark Salter of the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa; Professor Miguel DeLarrinaga of the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa; Professor Mark Neufeld, deputy director of the Centre for the Study of Global Power & Politics at Trent University; Professor Elizabeth Dauphinee (BA Hons. '99, MA '00, PhD ’05) of York’s Department of Political Science in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies; and Professor Peter Nyers of the Department of Political Science at McMaster University.
The round table will be held in 519 York Research Tower, Thursday, Feb. 4, from 1:30 to 3pm. To register for the conference, click here. For more information on either the conference or the round table, visit the YCISS Web site or contact yciss@yorku.ca.
The New Directions conference has received support from the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation; the Office of the Vice-President Academic & Provost; the Faculty of Graduate Studies; the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime & Security; the Department of Social Science; the York University Ad Hoc Conference Fund; and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.