Email: oldrich.bures@mup.cz
Professor Bures is the founding director of the Center for Security Studies and Professor of International Political Relations at Metropolitan University Prague. He also lectures at the Department of Security Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague. From 2021 till 2026, he is a Visiting Professor at the University of South Wales. From 2009 till 2018, he was the Head of the Department of International Relations and European Studies at Metropolitan University Prague. He was previously a senior lecturer at Palacky University; a Fulbright Fellow at the Joan. B. Kroc Institute, University of Notre Dame; an External Research Fellow at the Centre for European Security, School of English, Sociology, Politics & Contemporary History, University of Salford; and a Marie Curie COFUND Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Hazzard, Risk and Resilience at Durham University. His research is focused on Conflict Resolution and International Security, with special emphasis on the privatization of security, (counter-)terrorism, and securitization of migration. He was awarded several external research grants, including the European Commission, the Czech Science Foundation, and the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic. He currently participates in the Jean Monnet research-led excellence network on EU counter-terrorism (EUCTER), the Globalization, Illicit Trade, Sustainability and Security (GLITSS) COST Action, and he is a co-founder of the Private Security Network (PrivSecNet). He serves as an evaluator of the European Research Executive Agency, the Czech Science Agency, the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic, and the Czech and Slovak national higher education accreditation institutions.
His work has been published in Security Dialogue, Cooperation and Conflict, Terrorism and Political Violence, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, International Studies Review, International Peacekeeping, Intelligence and National Security, European Security, Global Governance, Problems of Post-Communism, Population, Space and Place, Population and Development Review and Journal of Business Ethics, among other key journals. He is the author of several monographs, including EU Counterterrorism Policy: A Paper Tiger? (Ashgate, 2011) and Private Security Companies: Transforming Politics and Security in the Czech Republic (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), and (co-)editor of several edited volumes, including A Decade of EU Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence: A Critical Assessment (Routledge 2017) and Security Privatization: How Non-security-related Private Businesses Shape Security Governance (Springer 2018). He also has an extensive record of media appearances. He has considerable experience in organizing both research and science-popularising events, as evidenced by the numerous seminar series, workshops, and international conferences that he (co-) organized.
Beyond academia, his expertise has been utilized, including cooperation, advising, and consulting with/for Czech security forces and several Czech government Ministries, particularly Interior; Defence; Foreign Affairs; Education, Youth, and Sports; and Labor and Social Affairs. He has also worked as an external conflict resolution trainer and consultant for the largest Czech humanitarian NGO People in Need.