Hub for the Future of Advanced Security and Technology Research (FASTER)

Faster focuses on:

1. Cultivating a Future Studies for security and technology research…

Most research in security studies and on technology in political science is reactive. It responds-to and analyses phenomena as they emerge. This leaves both researchers and policy-makers playing catch-up. FASTER draws on the ethos underlying ‘future studies’ to allow us to open-up a longer-term strategy for security and technology. The goal is to cultivate more empirical, conceptual, and basic scientific research of relevance to practice in order to understand ‘unknown future challenges’ in relation to security, defence, and technology.

2. Insisting on a holistic approach to security and technology…

While short-term solutions to immediate threats are critical, they also risk devaluing the bread and butter of research in security studies, international relations, and political science. The added-value of social science rests on the holistic thinking it nurtures. FASTER’s core added-value is thus its capacity to mobilize the unique social scientific resources of the Department of Political Science and to bring these resources more fully into contemporary debates. Importantly – however – FASTER seeks to achieve this with the goal of explicitly combining advanced security and technology theory/research with practical engagement, bridging the gap that remains between them.

3. Nurturing transdisciplinary engagement with technologists, engineers, and others…

An important gap in the study of security and technology research is the comparative lack of engagement between social science and the applied, engineering, and natural scientists who design and develop (security) technologies. FASTER is also a hub integrating the Department of Political Science more closely into the natural and engineering scientists, as well as technologists themselves. This has the potential to help focus research in this area on a broader set of emerging technological issues that intersect with security politics.

4. Connecting to international partners with similar goals globally…

The issues FASTER engages are global. The hub therefore also aims to internationalize Danish research in this area. Indeed, the model that FASTER embraces is also one being developed elsewhere through initiatives such as the Citizens Lab in Toronto, Forensic Architecture in London, Swisspeace in Basel, etc. FASTER engages with initiatives such as those and also serves as a hub bringing-in international practitioners concerned with these issues from organizations such as the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and so forth. In this regard, it aims to further the leading reputation of the University of Copenhagen as an institution engaged in active knowledge dissemination.