Implementing research security in Denmark: the emergence of research security professionals

Research security has emerged as a central framework for managing geopolitical risk in international scientific collaboration. Policies on research security place new responsibilities on scientists to manage risk while bringing intelligence professionals into academic domains, raising questions about scientific autonomy and authority. This article conceptualises research security as a diffusing ‘policy object' and examines its implementation in Denmark, asking how research security is negotiated and enacted in practice and how emerging forms of expertise and professional roles reshape science-state relations. Drawing on media debates, policy documents and guidelines introduced following the establishment of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service’s Centre for Innovation and Knowledge Security and interviews with research security staff, the article analyses struggles surrounding risk in the early stages of implementation. It shows how research security efforts by the intelligence services generated public contestation and criticism while also accelerating institutional engagement by turning abstract security concerns into concrete governance challenges. Mobilising cultural and relational theories of risk, the article shows how competing risk perceptions generate new forms of expertise mediating between scientific and security domains. In this account, research security emerges as a contested site through which authority is negotiated and science–state relations are reconfigured.