Centre for Global & Multi-level Governance
Team leader – Dr hab. Agnieszka Szpak, NCU professor
The emerging field research team within the Centre for Global & Multi-level Governance (CGMG) consists of 23 collaborating researchers. The team make-up is interdisciplinary as it includes employees as well as doctoral and master-level students of four NCU faculties: Political Science and Security Studies, Law and Administration, Economic Sciences and Management as well as Philosophy and Social Sciences. The team comprises three research groups, each of which will study global and multi-level governance from a different perspective – inter-governmental, non-governmental and corporate.
The analysis of global and multi-level governance aims at developing a new approach to solving universal problems. Traditionally, law and international relations focused on relations between states, considered as main actors, yet soon this paradigm became insufficient for explaining relations in the international arena. This approach has been expanded by adding international organizations – first inter-governmental, then non-governmental ones – and presently new participants must be included as well, i.e. cities, regions and indigenous peoples. The inter-governmental, non-governmental and corporate perspectives are mutually complementary and allow building complex explanatory and predictive models.
The project is a response to the worldwide academic interest in the problem of global and multi-level governance. It facilitates cooperation among researchers who share the interdisciplinary, open approach to seeking new solutions together with partners from abroad. The team members have so far collaborated with researchers from such leading centers as Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University; University of Oxford; Altius Society at Oxford University; Harvard Law School, Institute of Global Law and Policy; Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; International Institute for Peace in Vienna; NATO Allied Command Transformation, Norfolk, USA; Allied Command Transformation, ACT, NATO; Central European University; United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination; United Nations Global Compact Network; Chatham House – International Affairs Think Tank; King’s College London; RAND Corporation; and US War College. The project will develop the capability of building teams that will use the synergy of potentials of different academic disciplines.
A long-term result of the team’s operations will be establishing the innovative Centre for Global and Multi-level Governance, acting as a University think tank. It is our opinion that an interdisciplinary approach combining political sciences, security sciences, law, economy, management and philosophy and still remains open to other disciplines will allow analysing many interesting, significant phenomena, mechanisms and connections.
Dr hab. Agnieszka Szpak, NCU professor, is the head of the Department of International Security in the Institute of Security Studies (the Faculty of Political Science and Security Studies). She represents interdisciplinary approach to research, holds the degree of doctor habilitatus in political science, a PhD in law, and an MA in international relations. She specializes in international humanitarian law and human security issues. Recently, within an NCN OPUS project she and the project team have been focusing on cities’ cooperation at the international level. She has been running a project “The role of cities in multi-level governance” as part of the Disciplinas Excellentia program, and “The status of contemporary cities in international relations” within the THUS program. In her research she has also addressed the issues of indigenous peoples and their rights, particularly those in the Arctic region. She has participated in numerous training courses and study visits abroad, e.g. at the Hague Academy of International Law, International Institute of Humanitarian Law in Sanremo, and Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder). She has taken part in many international conferences and has published approximately 150 texts in Polish and English. Her achievements have received recognition in the form of multiple Rector’s awards and grants; she also won the second award in the 9th Prof Remigiusz Bierzanek’s competition for best doctoral dissertation.