DPBS Project
DPBS is a project aimed at making the University of Bordeaux a recognized national and international player in the field of "strategic studies".
Selected in April 2018 by the Ministry of Defence as part of the pre-selection of the "Defence and Strategy Centre of Excellence" label, after a rigorous process and alongside four other projects, DPBS will lead, at the end of a two-year preparation phase, to the construction of the application file for the definitive award of the label in 2020 In order to pursue this objective, DPBS proposes an innovative and transdisciplinary approach to strategy and defence issues.
A transdisciplinary project
Supported by 3 research professors (J. Belin, lecturer in economics - GREThA, S.-Y. Laurent, professor of political science - IRM, and A.-M. Tournepiche, professor of public law - CRDEI) and a young researcher (J. Ancelin, contract lecturer in public law - CRDEI), DPBS plans to develop and structure a recognized research network based on the skills and work already undertaken for several years within the University of Bordeaux in this field. It also aims to enrich the training offer in order to offer students qualifying training courses adopted to meet contemporary needs.
An innovative research requirement
On the scientific level, the DPBS project combines two complementary themes: "Defence industry and budget" and "Conflictualities and new forms of confrontation", which are too often treated separately. DPBS aims to decompartmentalize them and propose a research axis linking the "defence system" (industry, budget, armies) with the intensity and characteristics of armed conflict. This will include, for example, proposing the analysis of defence budgets or the defence industrial and technological base in relation to current and emerging norms applied to the conflict or the socio-economic characteristics of new forms of conflict (including cyber conflicts). Drawing on a pool of more than thirty researchers from several humanities and social sciences disciplines, this project aims to build a renewed reading of themes rooted in strategic and defence issues.
An ambition for appropriate training
On the academic level, the DPBS project plans to strengthen the existing offer by developing high-level specific "defence" training and by inserting modules in generalist training in order to spread the spirit of defence. This approach should enable the University Diploma "Arès" to be transformed into Master 1 and 2, thus offering an original and highly qualified training.
A project in an extended environment
The DPBS project is at the heart of the strategic axes of the University of Bordeaux, a major international research university with an IDEX and an Institute of Advanced Studies. It is based on a dense local ecosystem composed of several chairs active in the field (the "Defence and Aerospace" Chair, the "Defence Economics" Chair of the IHEDN endowment fund, the VIA Inno platform). Finally, it will make it possible to build lasting links with diversified public actors (at local, national and international level) and key private actors in the field of strategy and defence issues (industrialists, associations).
