Contemporary Security Challenges Lecture Series

This series of occasional lectures and seminars will enable you to engage directly with those responsible for strategy and security in this country and internationally.

The Security Challenges series will bring students and faculty who want to engage face-to-face with strategic leaders and those who set the course and velocity of our security. It won’t always be a reassuring experience! Subjects will vary, but the unifying theme of all those attending will be a shared interest in discussing solutions with an open mind, not seeking refuge in preconceived notions or the comfortable, endless re-definition of problems.

Our objective is to better connect Exeter with the real world of strategy. Strategy, if it is to succeed, by definition should be inter-disciplinary, so these events are for all, not just scholars of, say, politics or history. Attend - you may or not be entertained; but you will leave with fresh insights into how the decisions that impact our lives are made.

The aim of the Institute is to make a contribution to security strategy; in thought and action. It is doing this through innovative teaching, relevant policy-facing research and direct engagement with those grappling with the uncertainties and dilemmas that confront all of us, and confound anyone seeking reassuringly clear-cut solutions to today's national, international and human security challenges. Describing this web of 'wicked problems' is necessary, but not sufficient. We need to debate and find solutions: this is your chance.

The Strategy and Security Institute is bringing those who make and execute security policy, and who shoulder the burden of responsibility for security, to the students and faculty of the University - to learn from them and to debate with them.

Strategy-making is really hard, but it is not a black art. Good strategy results in a set of choices based upon an idea - often, frankly, a hope - that beneficial effects will flow from a particular course of action. The catalyst for strategy - in life if not in all the text books - is often a chance remark or a fresh insight. For this reason many senior figures relish spending a few hours away from Whitehall or Brussels to engage with those who do not yet have all the institutional baggage; that's you. This lecture and seminar series has this creative (albeit occasional) dynamic at its core.

We cannot promise to give them the insights they (perhaps secretly) hope for, but the alchemy that can result when intellect meets power is at least a possibility.