Associates

Christina Lamb is Chief Foreign Correspondent at The Sunday Times and one of Britain’s leading foreign journalists as well as a bestselling author. She has reported from most of the world’s hot-spots from Angola to Ukraine and starting with Afghanistan after an unexpected wedding invitation led her to Karachi in 1987 when she was just 21. She is the recipient of numerous awards including Young Journalist of the Year; Foreign Correspondent of the Year; the Prix Bayeux and the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Editors.

Lina Khatib is a Visiting Scholar with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative at Harvard University and an Associate Fellow at Chatham House's Middle East and North Africa Programme, where she previously served as director. She is an expert on the politics and international relations of the Middle East, with particular focus on Islamist groups and security, political transitions, and foreign policy. Outside of her work in policy, she spends her time supporting the global metal music community and occasionally creating visual art. 

Philippe Sands KC is Professor of Law at University College London and Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard University. He is a practising barrister at 11KBW, appears as counsel before the International Court of Justice and other international courts and tribunals, and sits as an international arbitrator. His books include East West Street: On the Origins of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide (2016), The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive (2020) and The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy (2022). His new book, 38 Londres Street: On Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia, was published in April 2025.

Samir Puri is Director of the Centre for Global Governance and Security at Chatham House. He is also a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, where he previously taught full-time between 2015 and 2018. Samir is also a former UK civil servant and worked for the Foreign Office between 2009 and 2015, including a year seconded to a ceasefire monitoring mission in east Ukraine. He has published five books, the latest being Westlessness: The Great Global Rebalancing (Hodder & Stoughton, 2024).

Elke Schwarz is Professor of Political Theory at Queen Mary University London. Her research focuses on the intersection of ethics of war and ethics of technology with an emphasis on unmanned and autonomous / intelligent military technologies and their impact on the politics of contemporary warfare. She is the author of Death Machines: The Ethics of Violent Technologies (Manchester University Press), a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and a member of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC). She is also 2022/23 Fellow at the Center for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS) in Heidelberg and 2024 Leverhulme Research Fellow with a project on the politics of Apocalyptic Artificial Intelligence. Her work has been published in a number of philosophical and security focused journals, including Ethics & International Affairs, Philosophy Today, Security Dialogue, Critical Studies on Terrorism and the Journal of International Political Theory among others.

Rana Mitter is Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China and Director of the University China Centre at the University of Oxford. His work focuses on the emergence of nationalism in modern China, both in the early twentieth century and in the present era. He is the author of several books, including 'Modern China: A Very Short Introduction', 'A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World' and the award-winning 'China’s War with Japan, 1937-45: The Struggle for Survival'.

Olga Tokariuk is a Senior Analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, based in London. Her research is focused on state-sponsored information operations and disinformation, particularly in the context of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Olga is also an Academy Associate at Chatham House’s Ukraine Forum. She is a former fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, where she researched the role of humour as an antidote to disinformation. Olga Tokariuk’s background is in journalism. Her work and commentary have been featured in TIME, The Washington Post, NPR, BBC, Monocle, EFE, ANSA, and other international and Ukrainian media. Mrs Tokariuk is a frequent guest lecturer at academic institutions including University of Oxford, University of Miami, and a keynote speaker at conferences. She holds an MA in political science and international relations from the University of Bologna and an MA in journalism from the Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv. In the past, Olga worked on counter-disinformation research projects with Oxford Analytica, Zinc, Mythos Labs and is a former scholar of the Digital Sherlocks program at the Atlantic Council’s DFR Lab. 

Farah Jassat is Head of Editorial Innovation and Digital at Intelligence Squared. Before joining Intelligence Squared, she worked as a BBC journalist and producer across multiple television and radio programmes including Newsnight, Woman's Hour and Newsround. Prior to this, she was a freelance writer for The Guardian and Huffington Post.

Simon Wessely is Regius Professor of Psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital and King's College London, and President of the Royal Society of Medicine. He founded the King’s Centre for Military Health Research, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2025, and has over 800 publications, discussing issues such as the health of the British Armed Forces past and present, combat stress, unit cohesion and morale, and physical and mental injury. He has written extensively on historical issues, including co-authoring a history of shell shock and in 2025 was awarded Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) in the King's Birthday Honours.

