Our Mission

The Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies (CASSIS) is an interdisciplinary research center at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn in the field of strategic foreign, European and security studies. CASSIS aims at developing, evaluating and publicly discussing European strategies in response to current challenges in the field of foreign and security policy. It is anchored in the Faculty of Philosophy and brings together proven university units in a perspective-oriented manner: The Center for European Integration Studies (ZEI) under Prof. Dr. Ludger Kühnhardt and Prof. Dr. Christian Koenig, which has been operating in the federal city for almost 30 years, and the Center for International Security and Governance (CISG) headed by former U.S. Ambassador and Henry Kissinger Prof. James D. Bindenagel. Thus, CASSIS merges existing strengths on security policy issues with those on transatlantic partnership, European integration, and German foreign policy, and helps shape strategic discourse in Germany on crucial issues by focusing on common strategic challenges.

Part of CASSIS is the Henry Kissinger Professorship for Security and Strategic Studies, which has been funded by the German government (BMVg and Federal Foreign Office) since 2014 and is dedicated to researching and teaching issues of international security in the sense of strategic studies and how they relate to transatlantic relations. Another of the professorship's central tasks is the practice-oriented systematization and further development of security policy research potentials of various disciplines within and outside the University of Bonn.

With the establishment of CASSIS, the University of Bonn is taking up plans of both state and federal policy to strengthen security policy and strategic research and debates in Germany and North Rhine-Westphalia and to strengthen the relevant research profile of the University in the UN and federal city of Bonn as an international center of competence in Germany.


The Approach

Following the approach "Global challenges need European answers", CASSIS is to develop scientific analyses and practice-oriented strategic approaches to solutions, to train future leaders scientifically by means of interdisciplinary, equally research- and practice-oriented teaching, and to strengthen the security policy and strategic discourse in the European Union, Germany and North Rhine-Westphalia via an intensive theory-practice dialogue, in particular through close cooperation with the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy for International Politics, which is currently being founded.

In terms of content, CASSIS focuses on the interdisciplinary examination of traditional foreign and security issues such as interstate conflicts, competing international regulatory systems and a return of geopolitics on the one hand, and on non-traditional security challenges around cyber and energy security, terrorism and human security (especially health & food security) on the other.

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Eine Wissenschaftlerin und ein Wissenschaftler arbeiten hinter einer Glasfassade und mischen Chemikalien mit Großgeräten.
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Research at CASSIS

The guiding approach of research at CASSIS is the evaluation and high-profile discussion of strategic response options, especially through stronger European cooperation and integration with further strengthening of the transatlantic partnership. In view of Europe's changing strategic situation, the research will therefore examine, among other things, how a closer security policy integration in the supranational institutional network of the EU can be realized in a goal-oriented manner while increasing the efficiency of security production on the European continent, what paths can be taken to stabilize and strengthen the transatlantic partnership, and in what ways the EU as a security policy actor in partnership with the United States can increase security in agreement with countries in neighboring regions.

Our Cooperation Partners

In addition to closer cooperation with the United Nations University (UNU), the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC), the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), the Academy of International Affairs NRW (AIA) and other important Bonn institutions, CASSIS will also support the further internationalization and internationality of teaching.

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Eine Wissenschaftlerin und ein Wissenschaftler arbeiten hinter einer Glasfassade und mischen Chemikalien mit Großgeräten.
© Shutterstock

International

Thanks to additional third-party funding and initiated research projects, CASSIS will also make an important contribution to strengthening academic cooperation between the University of Bonn and two important priority countries - the USA and Israel. For example, an annual German-Israeli student exchange between CASSIS and the Reichman University Herzliya was established through a "Hans Morgenthau Fellowship for International Politics". Likewise, CASSIS was able to support the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) by establishing a long-term lectureship on strategy, diplomacy and international security policy, which further expands the cooperation between CASSIS and the Reichman University. Furthermore, the close cooperation with the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) at Johns Hopkins University will be deepened.

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