I teach at undergraduate, postgraduate and professional levels. Most of my current teaching is based at King’s College London, where I convene the Master’s-levelcourse Science, Weapons & Arms Control in the Department of War Studies. The course examines the complex interplay of science and international security. It explores how weapons-related knowledge is produced, interpreted and contested, emphasising the social and political embeddedness of scientific practice. Through historical and contemporary case studies, students engage with a set of core questions:
- Do scientific and technological advances enhance or undermine peace and security?
- How are emerging biotechnologies shifting the balance of power? Who benefits—and who bears the risks?
- How are information societies reconfiguring the power of states to gather, manipulate or obscure information in the name of security?
- In an era of information warfare and algorithmic decision-making, what roles remain for arms control and verification?
While physics and chemistry transformed the conduct, political stakes and consequences of war in the twentieth century, today the rise of the biosciences—particularly genetic editing, synthetic biology and AI-driven drug discovery—has introduced new strategic considerations. These tools and technologies are reshaping old questions and generating new ones about the intersection of science, society and global order.
I adopt a research-informed approach to teaching, drawing directly on my active research and current scholarship. I employ a range of pedagogical tools—including digital polling, case studies and practitioner-led exercises—to encourage active learning and critical reflection. Conceptually, I integrate elements from Science and Technology Studies (STS) into lectures, advancing the intersection of STS and critical security studies—an intellectual frontier I identified in my chapter in An Introduction to War Studies (Elgar, 2024, with Hassan Elbahtimy).
To support distance-learning, I developed an e-learning module on Biological Weapons in collaboration with the European Union’s Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Consortium.
I also contribute to short practitioner courses, including King’s Strategic Affairs course for FCDO diplomats (2025), King’s Emerging Technologies and Emerging Threats course for Qatari practitioners (2025), and GCSP’s Addressing Challenges in Global Health Security course for international practitioners (2025).
PhD supervision (past and present):
- Henrietta Wilson—Reassessing Biological Weapons Convention verification in the age of Google (King’s)
- Susanna Finlay—Life as engineerable material: An ethnographic study of synthetic biology (LSE 2017)
- Alex Hamilton—Governing through risk: Synthetic biology and the risk management process (LSE, 2015)
- Caitlin Cockerton—Going synthetic: How scientists and engineers imagine and build a new biology (LSE, 2012)