The Programme for Strategic and International Security Studies (PSIS) was created in 1978 and has established itself as a cornerstone for a variety of academic and policy-orientated initiatives. When the former Graduate Institute of international Studies (IUHEI) and the Graduate Institute of Development Studies (IUED) merged at the beginning of the year 2008 to form the new Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, the respective research entities of both were also repackaged and transformed. A more ambitious entity with a wider scope of research, the CCDP, was created and the PSIS itself thus no longer exists.
This newly-established research entity of the Graduate Institute, the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP) aims to provide high-level expert support and policy-relevant research on the current and emerging security and development issues of the 21st century.
It also seeks to generate important North-South linkages for scholarship and research as well as to provide a platform for dialogue and networking through the organization of conferences and workshops.
The CCDP focus its research and activities on the general phenomenon of armed violence ("conflict"), on efforts to foster the conditions that prevent the outbreak or recurrence of such violence ("development"), as well as on comprehensive and/or targeted strategies to promote peaceful relations on the communal, societal and international level ("Peacebuilding").
Research projects will elaborate on specific aspects of armed conflict and the actors involved in organized violence, on the link between security and development in war-torn areas, and on the tensions and synergies among international actors involved in humanitarian, security, and socio-economic reconstruction efforts.
The ongoing activities of the CCDP are coordinated by a Steering Committee made up of Professors Keith Krause (Director), Thomas Biersteker, Riccardo Bocco and Gilles Carbonnier (Deputy Director). Other faculty members and researchers will be associated with the CCDP as research interests converge and opportunities emerge.
The CCDP has also inherit the PSIS tradition as an intellectual as well as administrative centre for a variety of projects, namely the Small Arms Survey, the Geneva Forum, the BioWeapons Prevention Project and the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform
