The turbulent global security environment, as it is approaching the end of the second decade of the 21stcentury, keeps reflecting, confronting and accommodating a diverse range of traditional and non-traditional threats and challenges. Many traditional security issues have undergone a remarkable transformation in their structures and substances due to cultural shifts, technological drivers, ideological alterations, social upheavals and economic fluctuations. Often they provoked anxiety and antagonisms among numerous actors actively pursuing their interests on domestic, local, regional and global levels. They created mounting tensions that led to civic resistance, unrest, revolution, and civil war as well as – in their most extreme forms – to crime, terrorism and humanitarian catastrophes. Similarly, instability in the international arena, triggered by numerous variables (structural, ideological, cultural, institutional) exacerbates the tense situation in many regions, sometimes leading to military confrontation and armed hostilities between state- and non-state actors.  Local, regional and global actors also have been confronted by a range of non-traditional challenges, including environmental pollution and global climate change, the rise in the sea level,  poverty, social deprivation, digital exclusion etc. In addition, the incorporation of new technologies into global governance has raised questions concerning the roles played by the variety of actors in non-traditional domains, such as cyber communications, artificial intelligent systems, remote surveillance and the use of space.  Each of these traditional and non-traditional challenges has direct or indirect impact on international security.

An interdisciplinary perspective would contribute to our understanding of these complex and often interrelated challenges. In these efforts, the perspectives of the humanities and the arts are as important as those of the social and natural sciences. Similarly, the perspectives of business, law, medicine, and other sciences are all also necessary and must be incorporated into many of the solutions if the global community is to be successful in developing responses to these 21stcentury challenges. 

The 2ndJagiellonian Interdisciplinary Security Conference (2JISC) seeks to stimulate interdisciplinary debate on contemporary actorness in the complex security environment. “Friends”, “Foes” and “Familiar Strangers” (S. Milgram) are the archetypes of dominant patterns of behaviour and performance in contemporary turbulent global security system. They serve as referent objects of security in its dynamic, “liquid” form, going beyond conventional roles and established institutional schemes. They facilitate security actors’ differentiation according to their status and roles performed in selected security fields. They also stimulate discussion about varieties of actorness in domestic, national and global dimensions of security policy.

The 1stJagiellonian Interdisciplinary Security Conference, organised in 2015 in collaboration with the International Studies Association (ISA) as the Jagiellonian University Security Conference – Interdisciplinary Approaches to Security in the Changing World, brought together 150 researchers and practitioners representing over 100 institutions from 26 countries around the world. This successful academic event resulted in valuable and stimulating papers which, following a careful selection, were collected into two volumes edited by Artur Gruszczak and Paweł Frankowski from Jagiellonian University: Technology, Ethics and the Protocols of Modern War(Routledge 2018) and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Regional and Global Security(Palgrave Macmillan 2018).

The 2nd Jagiellonian Interdisciplinary Security Conference seeks to convene a wide range of  scholars, leaders and activists representing academia, government, business and NGOs in an effort to promote and advance an interdisciplinary dialogue aimed at launching theoretical proposals and finding effective practical solutions to the challenges that must be confronted in the contemporary global security arena. Ideas how to transform a few of these challenges into opportunities will serve to enhance security and promote frameworks that enhance regional and global governance. 

The conference is organized by the Department of National Security, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.