CREST are delighted to invite submissions for their fourth international conference on Behavioural and Social Sciences in Security (#BASS24).
The conference will be held at the University of St Andrews (Scotland, UK) from 16 to 18 July 2024.

This year, the themes are: Risk and Resilience, Information and Influence, Emerging Threats, and Global Security.
The deadline to submit your applications is 11 March 2024.

Find out more

The themes:

Risk and Resilience

Risk and Resilience concerns the actors that produce security threats. These include the individual and contextual factors that shape actors’ beliefs, behaviours, and motivations, and the measures that can increase resilience to security threats at the individual, community, and societal levels. Such measures may relate to preparation and mobilisation towards violence, or efforts to prevent, counter, deter or disrupt ongoing activity. Example questions include (but are not limited to):

• What individual, group or contextual factors shape security threats?
• What informs resilience to terrorism?
• What processes influence the planning, recruitment, ideological transmission and enactment of security threats? 
• What helps to prevent, counter, deter or disrupt terrorism and mobilisation to violence?

Information and Influence

Information and Influence considers how information about individuals, groups and organisational processes is elicited and assessed; and how information may be used to influence others. These interactions may take place online or offline, and may be at the dyad, group or societal level. Example questions include (but are not limited to):

• What techniques can help people to remember and report more information?
• What techniques are effective for developing relationships?
• How do team dynamics and information flow influence an organisation’s response to evolving security threats?
• What role does mis- and dis- information play in exacerbating global security challenges?

Emerging Threats

Emerging Threats considers the challenges that emerging technology pose for national security – what existing risks do they exacerbate and what new risks might we expect in the future. Equally, and conversely, in what ways does emerging technology afford us new ways to understand and mitigate security threats. Example questions include (but are not limited to):

• What new insights do large language models offer that allow us to understand national security threats in the next 15 years?
• How close are we to developing a digital behavioural biometric system for use in national security?
• What ethical considerations arise from the use of AI in security, and how can these be addressed?
• What are the main challenges of Generative AI for national security and how close are we to mitigating these challenges?

Global Security

Global Security considers the geopolitical dimensions of security threats. This includes how a changing geopolitical picture can shape state and non-state actors’ beliefs and behaviours and the processes that generate and inform responses to security threats. It also considers how these dynamics are informed by socio-cultural, historical, and geographical factors. Example questions include (but are not limited to):

• How do geopolitical dynamics intersect with national security on key issues such as climate change, energy security, and social polarisation?
• How does regional instability influence transnational security threats?
• What informs the process and outcome of state responses to dissent?
• What are the global security implications of new technologies such as AI and their use by state and non-state actors?

Submissions

Under each theme, CREST welcomes theoretical, empirical or critical paper contributions to the following categories: Conference papers, Posters, and Lightning talks.

Submission to each category is in the form of a 200-word abstract to be filled in here by the 11 March 2024.

Conference papers

Mature research nearing journal submission or publication can be submitted as a Conference Paper, which will be delivered through a 20-minute presentation.

Posters

Mature or emerging research can be submitted as a Poster. Early-career researchers (up to five-working-years post-PhD) will be entered into a poster competition.

Lightning talks

Emerging research can be submitted as a Lightning talk, which will be delivered through a 5-minute talk.

SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION