Prestigous ERC Consolidator Grant for historical research on European security policy

Prof. Beatrice de Graaf has been awarded a grant of 1.9 million euros from the European Research Council (ERC) to fund her historical research on European security policy. The Consolidator Grant is a prestigious grant created to advance the work of promising researchers.

De Graaf’s project, titled ‘SECURE. Securing Europe, fighting its enemies 1815-1914’, will involve a team of researchers who will be tracing the formation of a European security culture as resulting from shared visions on ‘enemies of the state’, ‘vital interests’ and the associated practices between 1815 and 1914. She will be comparing different security regimes that Europe has applied around the world, in places as diverse as the Ottoman Empire and China. These extremely dynamic regimes were motivated both by threats from anarchists factions, pirates and smugglers, for example, and by political, moral, colonial and other interests. Mobilising increasing numbers of professional ‘agents’ from various quarters – including police, judicial authorities and armed forces – they evolved from military interventions into police and judicial regimes and ultimately contributed to the creation of a true European security culture.