CWS Conferences

CWS Conference 2022

CWS Conference 2020

What is a battlefield, who is a fighter? Choice, control, war and the institutions that address them. The past several decades have seen significant changes in how, and by whom, war is waged. Paradigm-shifting books like Kaldor & Chinkin’s International Law and New Wars (CUP 2017) have married ideas about the changing nature of war to the changing norms and practices institutionalized in international law and international humanitarian law. New technologies like expansive cyber communication networks and AI facial recognition software straddle the spheres of statecraft, business, and weaponry. Drone technology turns programmers into soldiers capable of wrecking devastation from 3000 meters at the touch of a button thousands of kilometers away. And from 2012 – 2016, ordinary citizens from around the globe, including 6000 Europeans, responded to ISIS’ call to arms and joined the califate in armed struggle and repressive state-building. This conference considers contemporary challenges in the changing face of war centered around two themes: what is a battlefield, and who is a fighter. In both fields, recent experience shows that traditional baselines have been shifted importantly; are our policies, definitions, and institutions keeping up? Where, and at whom and at what, should we be looking to understand today’s wars, and tomorrow’s? To consider these questions animatedly, we are engaging the interdisciplinary expertise of SDU’s Center for War Studies and its friends to discuss, over 1.5 days, how war is altering our understanding of what battlefields and fighters consist of, and what this means for the tools we currently apply.

CWS Conference 2019

During the last three decades, technological advancement and digitalization processes have largely impacted our ways of life, introducing substantial changes to everyday life. The emergence of smart phones, social media, unmanned vehicles, and automation – to name just a few areas of major development – fundamentally alter our possibilities of communication, documentation, mobility, and representation. These technological developments have consequences that reach far beyond the life of individuals, leaving their mark on forms of governance, culture, as well as international cooperation and conflict. In fact, modern technology and digitalization processes are changing the existing international order and its primary institutions. This conference aims to bring together experts and perspectives on how technological change in the fields of communications and robotics is impacting the existing international order. Throughout history, the development of new technologies has led to fundamental changes in the strategies and tactics of war, as well as the norms of the use of force, and much can be learned from these previous technological revolutions. Today, some of the fundamental changes that are happening to war and warfare can be seen in the increasing role of drones on and off the battlefield, the fundamental impact social media has on war reporting, the increasing importance of networks, and automation.

CWS Conference 2018

The impact of war on societies and governments is an enduring concern for scholars as well as policy makers, just as the ability to control, contain and limit it. This conference gathers academics and practitioners to foreground a collective and critical reflection on how war crystallizes and triggers changes in political practice, morality, law, social and political thought, technology, and the liberal arts. It takes stock of ‘War Studies’ as an interdisciplinary scholarly enterprise and celebrates the recent institution of a European War Studies Network led by the Center for War Studies at SDU.