The BISA working group on Russian and Eurasian security holds 2-3 multidisciplinary workshops each year, bringing together practitioners as well as academics to examine both theoretical and empirical issues relating to contemporary developments in the post-Soviet foreign and security landscape.
There is a continuing and growing interest in the former Soviet space in both the area of security studies and foreign policy/international relations. While many issues are examined and written about from an ‘out of area’ perspective (e.g. energy; terrorism; regional security relations), there is a need to focus on cross-linkages between regional and global issues (e.g. Central Asia-Afghanistan-the ‘West’; Russia-Ukraine-NATO/EU) in order to bring together disparate expertise in one forum. Valuable expertise on the subject-area can sometimes be lost to area studies, but we believe this energy should be harnessed to broader disciplinary areas of security studies and foreign policy analysis/international politics. BISA represents an opportunity to gain a higher profile for the study of the former Soviet Union (not just Russia) and to position this in the context of the broader field.
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