Security studies have been one of the priorities for the Center. Among those, the Center has always paid an utmost attention to the study of the European Security. For instance, the conference “European Security and Ukraine” was co-organized by the Center and Indiana University, Bloomington in 1996. It has attracted some most prominent international experts in the field and has resulted in a book “Ukraine and European Security”, published by “Macmillan Press” in 1999.

The cooperation has continued with the same partners and a new conference on the same subject in 2004. The Regional Seminar for Excellence in Teaching (ReSET) “European Security and NIS: New Teaching Framework for New Europe” has been carried out in 2005-2008. The Regional Seminar for Excellence in Teaching (ReSET) “The EU as an emerging European security actor: exploring theoretical paradigms” has been in action in 2010-2013.

Both seminars have been sponsored by the Higher Education Support Program (HESP). They have brought together the leading experts in the field with some dozens of promising junior faculty and researchers from various post-Soviet states. These projects have convened six summer schools in Odesa and many more workshops elsewhere. The project has also produced a special volume of the “Topical problems in international relations” (issue 102, part 2, published by the Kyiv Institute of International Relations) in 2011.

The Center for International Studies is involved in studying the issues of security of the wider Black Sea region. Victor Glebov (currently a Director of the Institute of Social Sciences at the Odesa I. Mechnikov National University) has initiated the process of research in regional security years ago. The large-scale forum “Regional Dynamics of Black and Caspian Sea Basins” was convened with International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) in 2000. It has launched a whole set of the subsequent conferences and workshops on this topic of the Black Sea regional security dynamics.

Senior Research Fellow Sergiy Glebov (who is a coordinator of the regional security studies at the Center) has introduced the first dissertation on the subject of security in the Black Sea region in Ukraine in 2002, which was a comprehensive and systemic in its outlook. In 2003 he has conducted his research project on this topic at the A. Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Sergiy teaches an entire course specifically devoted to the security issues of the Black Sea area.

Center’s director Volodymyr Dubovyk has joined the Greater Black Sea working group, which was established by the PfP (“Partnership for peace”) Consortium in January 2006. A large group of Center’s research fellows have taken part in the “Black Sea Synergy” conference on the way from Odesa to Istanbul in October of 2007. Needless to say, that Black Sea security and cooperation issues were always subjects of the number of other national and international conferences, round-tables and academic forums which has been conducted in the Black Sea littoral states as the Russian Federation, Turkey, Georgia, Romania, Bulgaria where our Fellows took active part also as co-organizers, presenters and speakers since 1992. In general, the Black Sea Studies have been among priorities in Center’s publications and individual scientific works of its Fellows, which also by publishing and personal presentations shared their scientific findings in the USA, Great Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Greece under auspices of different academic networks.

The Center for International Studies is involved in analysis of the security and international developments that take in the post-Soviet space, the role of Ukraine in this realm. In 1993 – 1998 it has organized five round-tables on the issues of Ukrainian-Russian relations. Its Director Volodymyr Dubovyk teaches a course on Ukraine’s foreign policy and its Senior Research Fellow Sergiy Glebov teaches a course on the foreign policy of the Russian Federation. V. Dubovyk was a liaison in Odesa in 1995-97 of the Russian Littoral Project (co-headed by K. Dawisha and B. Parrott), which was specifically focused on security dynamics in the former Soviet Union. The project’s conference “Economic transition in the Newly Independent States and integration into the world economy” was hosted by the Center in 1995.