Admission requirements
Mandatory course for students enrolled in the bachelor’s programme Security Studies. Only students of the Bachelor Security Studies can take this course.
Students must have passed Integrated Project 1 before the start of Integrated Project 2.
Description
Integrated project 2 centres around real life challenges and practices, engages students in ‘doing security’ via ‘policy-advising’ tasks and trains and assesses their professional skills. Students will consult on a real life security or safety challenge presented to them by organisations and practitioners from the security domain.
Students will work in think tank groups on a security and/or safety challenge introduced and explained by a practitioner. Each group is expected to apply the three step approach of ‘explore, understand and do’ in order to respectively collect facts and contextual information on the case at hand (explore), deepen their understanding of several elements of the case by applying disciplinary lenses (understand) and merge these insights to assess and design policy recommendations to address the challenge at hand (do). This will result in a policy advice report in which each group presents their security and/or safety challenge, adopts several disciplinary lenses, integrates their findings and formulates recommendations for further action. Moreover, students will present their findings and recommendations to solve security and safety issues to the organisations.
Course objectives
After this course students are able to:
Demonstrate knowledge and understand a real-life security challenge and the potential governance strategies to tackle it.
Demonstrate knowledge and understand the relevant academic and policy-oriented background literature related to the topic provided by the policy-maker.
Demonstrate knowledge and understand the required conventions and approaches by think tanks/policy advisors. Analyse a real life security/safety problem by means of interdisciplinary research in both individual and group settings.
Formulate an in-depth individual research and advice paper and a comprehensive group report including implementable and insightful policy recommendations to address a security/safety challenge posed by the senior official. Apply the knowledge on project management, group work and effective presentations throughout the project.
Reflect on proposed policy recommendations in terms of feasibility of implementation, support amongst stakeholders, and ethical dilemmas.
Reflect critically on their own contribution to the group and role in the group, their own strengths, weaknesses and potential for improvement throughout the project.
Demonstrate an open and academic attitude, characterised by accuracy, critical reflection (also about one’s own strengths, weaknesses and learning path) and academic curiosity, as well as striving for life-long learning.
Timetable
On the right side of programme front page of the e-guides you will find links to the website and timetables, uSis and Brightspace.
Mode of instruction
Plenary lectures and course labs.
Attendance of the course labs is mandatory. If you miss more than 1 course lab you fail the course and will not obtain a final grade.
Assessment method
Individual Policy Paper
50% of final grade
Grade must be 5.50 or higher
Resit of a fail is possible
Resit will take the similar form
Final Group Paper
50% of final grade
Grade must be 5.50 or higher
Resit of a fail is possible
Resit will take the similar form
Individual paper resit
If a student has not handed in an individual paper, they will be given a new assignment. If a student fails their individual paper, they will have to improve the original paper following all the stipulated requirements. The grade for this improved paper will be capped at 70%.
Group paper resit
If the entire group fails the paper, they will have to improve the original group paper following all the stipulated requirements. The grade for this improved paper will be capped at 70%. If an individual fails the group paper (due to e.g. “free-riding”, absence or illness) they will be given a new group assignment.
Transitional Arrangement
Passed partial grades obtained in year 2021-2022 remain valid during year 2022-2023. Students who did not meet the course lab attendance requirements in 2021-2022 are required to attend the course labs in 2022-2023.
Reading list
A selection of books and articles will be announced on Brightspace.
Registration
Please use uSis to register for this course. After you have been enrolled for this course in uSis you will be automatically enrolled into the specific Brightspace course page. When the registration for this course opens, will be announced via the General course pages via Brightspace well in advance.
Access to Brightspace is necessary because the syllabus and other information about this course can be found here. Furthermore, announcements and modifications will be communicated via Brightspace. Students have the responsibility to stay informed and are thus advised to regularly check Brightspace for updates. In uSis you can access your personal schedule and view your results.
Contact
Drs. Celesta Kofman, course coordinator c.j.kofman@fgga.leidenuniv.nl
Remarks
For exceptions, please contact the Board of Examiners.