IIR (Czech Republic)
The IIR, founded in 1957, is a public research institution founded by the charter of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic. As the country’s leading think tank on matters of foreign and security policy, the IIR combines engagement in academic research and providing expert advice in areas ranging from transatlantic relations, disarmament and nonproliferation, EU internal and external policies, or East Asia to Czech and European stakeholders. In recent years, it has organised, among other key events, an annual Prague Agenda conference as a forum for discussion of disarmament, arms control and nuclear security issues, and run a major international multiannual research project on Global Prohibition Regimes focused on both WMDs, conventional and other ‚nonconventional‘ (drug and endangered species trade; cyber security) frameworks of global security regulation. The IIR is a member of a number of international networks and consortia, including EPIN, TEPSA and ECPR.
Contact information
Institute of International Relations Prague – IIR
Nerudova 3, 118 50 Praha 1, Czech Republic
Tel: + 420 251 108 111
Fax: +420 251 108 222
Website: https://www.iir.cz
Point of contact
Ondrej Ditrych
Director
Tel: +420251108111
ditrych@iir.cz
The team
| Contacts | Resume | Speciality |
|---|---|---|
| Dr. Ondřej Ditrych | Dr. Ondřej Ditrych is the director of the Institute of International Relations Prague and an academic fellow at Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences. He holds degrees in international relations from University of Cambridge and Charles University in Prague. He was previously a senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague, a Fulbright research fellow at Belfer Center, Harvard University, a visiting researcher at CERI, Sciences Po Paris and SWP Berlin, an associate fellow at European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) and worked as an analyst for NATO SHAPE. He has been a convenor of the Czernin Security Forum Conference and previously directed the global prohibition regimes project at the Institute. His academic papers have been published in journals including Security Dialogue, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Journal of International Relations and Development, International Relations, International Politics or Historical Social Research. His latest books, Tracing the Discourses of Terrorism: Identity, Genealogy and State (2014), and a co-edited volume Regulating Global Security: Insights from Conventional and Unconventional Regimes (2019), were published by Palgrave Macmillan. He has also authored and co-authored a number of policy analyses including for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic recently e.g. on strategic foresight related to COVID-19’s projected effects on international politics, or for the European Parliament’s SEDE Subcommittee (on missile defence in Europe). |
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| Dr. Matus Halas (halas@iir.cz) | Dr. Matus Halas is a senior researcher and coordinator of the Centre for European Security at the Institute of International Relations. He previously worked in a professional military education as a lecturer in strategic studies at the Baltic Defence College (Tartu, Estonia) and as an assistant professor at the Institute of European Studies and International Relations in Bratislava (Slovakia) too. He also briefly held the position of science section editor in Slovak daily SME and he still regularly contributes to this newspaper’s Op-Ed section on topics related to European security and international politics. He received his Ph.D. in International Relations from the Charles University in Prague and he spent prolonged periods during his studies and the career at the University of Potsdam and the Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne. His research focuses on agent-based modelling of complex systems, deterrence theory and geopolitics. His articles appeared in impacted journals like Geopolitics, Social & Cultural Geography, Cambridge Review of International Affairs and Advances in Complex Systems. He edited a volume Geopolitické omyly dvadsiateho storočia [Geopolitical Mistakes of the 20th Century] (Bratislava: Comenius University Press, 2014) that introduced classical geopolitical texts to a general public for the first time in a translated form. He is a member of the International Political Science Association |
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| Dr. Miroslav Tuma (colonel retd.) | Dr. Miroslav Tuma (colonel retd.) is a senior associate at the Institute of International Relations Prague. He graduated from the Military Communications School, Nove Mesto n. Váhom, and later from the Faculty of Law of Charles University, Prague. He served in various command and staff posts. In 1989-1990, he participated in the UN Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM I) and in 1991 he joined the UN humanitarian operation in Iraq (the UN Guards Contingent in Iraq – UNGCI). After ending his military career in, he was assigned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, where he worked primarily in the United Nations Department, and was posted at the Czech Permanent Mission with the UN in New York. He is the author of several books and policy papers dealing mainly with arms control, nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation edited by the Institute of International Relations in Prague, including, recently, Íránská jaderná dohoda a širší mezinárodní souvislosti [The Iran Nuclear Deal And the Wider International Context]. He also authored a SIPRI policy paper Relics of Cold War, Defence Transformation in the Czech Republic. As an expert mainly in the nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, he contributes to media and lectures on arms control and disarmament at the Faculty of Law of Charles University in Prague. |
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