DFG Research Unit 5870 "The Promise of Security in Catastrophic Times"

Security is both a crucial promise and a fundamental value of democratic states. To what extent can security be guaranteed in times of increasing crises, disasters and losses, and what exactly does security mean? In the growing awareness that not everything can be protected and saved, PROMISE deals with tensions and conflicts between social expectations and the attempts of states and international organisations to reconfigure their protective functions. The researchers analyse and compare changes in the protective mechanisms of democratic states and international organisations – from triage mechanisms to inclusive self-organisation – and develop explanatory approaches to theoretically and empirically capture the transformation of security promises in times of disaster.

The research unit PROMISE is an interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers from the University of Hamburg (UHH), Helmut- Schmidt-University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg (HSU), and the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at Universität Hamburg (IFSH).

IFSH Director Ursula Schröder is Spokesperson of PROMISE and Principal Investigator for the project RP2: “Infrastructures of Protection: Planning for Catastrophes to Come”. IFSH Senior Researcher Dr. Holger Niemann is Principal Investigator for the project RP3: “Protection Mainstreaming through Valuation Practices in the United Nations”.

More information on all projects of PROMISE can be found here.

The research unit PROMISE will start in April 2026 and will run for four years. It is funded by the German Research Foundation.