Each year, Student / Young Pugwash (SYP-UK) organises a conference on international security. The subject of the 8th annual conference, held in 2025 at King’s College London, was ‘Stepping Back from the Brink: Fresh Thinking on Peace and Disarmament’. Our aim was to encourage new thinking on the legal, political and technical questions associated with this topic, with a focus on ethical science.
A review of the 2025 conference, with videos of each session is available here.
The articles in this collection were written by some of those who presented at the conference. The authors cover a range of important and topical ground concerning the past, present and future of nuclear weapons. The collection was reviewed and edited by the members of SYP-UK’s executive board.
You can download the article collection as a pdf here.
Contents
Nuclear Energy in Africa and the Threat of Nuclear Terrorism: Trends, Risks and Policy Implications
Pablo José Pérez Cañavate
Gender Inequality in Nuclear Disarmament: Causes, Consequences, and the Case for Change
Aavienda Chowdhry
Rebalancing Disarmament: Incentivising Non-Proliferation Through Advanced Nuclear Technologies
Anthony Dai
Reimagining Nuclear Disarmament: Leveraging a Fourth Special Session on Disarmament and Pact for the Future as an Alternative Framework for Policy Innovation
Monalisa Hazarika
Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Security Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Olivia Ibbotson
The AUKUS Challenge: Navigating Nuclear Governance in the Indo-Pacific
Divisha Jain
How Digital Archives can Preserve the Memory and Experiences of Atomic Bomb Survivors
Kotone Kajikawa
The Verification Nightmare: Hypersonic Weapons and the Challenge to Arms Control
Mariam Mumladze
Maintaining ‘Cold Peace’ Between Regional Nuclear Dyads in Light of the Third Nuclear Age: The Case of India and Pakistan
Shivani Singh