Masuma Ahuja is an author, independent journalist and former Digital Editor at The Washington Post. Her work focuses on telling human stories that help us understand people, power and politics around the world, working across words, audio, multimedia and social media. Previously she was a producer at CNN and shares in a Pulitzer Prize, a Murrow Award, and a Webby for her work.

Jonathan Cohen is Executive Director of Conciliation Resources, an independent international organisation working with people in conflict to prevent violence, resolve conflicts and promote peaceful societies. Over the past twenty years at Conciliation Resources Jonathan has supported dialogue and peace-building initiatives in contexts including the Caucasus, Kashmir, the Philippines, Colombia and Nigeria. Previously he served as Deputy Director of the Foundation on Inter-Ethnic Relations in The Hague working with the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities.

Sarah Sands is a Partner at Hawthorn Advisors. She was the former editor of the BBC’s Today programme, Radio 4’s flagship news and current affairs programme. She was previously editor of the London Evening Standard, the first woman to edit The Sunday Telegraph and deputy editor of The Daily Telegraph. Sarah is Chair of the Gender Equality Advisory Council for G7 for 2021 and of the political think tank Bright Blue.  She is also a Board Member of London First and Index on Censorship and is a Patron of the National Citizen Service. Sarah is an honorary fellow of Goldsmiths College, University of London, Lucy Cavendish College Cambridge and a visiting fellow to the Reuters Institute.

Beryl Pong is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the Centre for the Future of Intelligence and the Institute for Technology and Humanity at the University of Cambridge. She directs the Centre for Drones and Culture and holds affiliated positions with the Faculty of English and Trinity College at Cambridge, and with the National University of Singapore. Her background is in literary and cultural studies, and her research interests span the interwar period of the twentieth century through to contemporary remote warfare. She is the author of British Literature and Culture in Second World Wartime and the co-editor of Drone Aesthetics: War, Culture, Ecology. 

Chris Kempshall is a public historian and author who specialises both in transnational experiences of warfare and modern media representations of history; predominantly computer games and the Star Wars franchise. He is currently the President for the International Society for First World War Studies and a Senior Research Fellow for the Centre for Army Leadership, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and has acted as an academic advisor and consultant to various museums and game developers. Alongside his academic writing he authored Star Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire, an ‘in-universe’ history book officially licensed by DK and Lucasfilm and published in 2024.  

Matthew Ford is an Associate Professor in War Studies at the Swedish Defence University in Stockholm and Research Associate in International Relations at the University of Sussex. After completing his doctorate at King's College London, Matthew joined the UK Civil Service as a Strategic Analyst with the Policy and Capability Studies Department of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, an agency of the UK Ministry of Defence. His research interests focus on military innovation, socio-technical change and the epistemology of war.

Meera Sabaratnam is Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, where she runs an undergraduate option on International Security and Conflict. Her research interests are in the colonial and postcolonial dimensions of world politics, in theory, practice and methods. Having previously written about international state building practices and the First World War from perspectives in south-east Africa, she is now working on a theory of international order through the lens of debt and indebtedness.

Marcus Webb and Rob Orchard are the co-founders of The Slow Journalism Company and editors of Delayed Gratification. They are also editors of its flagship title, Delayed Gratification, a print publication which revisits the events of the quarter and is designed as an antidote to the increasingly speedy, kneejerk nature of news journalism. Making a virtue of being “Last to Breaking News”, it is filled with longform features, photo essays and infographics. In 2019 Rob and Marcus were named Independent Editors of The Year by the British Society of Magazine Editors.

Ben Hammersley is Principal of Hammersley Futures and former Executive Editor of WIRED magazine. Previously, Ben worked for The Times and The Guardian, reporting from Afghanistan, Beirut, Myanmar, and many other places around the world. He was also executive editor of WIRED magazine, presenter of Cybercrimes with Ben Hammersley on BBC World News, and a consultant for the European Commission, the British and US governments, and many other organisations. He has written five books, and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, daughter, and various robots.

