ABSTRACT
Defence studies is a multi-disciplinary field examining how agents, predominantly states, prepare for, prevent, avoid and/or engage in armed conflict. Where security studies has been broadened and stretched to cover at times the near totality of international and domestic affairs and war studies has come to mean not just operations and tactics but also experiences and outcomes, defence studies remains a coherent area of study primarily aimed at how defence policy changes over time and in relation to stimulating factors such as changes in power, strategy and technology. Largely emanating from the United Kingdom in the twentieth century, the term defence studies goes back to the establishment of the Imperial Defence College in 1927, later named the Royal College for Defence Studies in 1970. Since this point, defence studies has become an intellectual pursuit designed to build our understanding of the convergence of war with other fields that impact the proclivity and intensity of battle. Defence studies help us to see how martial force is understood, built and deployed.
