The Intelligence College in Europe offers to intelligence officers of member countries a range of specific courses and education training developed in close partnership with academia, to help build better mutual understanding.
The College’s Academic Programme does not promote a single vision, but can facilitate contact with different strategic cultures and completes training offers developed at the national level.
The Academic Programme aims at providing flexible and professional training to College Members. The courses are organised in modules and meet the concrete needs of intelligence professionals.
It exists in two formats: a yearly Executive Education Programme and postgraduate courses.
During the academic year 2023/2024, five sessions of the Executive Education Programme were successfully organised, gathering almost 180 participants. Six postgraduate courses have been conducted, engaging over 150 participants.
The academic network is growing year after year. It consists for now of 36 academic institutions, academies, universities and think tanks from 18 different member countries.
For the first time, on May 13th, ICE hosted a landmark promotional event in Brussels for “The Routledge Handbook of Disinformation,” a collaborative academic work produced by three members of its academic network.
The second ICE Academic Conference, held in Salamanca in June 2024, marked a significant advancement in collaboration, setting new cooperative directions and operationalizing the academic network. During this event, the ICE Academic Advisory Board was established, an academic working group was formed, and several practical initiatives were agreed upon. These developments underscore ICE´s commitment to strengthen collaboration within the academic network of security and intelligence services in Europe.
Last academic programme
Italian Award “A Thesis for National Security”. Conclusion of the sixth edition
On December 10th, the sixth edition of “A Thesis for National Security” prize ceremony, promoted by the Security Intelligence Department (DIS) took place in Rome, at the headquarters of the Italian Intelligence System. The event was attended by Alfredo Mantovano, the Undersecretary of State to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers - Delegated Authority for the Security of the Republic, the Director General of DIS, Elisabetta Belloni and the Directors of the Italian Intelligence Agencies.
The award aims at bringing the younger generation closer to the world of intelligence, promoting and encouraging studies on topics related to national security.
It was launched in 2014 as part of the activities to promote security culture, and over time, the competition has witnessed an increasing relevant involvement of the university world, and has become an annual initiative: more than 100 recent graduates from more than 40 national universities have participated.
This initiative represents yet another sign of the Intelligence's openness to the outside world and the solidity of its relationship with civil society and the university environment.
In this edition (2023-2024), 7 participants were rewarded with a prize worth €2,500 each for the best master thesis, rated no less than 105/110, on the following topics, among others: geopolitics and international relations; threats to national security; law, doctrine and history of intelligence; economic and financial security.
These are the winners selected by an internal Committee:
- Samuele Bernardi, University of Pisa, From EU strategic autonomy to EU public order and security. Towards the framing of an “EU strategic security”?;
- Roberto Colle, University of Trento, Democratic control of the information and security services: Historical and comparative aspects of a current issue;
- Edoardo Liberati, Sapienza University of Roma, Efficient, Reusable and High Error Tolerant Fuzzy Extractor for Physical Unclonable Functions;
- Alessandro Lotto, University of Padova, BARON: Base-Station Authentication Through Core Network for Mobility Management in 5G Networks;
- Matteo Marras, University of Torino, The defence of national interests and Chinese investments in Italy;
- Martina Serao, University of Roma Tre, The strategic competition between European Union and Russian Federation: A Net assessment analysis;
- Maria Vittoria Zucca, University of Trento, Cybercrime in healthcare: history, diagnosis, and prognosis of an IT “disease.”.
The seventh edition of the Award is ongoing and you can find it on the Italian Intelligence website www.sicurezzanazionale.gov.it.