News & events
On 5 November 2025, the Future Threats Lab hosted a workshop at Teesside University, which explored the cascading impacts of satellite disruption on the Tees Valley, investigating sector-specific vulnerabilities and the health and social impacts on communities.
On 20 October 2025, the Future Threats Lab and the Fairness Foundation hosted Dr Luke Kemp for a discussion on his provocative new book, Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse. In this riveting history of humanity, Kemp reveals the pivotal role of inequality in provoking societal collapse, and considers the implications for our own increasingly unequal societies.
Dr Jeni Mitchell has been awarded Security & Defence PLuS funding for the project ‘Establishing Guidelines for Successful Collaboration Between the Space Industry and Indigenous Communities’. The international collaboration involves scholars from King's, Arizona State University, and the University of New South Wales.
The project addresses how the space industry can engage more effectively and ethically with Indigenous communities worldwide. As major powers increasingly view space as a strategic domain, Jeni will help examine the implications for Indigenous communities through interdisciplinary consultations, case studies, and workshops to create a practical framework for collaboration in our ‘New Space Age’.
On 13 June 2025, the Future Threats Lab, the Fairness Foundation and the Policy Institute at King's College London convened a one-day workshop examining how wealth inequality exacerbates the risks and impacts of extreme heat in the UK. The workshop explored how inequality interferes with the UK's preparedness, response and adaptation planning for extreme heat events. The findings will be published shortly.
On 28 May 2025, the Nuclear War Scenario Design Workshop was held as part of King’s Wargaming Week, hosted by the Future Threats Lab and the Nuclear Futures Project at King’s College London. The event gathered scholars and practitioners to explore nuclear futures through scenario design. Participants discussed nuclear scenario archetypes, critical trends, and design best practices, then collaborated in small groups to create credible, policy-relevant nuclear war scenarios.
On 1 November 2024, the Fairness Foundation, the Future Threats Lab at the Department of War Studies, and the Policy Institute at King’s College London convened a one-day workshop for 25 senior stakeholders from the worlds of politics, government, academia, business and civil society. Its purpose was to examine the evidence for the serious risks — perhaps even catastrophic risks — posed by wealth inequality in the UK to our society, economy, democracy and environment, and for the ways in which those risks can be mitigated through government policy.
We produced a report on the workshop findings, which was featured in The Guardian and other press.
Jeni Mitchell has been appointed Deputy Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Research on Slavery in War. She will co-lead the Forecasting strand. The new centre will be the first overarching and integrative attempt to understand the slavery–war nexus as it has evolved historically and up to the present.
In September 2024, Jeni Mitchell and Pablo de Orellana presented ‘The Future is Human’ at Methods Con 2024, hosted by the National Centre for Research Methods in Manchester.
In September 2024, Jeni attended an academic workshop on The Future of UK Military Space at RAF Fylingdales, home to the UK’s ballistic missile early warning service and space monitoring programme.
In July 2024, Jeni participated in the department’s first Widening Participation Summer School, leading a futures workshop for local secondary school students.