Irini Papadimitriou is a curator and currently Director of Exhibitions at Diriyah Art Futures in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. She was previously Creative Director at FutureEverything in Manchester, and Artistic Director at the Sea Art Festival 2023 in Busan, South Korea. Her curatorial practice - and roles as Digital Programmes Manager at the V&A, and Head of New Media Arts Development at Watermans - draws on interdisciplinary and critical discourse to explore the impact of technology in society and culture, and the role of art in helping us engage with contemporary issues. Curatorial research areas include technology and ethics, surveillance society, digital citizenship and the public (physical-digital) realm.

James Verini is a writer for The New York Times Magazine specializing in the coverage of conflict. His 2019 book They Will Have to Die Now: Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate, was based on his series in the magazine about the war against the Islamic State. His journalism has also appeared in National Geographic Magazine, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, and elsewhere. He has written about combat, civil wars, jihadism, insurgencies, peace-keeping and war crimes prosecutions in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Palestine, Kenya, Sudan, Central African Republic, Nigeria, and other places. His work has received a National Magazine Award and a George Polk Award. He is currently at work on a book about the war in Ukraine. 

Charlie Winter is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King's College London. His specialism is terrorism and insurgency, with a focus on online and offline strategic communication. He is studying for a PhD in War Studies, examining how militant groups cultivate creative approaches to governance and war. Charlie has written for the BBC and The Guardian and has had work published by Critical Studies in Media Communication, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Philosophia, The Atlantic, War On The Rocks, and Jihadology, among others.

Patrick Vernon is a film-maker and cultural historian, and founder of both Every Generation Media and the 100 Great Black Britons campaign. He is also editor of Black History Month magazine and the 70th Windrush Commemorative magazine for Sugar Media Marketing. Patrick was for many years a councillor for the London Borough of Hackney and he remains active in the fields of public health and diversity. Patrick was a Clore Leadership Fellow intern at the IWM in 2007 and later contributed to its AHRC-supported project Whose Remembrance? Patrick led the successful campaign for a national Windrush Day on the 22nd of June for celebrating the contribution of the Windrush Generation and all migrants to Britain since the Second World War. 

Christine Chinkin is the founding Director of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics, a hub dedicated to promoting justice, human rights and participation of women in conflict-affected situations around the world. She is also a William W. Cook Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan and a member of the Bar of England and Wales and Matrix Chambers. Christine has written extensively on international law and human rights law, in particular on the human rights of women. She is co-author of The Boundaries of International Law: a Feminist Analysis, (with Hilary Charlesworth, The Making of International Law (with Alan Boyle) and of International Law and New Wars (with Mary Kaldor).

Jean Seaton is Professor of Media History at the University of Westminster, an Official Historian of the BBC and Director of the Orwell Foundation. She is the author of, among others, Carnage and the Media: the Making and Breaking of News about Violence, Power Without Responsibility: the Press and Broadcasting in Britain and Pinkoes and Traitors: the BBC and the nation 1974-1987. Jean is on the editorial board of  The Political Quarterly. She is a founding member of several active media NGO's that hold the media to account, including Full Fact and the Reuters Institute. From 2015-2016, Jean was co-investigator on IWM’s research project 'Listening to the World’, which examined the academic potential of the BBC Monitoring transcripts.

David Loyn is an author and Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He is an authority on Afghan history, and award-winning former foreign correspondent. He is the author of Frontline – Reporting from the World’s Deadliest Places which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, and Butcher and Bolt – Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan. He is an adviser to the Foreign Office on policy in South Asia and Afghanistan, and teaches mid-career diplomats at the Diplomatic Academy. From 2017-2018 he worked in Kabul as an adviser on Strategic Communications to the Afghan President. David has also been an adviser on a number of theatre and dance productions.

Kimberly McIntosh is an expert in the field of race and inequality policy. She is currently Senior Policy and Research Officer at Child Poverty Action Group, and was previously Senior Policy Officer at The Runnymede Trust, the UK’s leading independent race equality think tank. She was the love and dating columnist at gal-dem, a new media publication committed to telling the stories of women and non-binary people of colour and an Associate Editor at Wasafiri, a quarterly British literary magazine covering international contemporary writing.

