King’s College London (KCL) is starting a master’s degree (MA) in National Security Studies, to launch in September 2017. KCL says it’ll offer joint-learning between practitioners and policy-interested postgraduate students in a degree level course focusing on cross-governmental responses to contemporary security challenges. King’s College recently established a new School of Security Studies, led by nuclear security Professor Wyn Bowen.
The Centre for Defence Studies (CDS), Department of War Studies within the School of Security Studies, meanwhile heard the inaugural lecture of diplomat and Visiting Professor, Lord Peter Ricketts on ‘The Practice of National Security’ on March 15 at King’s College’s Strand Campus in central London.
Lord Ricketts, a former Permanent Under-secretary of the FCO whose last post before retirement in 2016 was as Ambassador to France, spoke on the establishment of the UK National Security Council in 2010, as well as his appointment as the first National Security Advisor and the emergence of a national security approach in the UK. Tracing how the British Government has coordinated the different strands of its overseas policy from the Committee of Imperial Defence onwards, he set out why he believes the creation of the National Security Council was a constitutional innovation that deserves to last, and detailed how it operated in its first years while he was the National Security Adviser.
Professor John Gearson, Director of The Centre for Defence Studies, will lead the MA programme. He said: “It is significant that we have such a key figure to discuss national security at a time of global change. In recent years many countries have dropped notions of internal and external security, in favour of an extended conception of national security. CDS scholars have been at the forefront of these debates in the UK. I am delighted to welcome Peter Ricketts to the Centre – he joins a distinguished group of visiting professors and fellows already working on national security matters at CDS.”
Contact the course tutor, Dr Nina Musgrave: [email protected].
