NATIONAL DEFENCE UNIVERSITY

Their core work

The National Defence University (NDU) in Helsinki is Finland's military academy — responsible for training military officers and conducting defense-related research. In the H2020 context, they contributed specialist knowledge on EU peace support operations, capability assessment in conflict prevention missions, and educational methodologies for personnel operating in complex security environments. Their project work spans two connected themes: evaluating how effectively EU actors prevent and manage conflicts (IECEU), and designing game-based training tools to build the soft skills — communication, cultural awareness, gender sensitivity — needed by practitioners in the field (GAP). They bring what civilian universities rarely can: operational credibility in defense education combined with academic rigor.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Both H2020 projects started within a year of each other (2015–2016), so the window for observing evolution is narrow. The IECEU project (2015) was the more policy-facing effort — assessing operational capability and effectiveness of EU conflict prevention systems. The GAP project (2016) introduced a methodological shift: rather than evaluating existing systems, it built training tools using games and roleplay to develop the human skills that peace operations demand. The direction of travel points from policy assessment toward innovative educational delivery — a move from diagnosing what is missing to actually training people to fill that gap.

NDU appears to be moving from policy analysis toward applied training innovation — if this trajectory continues, they are a natural partner for projects involving simulation, serious games, or competency frameworks in security and defense education.

How they like to work

NDU has participated exclusively as a non-leading partner across both projects, contributing domain expertise rather than managing consortia. Both projects are Coordination and Support Actions, which typically involve larger, diverse groups — their 22 unique partners across 10 countries confirms they work comfortably in broad European networks. There is no sign of repeated partnerships with the same organizations, suggesting they engage project-by-project based on topic fit rather than maintaining a fixed inner circle.

NDU has worked with 22 unique consortium partners spanning 10 countries, a network breadth consistent with EU security policy projects that draw on partners from across member states and associated countries. No dominant geographic cluster is visible from the available data.

What sets them apart

As a national military academy rather than a civilian research university, NDU brings operational credibility that most H2020 partners in the security pillar simply do not have — their researchers and faculty have direct institutional links to defense planning, officer training, and military doctrine. This makes them particularly valuable in projects where the gap between academic frameworks and real-world security practice needs to be bridged. For consortium builders working on peace operations, security sector reform, or defense training, NDU offers access to a professional military network and a lived understanding of what practitioners actually need.

Highlights from their portfolio

• IECEU
  The largest-funded project for NDU (EUR 218,638), directly targeting the operational effectiveness of EU conflict prevention capabilities — a high-relevance topic for EU security policy at the time.
• GAP
  Gaming for Peace is an unusual combination of game design and peace education, making NDU one of the few military institutions in H2020 to engage with serious games as a training methodology for conflict resolution.