This week, the Collegium is hosting another group of early-career scholars within the Constructive Advanced Thinking (CAT) programme. During their time in residence, they will work intensely on their research project Theories of Change and Nuclear Disarmament (TCND), but will also have the opportunity to interact with SCAS Fellows on different occasions.

The research project "seeks to initiate interdisciplinary conversations between researchers on the question of nuclear disarmament and how it might be achieved. Scholarly conceptions of 'change' as a concept are relatively limited within the fields of international relations (IR) and security studies, with mainstream theories often reproducing an implicit methodological 'continuationism' which discounts the possibility of meaningful change of, or within, the international system. Nuclear weapons are therefore too often accepted as an inevitable presence in world politics. TCND engages researchers from diverse disciplines on the concept of 'change’ and asks whether accounts of change processes from outside of IR might allow us to think about nuclear disarmament in a new light. Questions include: how much must change—is nuclear disarmament possible only in the context of much wider, sweeping changes in world socio-economic order, or can it be achieved through smaller, targeted interventions? Would the advent of a more just and peaceful world guarantee nuclear disarmament, or would nuclear weapons somehow remain? How can lower-order social changes be leveraged to feed into this process? How can interdisciplinarity contribute to answering these questions?"*

The group consists of five members:

Dr Tom Vaughan, Lecturer in International Security, School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, UK (PI)

Dr Lyndon Burford, Policy Fellow, Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme; Project Manager, Nuclear Transparency Inventory, BASIC, UK

Dr Kjølv Egeland, Senior Researcher, NORSAR, Norway

Dr Hebatalla Taha, Associate Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science and the Center for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University, Sweden

Dr Jana Wattenberg, Lecturer in Security, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, UK

Only Tom Vaughan and Jana Wattenberg are present for the week-long residency at the Collegium though. The stay at SCAS is one of several short-term stays at Institutes for Advanced Study across Europe.

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The Constructive Advanced Thinking (CAT) programme External link.is an initiative of the Network of European Institutes for Advanced Study (NetIAS) that gives outstanding early-career researchers the opportunity to focus on basic research dedicated to the development of new ideas to understand and address current or emerging societal challenges. It also aims at supporting the transformation of these ideas into real-world action and to foster networks of advanced thinking. An important feature of the programme is short-term visits to different Institutes for Advanced Study (IAS) where the scholars meet with Fellows in residence at the institutes, as well as local research communities.

*Abstract of the research project