Coming from a Greco-Roman tradition, Westerners have a tendency to try to squeeze the world into binary concepts: day and night, black and white, war and peace, major war and small war, soldier and civilian. Passing review 2 ½ millennia of war in and around Europe, one should conclude that reality is rarely as binary as that. This mismatch between reality and theory goes some way to explain problems that Western leaders and the armed forces they use have with coping with real life conflicts, and with countering their adversaries whose views of war are more fluid.

Beatrice Heuser is a graduate of the universities of London (BA from Bedford College; MA from the LSE) and Oxford (St Antony’s College; St John’s College, graduated with DPhil). She holds a higher doctorate (Habilitation) from the University of Marburg.  She has taught at King’s College London at the Department of War Studies, and at the University of Reading, and has taught at or held visiting professorships at several Parisian universities, the universities of Reims and Potsdam, at Sciences Po’ Paris and Reims, at the University of Rome III, at the Bundeswehr University near Munich and at the Russian Foreign Ministry’s university MGIMO.  She spent a year at NATO Headquarters as a Consultant/Intern, and has worked as Director of Studies of the German Bundeswehr’s military history research office. She has been affiliated to/currently serving on academic advisory boards of several research institutes, including the French Institute of International Affairs (IFRI), the Royal United Services Institute, Chatham House (RIIA), the German Institute for Contemporary History, and the French government’s strategic studies think tank IRSEM.

During the course 2022-23, IBEI has organised a series of research seminars, which normally take place once a week. Check the 2022-23 programme