Ruptures and Geopolitics: The Academic Perspective - Reflections & Closing

Описание: Tuesday 10th February

As part of the launch of the ISRM Academy, we are returning to a long-standing and valued tradition, which is hosting a monthly academic webinar focused on strategic risk and crisis management.

The timing for this renewed programme could not be more appropriate. In his recent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney used a single word — ‘rupture’— to capture the scale and significance of the changes currently reshaping the global system. His remarks were widely interpreted as marking a clear break from the US-led international framework that has been in place since the end of the Second World War and as recognising the emergence of a far less stable and predictable geopolitical environment.

Carney was explicit in his assessment: ‘Let me be direct: We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.’ He went on to argue that the multilateral institutions on which many states have relied, including the WTO, the UN and the COP framework, are increasingly under threat. As a result, countries are being driven towards greater strategic autonomy in areas such as energy, food, critical minerals, finance and supply chains.

This idea of rupture as a defining feature of contemporary risk is not new within academic thinking. In the early 2000s, the French scholar Patrick Lagadec explored the emergence of reality-changing ruptures in a series of influential works, including Risks, Crises, Ruptures: A Whole New Ball Game (2004), Crisis Management in the Twenty-First Century: ‘Unthinkable’ Events in ‘Inconceivable’ Contexts (2007) and A New Cosmology of Risks and Crises (2009). Across these papers, Lagadec examined the epistemological challenges posed by a new class of events and the implications for how societies model, prepare for and respond to crises.

This webinar will revisit Lagadec’s questions and insights, place them alongside Carney’s Davos speech and explore how academic thinking on rupture provides structure and clarity in an increasingly volatile world.The session is open to anyone with an interest in the academic study of strategic risk and crisis management, whether from a scholarly, practitioner, management or policy-making perspective. It will demonstrate how engagement with academic frameworks can offer practical value and deeper understanding in times of profound uncertainty.

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