We hosted the Historical Analysis for Defence and Security Symposium at York in July 2024.
Our research presentations
We did a joint presentation of a preliminary study (based on Adarsh Bura's thesis) of the naval aspects of Operation Sea Lion, Germany's planned 1940 invasion of England, at the Dupuy Institute HAAC2023.
Our work on concentration and asymmetry in defensive air power was presented in December 2022 at the Norwegian Defence University College's R&D seminar on Land Operations and Combined Arms Warfare: Lessons identified from the war in Ukraine.
A survey of our work was presented at the Historical Analysis conference of the Dupuy Institute, Washington DC, in September 2022, and at the US Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), Monterey, CA.
Our changepoint analysis of historical battle deaths, with its methodological innovations in the discovery of change points in heavy-tailed data, was presented at the Joint Statistical Meeting in Denver in 2019.
Our work on the attrition dynamics of multilateral war was presented in April 2018 at the International Studies Association convention in San Francisco and at the USNPS, and in 2017 at the International Symposium on Military Operations Research (ISMOR) (Royal Holloway University of London, July 2017).
Our work on the First World War at sea was presented by Niall MacKay in an Eight Bells lecture at the US Naval War College, Newport, RI (February 2016; here are the slides), at Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Modelling Conflict (Essex, September 2016), at the Historical Analysis for Defence and Security Symposium (HADSS) (dstl Portsdown, May 2017), at the USNPS, and by Chris Price at the British International History Group (BIHG) (Edinburgh, September 2016).
Our work on concentration and asymmetry in air combat was presented at the USNPS (January 2016), at HADSS 2014, at ISMOR2014 , at BIHG 2014 (London, September 2014), at Royal Air Force Air Command Headquarters (High Wycombe, November 2014), and in the Oxford Changing Character of War seminar (February 2015). Our earlier work on Lanchester models and the Battle of Britain was presented at HADSS 2011, at Conflict and Complexity (Kent, 2008), at Mathematics in Defence (Farnborough, 2009), and in a guest lecture at the NPS (Monterey, 2011).
Ian Horwood spoke at BIHG 2016 on the rise of carrier air power and inter-war wargaming at the US Naval War College, and on "'The Ethics of Bombing or the Bombing of Ethics': air power in a time of austerity" at Air Power: Now and the Future (RAeS, London, September 2016).
Outreach and Public Engagement
We have run our Battle of Jutland event, a combined lecture and wargame/simulation, twice: in 2013 for the York Festival of Ideas, and for the battle's 2016 centenary. Here's Jamie Wood talking about our work.
Our work on the Battle of Britain has been presented in talks to various school and university student audiences, to a mathematics teachers' summer school, and to the wider public for the York Historical Association and at the 2014 York Festival of Ideas. Our 2020 article on Bootstrapping the Battle of Britain was featured in the Daily Mail, Ars Technica (USA/UK), Popular Mechanics (USA), New Atlas (Australia), Big Think (USA), Fox News (USA), Business Telegraph (UK), Legion (Canada) and Weekendavisen (Denmark), among others, and "sent the history world into meltdown" (Dan Snow). Listen to us discussing it, the Battle of Jutland, and counterfactual history more generally on Dan Snow's History Hit.
Ian Horwood has appeared on Radio 4's Last Word to speak about Vietnam's General Vo Nguyen Giap, and Chris Price has appeared on BBC1's The One Show to talk about the famous Baedeker raids of 1942. Our work has also been featured in New Scientist.
Do contact us if you would like us to speak to your audience!
Seminars
Our past research seminar speakers include
Michael Armstrong (Brock U.)
Rex Brynen (McGill)
Greg Daddis (San Diego)
Andrew Halterman (NYU)
Christian Jentzsch (Bundeswehr Centre, Potsdam)
Moshe Kress (US NPS, Monterey)
Phil Sabin (KCL)
Matthew Seligmann (Brunel)
Mike Spagat (Royal Holloway, London)
Jose Torres (Malaga).