IFG Lab is the new name of the former Centre de recherches et d’analyses géopolitiques -CRAG (Centre for Research and Analysis in Geopolitics), a host research team (EA 353) founded in 1989 at Paris 8 University along with the first doctoral programme and Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies (Diploma of Higher Education) in geopolitics in France. The creation of the French Institute of Geopolitics by Béatrice Giblin in 2002 helped to put Paris 8 University’s department of geopolitics on the map.
IFG Lab continues to pursue its long-standing collaboration with the Department of Slavic Studies and the Nanterre Centre de Recherches Pluridisciplinaires Multilinguistiques -CRPM (Centre for Multi-Disciplinary and Multilingual Research), part of the Paris Lumières Association of Universities and Higher Education Institutions. 
The researchers and doctoral students of IFG Lab study territorial and digital rivalries. Their research work applies geopolitical methodologies (spatial analysis and stakeholder strategy, cartography and computer graphics) to a wide variety of conflict situations. These can be international (war, diplomacy, environmental conflicts, citizen involvement, etc.), intra-state (services and infrastructure projects, environmental conflicts, regionalist or nationalist movements, the French outer-suburbs issue, electoral rivalries, etc.), or digital conflicts (cyber conflicts, transfer and use of information, geopolitics of digital technologies, international regulation conflicts, etc.).

The GEODE project (Geopolitics of the Datasphere), led by IFG Lab, specialises in the conflicts and strategies associated with the digital revolution. In 2020, it was awarded the title of Centre of Excellence for International Relations and Strategy by the French Ministry of the Armed Forces (geode.science).
The researchers of the IFG Lab run the Turkey Observatory, which was created in 2019 to analyse the rise of authoritarianism in Turkey (observatoireturquie.fr).

Research themes:

For the 2020-2025 five-year term, the laboratory’s research is divided into four themes:

1. Geopolitics of the Datasphere (GEODE)
2. Geopolitical Risk Assessment
3. Local Geopolitics
4. Nation states, nationalism and minorities