Registration from 18.00, for a prompt 18.30 start.

The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception to which all registered delegates are invited.

Fortification strategies are resurgent in the contemporary world to a degree that is surprising to the casual observer.

Fortifications nowadays are designed to hide in plain sight, belying the reality that the conditions of urban life these days are as dominated by securitised architecture as they were in mediaeval times. Indeed, not since pre-Napoleonic days have the principles of positional warfare, fortification, and siegecraft been so dominant in strategic affairs.

The preoccupation in our interconnected ‘information age’ with networks, transactional flows, and speed belies the reality that the main themes of contemporary security practice - military, civil, and corporate - are infrastructure hardening, stronghold building, and the purposeful channeling of movements of people, goods, and ideas.

In this lecture David Betz will illustrate and explain the dense concentric layers of fortification that surround us all, whether we recognise them or not.

Professor David Betz joined the Department of War Studies (School of Security Studies) at King's College London in 2002, following the completion of his PhD at the University of Glasgow.

David's main research interests are insurgency and counterinsurgency, information warfare and cyberwar and propaganda. David is also interested in civil-military relations and strategy, especially fortifications both historic and contemporary.

David is head of the Insurgency Research Group in the Department of War Studies and was the academic director of the War Studies Online MA for its first five years.