This course provides you with an introduction to the concepts, practices and issues surrounding contemporary global security.

It draws on a range of theoretical perspectives and discourses to enable students to sharpen their analysis of global security and better understand which issues are securitised and why and how security issues intersect. Traditional state-centric conceptions of security will be contrasted with critical and emerging conceptions including human and ecological security as the course explores the contested and changing nature of the concept of security. It pushes beyond a focus on national security to take in a truly global perspective on security threats facing the world today while also examining how they manifest at the local level.

The course will cover a range of traditional and non-traditional security issues including the evolution of war and how it is fought, the impact of new technologies, the rise in transnational organised crime and terrorism, the implications of environmental degradation and climate change as well as the effects of global health pandemics