The Program links research groups at Harvard University in the United States and the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. It began formally in 1990, building on two decades of earlier collaboration between its co-directors.
In recent years HSP has been funded by grants from the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation of Chicago, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Alfred P Sloan Foundation of New York, the UK Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC), the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission, and the foreign ministries of Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal and the United Kingdom.
Our work is of two broad kinds: pro-active, and community-building. In the first, we develop new ideas for public policy on CBW and ways of thinking about policy proposals.
We seek to instil the traditions, practice and benefits of scholarship into the formation of public policy on issues involving biological and chemical weapons.
There are usually between 5 and 10 people, a few of them working full-time, the others part-time.