The Center for Security Studies (CSS) is a center at the

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

, which focuses on Swiss and international security.

Overview

The center was founded by Prof. Dr. Kurt Spillmann in 1986 and has been led by Prof. Dr. Andreas Wenger since 2002. It also constitutes as part of the Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS) along with the political science professorships at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and the

University of Zurich The University of Zurich (UZH, ) is a public university, public research university in Zurich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of the ...

. The mission of the CSS is to examine the challenges surrounding security policy development and how to deal with them. It does this by performing research on security-related issues and by training researchers and practitioners. The center also includes an independent think tank, which focuses on Swiss and international security policy as well as furthering peace. Another key aim of the CSS is to serve as a link between academia, practitioners and the public on security matters.

Projects

Projects which have been supported by the CSS include the

Parallel History Project The Parallel History Project on Cooperative Security (PHP) is an open source website reference compilation, research project, and analysis nexus sparked by the progressive increase in the declassification of NATO and Soviet bloc documents related t ...

, an online project which collected together and analyzed declassified and other government documents relating to the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

, as well as the

International Relations and Security Network The International Relations and Security Network (ISN) was part of the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, which is located in Zürich, Switzerland. It was an online information service that provided a ...

, an online information service that provided a range of open access products and resources on

international relations International relations (IR, and also referred to as international studies, international politics, or international affairs) is an academic discipline. In a broader sense, the study of IR, in addition to multilateral relations, concerns al ...

. While the International Relations and Security Network was closed in 2016, its extensive

digital library A digital library (also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, a library without walls, or a digital collection) is an online database of digital resources that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital ...

as well as other products have been integrated into the CSS and transformed into a new project, CSS Resources.

References

External links

(official website) {{authority control International security International relations Political research institutes ETH Zurich Peace and conflict studies Mediation Organisations based in Switzerland Think tanks based in Switzerland