The York Centre for International and Security Studies pursues a triple mandate of research, graduate teaching, and outreach. We undertake critical and theoretically-informed research that is driven by a concern with the ethical-political dimensions of security. We recognize, as participants in policy debates, that foreign and defence policies succeed or fail based on the specifics of the people, places, and situations they emerge from and transform.

Our interdisciplinary research is guided by the assumption that the pursuit of security, defence, peace, and social justice requires the study of transnational and global forces in relation to local contexts and a range of social groups. We believe that research on policies and practices associated with human rights, democratization, peacebuilding, terrorism, globalization, intervention, the environment, and militarization requires attention to specific power dynamics, social relations, and sites such as states, border regions, ecologies, and urban centres, and to the specificities of gender, migration, subnational divisions, and civil society.

The activities of the centre, a research unit of York University, range from large, interdisciplinary collaborative research projects to individual faculty projects, supported by a variety of seminar series, publications, and conferences. We work and partner with academics, policymakers, practitioners, and activists across Canada and around the world. Our members include York faculty and graduate students, and visiting scholars from inside and outside Canada.