Call for Papers: Creating and Challenging the Transatlantic Intelligence Community

Taking place in Washington, D.C., March 30 - April 1, 2017

Joint Conveners: International Intelligence History Association, German Historical Institute, and the History & Public Policy Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center

Transatlantic intelligence cooperation played a key role in collecting and analyzing information during the Cold War, and the resulting intelligence product informed the decision-making process at the highest levels of government in Europe as well as in the United States. The need for intelligence cooperation has become even more urgent after 9/11, as nations on both sides of the Atlantic are facing terrorist threats, and are confronting a host of other challenges posed by non-state actors, such as arms and drug trafficking as well as organized crime.

The conference will review the origins of the transatlantic intelligence partnership during the immediate postwar years and its evolution during the Cold War. It will explore the mechanisms for intelligence exchange between individual agencies as well as the ad hoc and informal interactions between members of intelligence organizations. In addition, papers will ex-amine the causes and consequences of frictions in this intelligence partnership that have occurred over the past decades. While some conflicts were due to continued compartmentalization of national intelligence organizations, others resulted from often conflicting bilateral or multilateral agreements and from an unequal relationship between individual agencies.

The conference, jointly convened by the International Intelligence History Association, the History & Public Policy Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the German Historical Institute, will be held at the Woodrow Wilson Center and at the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C., (March 30-April 1, 2017). The conference theme is broadly conceived and will provide for a wide range of discussions and a variety of papers relating to intelligence and international relations. It seeks to encompass past, current, and future developments, as well as analyses and trends in intelligence research.

Due to the complexity of its subject, the study of intelligence draws on a number of disciplines, including history, security and intelligence studies, political science, sociology, physics, engineering, and mathematics. We invite proposals from all fields of academic inquiry, exploring any organizational or operational aspect of intelligence services. While the transatlantic intelligence relationship after 1945 constitutes the main focus of the conference, proposals addressing intelligence issues outside these temporal and geographical boundaries will be considered as well.

We encourage paper proposals from young researchers and doctoral students as well as from established scholars and former practitioners.

Please submit your paper proposal abstract of 150-300 words and a short CV by email to the IIHA Executive Director Anna Abelmann.

The deadline for submissions is June 30, 2016.

Acceptance notifications will be sent out in late July.