The dark side of globalization
The Summer & Winter School on Illicit Trade
Money laundering. Terrorist finance. Drug trafficking. Arms smuggling. Illicit trafficking of wildlife, human body parts, and ancient historical artifacts. Tax havens. Proliferation of WMDs. Oil bunkering. Human smuggling and the modern day slave trade. Conflict minerals and blood diamonds. These are not just abstract terms, but billion dollar globalized industries that are part of the world’s globally interconnected economy and which overlap with and exacerbate terrorism, war and conflict, corruption, authoritarianism, and other contemporary security threats.
Illicit trade summer school course pierces the vale of secrecy around these issues and teaches students about illicit financing and trading; not only through theory and book study, but by learning the actual practices and techniques criminals, terrorists, and dictators use to obscure their profits and evade accountability for their actions, and the corresponding techniques to counter them.
This exciting course is the first of its kind in teaching illicit trade in a holistic and practically useful way. Students will learn how to set up offshore companies and bank accounts, obscure the beneficial ownership of assets, exploit the loop-holes of dual-use goods legal systems, and identify vulnerabilities in particular institutions, countries, and jurisdictions. The summer school includes academic and practical learning about illicit finance, trafficking, and trade, field visits to practitioners involved in countering these threats, and expert examination into strategies and practices about how to combat illicit trade.
Course Coordinators
Dr. Francesco Giumelli
Francesco Giumelli holds a Ph.D. from the University of Florence and is assistant professor in the Department of International Relations and International Organization at the University of Groningen. He has been Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute and Fellow at the Kroc Institute of Notre Dame University. He wrote the ‘Success of Sanctions: Lessons Learned from the experience of the EU’ with Routledge/Ashgate, and ‘Coercing and Constraining and Signalling: Explaining UN and EU Sanctions after the Cold War’ with ECPR Press. He also authored reports for the European Union Institute for Security Studies and the European Policy Centre among others and gave talks at various international think tanks, such as Chatham House, the German Council on Foreign Relations and the Italian Institute for International Affairs.
Dr. Tim Wittig
Tim Wittig holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of St Andrews, and is a research fellow at the University of Groningen. His research focuses on identifying and researching the social determinants of illicit trafficking, threat finance, and transnational organized crime, and how they intersect with other issues of international and environmental security. He is the author of numerous publications on these topics, including the book Understanding Terrorist Finance (Palgrave: 2011). In parallel to his academic work, Dr. Wittig has extensive experience as a practitioner, having worked for several years in the NGO sector on counter wildlife trafficking initiatives, in the defense/national security sector on counter threat finance and related issues, and as a consultant to public, private, and charitable sector clients. Prior to Groningen, Dr. Wittig has held a variety of university research and faculty positions, including at Johns Hopkins University, U.S. National Defense University, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of St Andrews.
Coming up next!
Summer School 2021
The programme is under construction, more information will be published soon.
For information, please write to illicittrade@rug.nl
Previous Editions
Winter School 2021
The Winter School was organized online in January 2021.
Summer School 2020
Due to the Covid-19 crisis, we decided not to offer the Summer School on Illicit Trade this year. It was a difficult decision, but we preferred not to contribute to the ongoing situation. We would like to express our gratitude to all people who are in the front-line to deal with this unprecedented crisis.
Summer School 2019
The course took place successfully in July 2019 in Groningen.
Summer
School
2018
The course took place successfully in July 2018 in Groningen.
Summer School 2017
The first edition of the Summer School on Illicit Trade!