The European Initiative for Security Studies (EISS) is a Europe-wide multidisciplinary network of
scholars consolidating security studies in Europe. EISS hosts the annual European Security Studies
Conference (ESSC) and is a founding member of the COST Action NetSec,
a wider partnership that knits together a dozen institutions across the continent, much of whose
leadership is drawn from the EISS community.
Concrete activities that build the European security-studies field — annual gatherings, the COST
Action, training the next generation, periodic surveys, and a rolling calendar of network events.
Annual Conference (ESSC)
9 editions across Europe since 2017, the largest European gathering of scholars
and practitioners working on security issues.
A four-year COST Action (2025 - 2029) of twelve partner institutions, EISS among the founding
members, addressing the fragmentation of Europe's security-studies base.
Prior to EISS, the field of security studies in Europe was fragmented, insofar as there was no
European forum capable of bringing together scholars and fostering exchanges among researchers
and academics. EISS aims to overcome this fragmentation by federating and consolidating a truly
Europe-wide field of security studies.
The Initiative was created in 2017 with two founding objectives, both explicit in the inaugural-conference
proceedings: build the European academic network in security studies, and create a forum for joint
research projects across institutions.
EISS began in 2017 within the AEGES association and became a standalone non-profit under the French
loi 1901 in 2021, with its registered office at CERI, Sciences Po. The 2017 founding remains
the reference date.
Declared to the Préfecture de Paris on 29 November 2021 (Journal officiel, 7 December 2021, no. W751263001).
Build the European academic network
Through the Annual ESSC and standing thematic sections where scholars present
in-progress work, not finished papers, to develop the field as it forms.
Create a forum for joint projects
Deliberately the opposite of a traditional paper-reading conference: the ESSC surfaces new ideas
and seeds cross-institutional research partnerships rather than broadcasting finished results.
Filling a gap in European security studies
Several European associations already cover International Relations broadly: the European
International Studies Association (EISA), the ECPR's Standing Group on International Relations,
the Nordic International Studies Association (NISA), the Central and Eastern European International
Studies Association (CEEISA). None are dedicated specifically to security studies.
EISS exists to fill that gap and to consolidate a European community of scholars in the field.
Multidisciplinary by design (historians, political scientists, economists, geographers,
anthropologists, sociologists, and legal scholars) and open to early-career researchers,
armed-forces and diplomatic-service members, and civil servants alongside academics.
The Annual Conference rotates through a different European country each year.
Research themes
Nine permanent thematic sections
The inaugural EISS conference organised papers around nine permanent thematic sections, still tracked
today through the ESSC programme. The list expands as participating universities propose cross-cutting
themes. Alongside the permanent sections, every annual ESSC also makes room for open panels, proposed
afresh each year, so the community shapes much of the conference's substantive content.
Transformations of warfare and conflict
Emerging domains (cybersecurity)
Arms acquisition and transfer
Private military actors
Defence cooperation and military assistance
Military interventions
Non-proliferation and arms control
Terrorism and counter-terrorism
Theoretical developments in security studies
Recent open panels have ranged widely:
ESSC 2018Asymmetric Threats, Non-State Actors and Domestic Politics
ESSC 2019Climate Change and Security Actors
ESSC 2021Thinking European Security through India
ESSC 2023(In)security and Organized Crime in Latin America
ESSC 2024Knowledge Production on War
ESSC 2026Cyber and Digital Sovereignty
Flagship event
ESSC — The European Security Studies Conference
The Annual ESSC is EISS's flagship gathering, the largest European meeting of scholars and
practitioners working on security issues. By convention the conference moves through a different
European city and host institution each year, building the network outward as it goes. Editions
since the 2017 inaugural at Université Panthéon-Assas:
Host cities since the 2017 inaugural conference. The 2020 edition was deferred to 2021 due to the
COVID-19 pandemic and held in Lisbon (shown as the 2021 dot). Click a dot to open the per-edition page.
Outline data:
Natural Earth
(public domain).
NetSec is a four-year European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action launched in
2025 by 12 partner institutions (EISS among the founding members),
to address the fragmentation of the continent's intellectual and analytical base in security
studies through policy workshops, summer schools, and conferences. Much of NetSec's leadership
sits within, or has long been associated with, the EISS community.
49
NetSec MC members across the Action
30
countries represented in the MC
12
founding partner institutions
The network of researchers EISS convenes runs far beyond the 23
people on the EISS board itself — through NetSec it now reaches
49 Management Committee members in
30 countries. Because NetSec is COST-funded, all its
events are free and open to anyone working in or alongside European security studies. No
membership is required.
EISS people leading NetSec
The two organisations share more than a founding link. Almost everyone steering NetSec also sits on the EISS board, holding a role in each.
EISS was founded in 2017 by Hugo Meijer as a European extension of the French academic
association
AEGES,
where he led international research partnerships. The inaugural conference at
Panthéon-Assas in January 2017 (see the panel) gathered around 100 scholars from 62
universities across 15 European countries.
What began as an outward-facing chapter of a national association quickly became
something larger. EISS is now an independent Europe-wide network with a board and
community spanning 12 countries. It is open across
theoretical approaches and disciplines, and welcomes scholars at every career stage.
9 editions of the ESSC have followed the 2017 founding, rotating through host
countries across the continent. In 2025 EISS joined eleven other institutions as a founding
member of the COST Action
NetSec, formalising
the network's role as one of Europe's main convening bodies in security studies. AEGES
remains a sister organisation on the French side. EISS's centre of gravity is European.
Stockholm
Stockholm UniversityProgramme →
Thessaloniki
University of MacedoniaRecap →
Prague
Charles UniversityRecap →
Barcelona
IBEI (Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals)Recap →
Berlin
Hertie SchoolRecap →
Lisbon
ISCTE — University Institute of LisbonRecap →
Paris
Sciences Po CERIRecap →
Action Chair · WG1 Lead
Dr Moritz WeissEISS board
Action Vice-Chair
Dr Marie RobinEISS Treasurer
WG2 Lead
Dr John N.T. HelferichEISS board
WG3 Lead
Prof. Chiara RuffaEISS board
WG4 Lead
Prof. Revecca PediEISS board
WG1 Co-lead
Prof. Filip EjdusEISS board
WG2 Co-lead
Alisa KerschbaumEISS board
WG3 Co-lead
Prof. Silvia D’AmatoEISS board
WG4 Co-lead
Sarka KolmasovaEISS board
Grant Awarding Coordinator
Dr Eliza GheorgheEISS board
Grant Awarding Co-lead
Dr Chiara LibisellerEISS board
Science Communication Coordinator
Eugenio SanchezEISS support team