The lab includes four inter-related research fields:

1. Theory of Global Risk Politics

We develop theories and analytical frameworks to analyze the life cycle of global risk politics. We integrate diverse perspectives of risk to re-think the key concepts in world politics and global governance, such as security, power and authority, conflict and cooperation, global leadership, and global safety nets, etc.

2. Geopolitical Risks and Global Security

Using the innovative theoretical framework of global risk politics, we study securitization and “riskification” of geopolitical issues, utilizing massive data and computational techniques to identify, monitor, and predict inter and intra-state conflict risks and terrorist attacks and conduct simulation-based scenario analysis. Our research focuses on contagion, diffusion, and amplification of risks on a global scale.

3. Climate Risks and Sustainable Development

Our lab regards climate security as a shaping force of the ontology of today’s nation-states, which forces states to re-define their “self”. We link climate risks to identity politics and ontological anxieties and focus on the key question of how nation-states would transform themselves into “ecological states” in order to effectively manage climate risks. Therefore, we study the forces in global and domestic markets and societies, as well as within national governments, that drive the direction and pace of global governance of climate change and, at the same time, change the “being” of nation-states to better fit the changed definition and reality of security.

4. Data and Computational Innovations for Risk Assessment and Prediction

We build databases and data-sharing platforms to promote global risk studies by integrating existing databases according to the tasks of risk research and by developing original databases. Currently, the lab collaborates with two powerful data centers at Peking University, the National Engineering Laboratory of Big Data Analysis and Applications and the Data Center for Management Science.   

5. Marine Security Risks.

This is a featured research field jointly conducted by the lab and the Institute for International and Strategic Studies at Peking University.