Aslan Livingstone-Ra is an Animator, Producer and Creative Director who specialises in telling difficult and challenging stories using non-traditional, compelling and unexpected visual mediums. Through his studio Poke It With A Stick he has worked with many of the top news and current affairs outlets in the world, from 10 years as a Producer/Editor/Animator for American network ABC News, through 4 years as animator-in-residence for BBC Newsnight. He has worked with numerous other clients including Disney, CGTN, EBRD, Nekton, Al Jazeera, BBC Stories, BBC Ideas and Deluxe.

Carl Miller is a researcher of the often hidden influences of digital technology on society. In 2018 he published The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab, about the changing nature of power in the digital age. He presents programmes for the BBC’s flagship technology show, Click, and is the founding Research Director for the The Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) at Demos. He’s a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London and a member of the Society Board of the British Computing Society.

Tarak Barkawi is a historian of war and empire and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. His scholarship uses interdisciplinary approaches to imperial and military archives to re-imagine relations between war, armed forces and society in modern times.

James Cator is Head of International at Wondery, a division of Amazon, where he leads the company’s podcast business outside the United States. Prior to joining Wondery, he held senior roles at Spotify and Google, and is recognised as an expert in audience development and content strategy within the media industry. A strong advocate for diversity in media, James helped launch and run SoundUp UK, a Spotify initiative aimed at increasing access to the industry for underrepresented and underprivileged communities.

Paddy Walker is Managing Director of the Leon group, a fifth-generation family office. His PhD covered autonomous weapons and challenges to their deployment. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Humanities Research Institute and an Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He sits on the Development Committee of the Imperial War Museum. Formally London’s co-chair at NGO Human Rights Watch, he is a director of Article 36, a charity focused on reducing collateral harm to civilians from weapon systems. His most recent book discusses the norms of warfare. 

Jane is a creative leader and independent consultant who advises on public engagement, content strategies and partnerships. As Head of Partnerships at the BBC, she led the broadcaster’s work to deliver ambitious creative projects such as the Centenary of the First World War, in collaboration with arts and cultural organisations. Jane started her career on Newsnight, working in the UK, Europe and the US. She joined a start‐up satellite business channel in Switzerland before returning to the UK where she was the first woman to edit The Money Programme on BBC 2. As a Commissioning Editor at Radio 4, she oversaw features, documentaries and factual programmes and led A History of the World in 100 Objects, a series made in partnership with the British Museum.

Peter Watkins is former Director General for Strategy & International in the Ministry of Defence. He was responsible for defence policy on NATO and the Euro-Atlantic area, the defence implications of exiting the European Union, and the UK’s key bilateral defence relationships as well as strategic planning and strategic policy matters (e.g. nuclear deterrence, cyber, space, exports).

Alice Kelly is the 2021-22 Gardiner Fellow at New-York Historical Society, and a Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. Her expertise is in British and American literary and cultural memory of the First World War. Alice writes for both academic and public audiences, and her publications include  Commemorative Modernisms: Women Writers, Death and the First World War (2020) and a critical edition of Edith Wharton’s war reportage Fighting France (2015). Alice’s recent British Academy-funded seminar series Cultures and Commemorations of War considered the practices and politics of war memory across time, featuring speakers including Jeremy Deller and Joe Sacco.

Shona Illingworth is a Danish-Scottish artist and Professor of Art, Film and Media at the University of Kent, UK. Her work examines the impact of accelerating military, industrial and environmental transformations of airspace and outer space and the implications for human rights. She is co-founder with Nick Grief of the Airspace Tribunal. Recent solo exhibitions of her work include Topologies of Air at Les Abattoirs, Musée—Frac Occitanie, Toulouse (2022–23), The Power Plant, Toronto (2022), and Bahrain National Museum, Manama (2022–23). Illingworth sits on the international editorial boards of Digital War and Memory, Mind & Media. The monograph Shona Illingworth—Topologies of Air was published by Sternberg Press and The Power Plant in 2022.

Professor Irene Bruna Seu is Emerita Professor of Psychosocial Studies and Critical Psychology at Birbeck, University of London, and the Founding Director of the Centre for Researching and Embedding Human Rights (CREHR). She has also been practising as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist for over thirty years. She is currently working for Conciliation Resources on a report on the integration of mental health and psychosocial support and transitional justice. The project, commissioned by the European Commission Facility for Justice in conflict and transition, aims to build an instrument for peacebuilding practitioners.