WISC stands for World International Studies Committee which has been in existence in one form or another since the turn of the century. The committee has representatives from well ober 20 national (eg. BISA) or regional (eg. Nordic ISA) international studies associations. There is a good spread throughout Europe, the Americas (ISA, ABRI, AMEI), East & Southeast Asia (JAIR, KAIS among others) yet presumably more associations will join. The Committee was launched by Barry Buzan as the International Studies Co-ordinating Committee (ISCC) a decade ago. Its style is to be informal, non-bureaucratic and its purpose is simply to be available if there is a felt need. It meets once a year or thereabouts usually at the ISA or SGIR conferences and its main business was and remains to exchange information and experiences as well as to co-ordinate the calendar for conferences.
Barry Buzan handed over the chair to John Groom soon after the ISCC was set up. The name was changed to WISC to avoid confusion with the ISSC (International Social Science Council), a 2002 Charter was adopted which loosely defined its purposes but WISC remained an institution in waiting. The ‘waiting for what’ turned out to be a suggestion from Andrei Melville of the Russian ISA that it was time to go beyond bilateral conferences such as BISA-ISA, NISA-RISA, ISA-JAIR and try to arrange a global conference. Ilter Turan, President of the Turkish PSA from Istanbul Bilgi University accepted the challenge to be the first host and in 2005 created a conference that was a success in every way. Besides the local organisers the Secretariats of ISA and ECPR played a major role. The aspiration to be global – the raison d’être of the conference – was partially fulfilled by bringing East Asians, Latin Americans, North Americans and Europeans together with a presence of scholars from Central Asia and the Middle East. We had a success on our hands so a second conference was organised for July, 2008 in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
The conference in Ljubljana of 2008 has been the place where the confidence about the future of the WISC has been strengthened, and mandate was given to it by large consensus to continue as far as 2011, and show for good that a global professional network is a much needed medium to make international studies truly universal.