Spring 2025 the Humanities Center supported 5 London faculty in small-scale, dynamic, collaborative research activities, typically involving at least three faculty members. This funding includes a range of humanities-focused work from gathering around shared methods, topics, or texts to visiting archives, museums, and libraries, or attending external research and networking events.
Exploring the Use of AI and Violence in Defense and Security Context: Lethal Autonomous Weapons and Drones as a Case Study
The pop-up brought together faculty and student research assistants to map and review academic and policy literature on AI in warfare, particularly autonomous weapons systems and drones, resulting in a collaborative annotated bibliography, with students receiving professional mentoring and career guidance throughout. This was complemented by an in-person workshop of eleven faculty and students, where postgraduate researchers and faculty presented literature review summaries and research findings, followed by discussion to synthesize insights and plan future collaborative work.
“We are very grateful for the Humanities Center leadership team for this opportunity, which demonstrated the enormous value and benefit (to research culture, collaboration, and the production of research papers) that can be created from just a little institutional ‘licence’, support, and amplification.”
A multigenerational team of five faculty and three PhD students visited Lambeth Palace Library on 8 May to explore its global collections, taking part in a tour, two research sessions alongside the Rare Books and Archives teams, and a networking lunch attended by 23 people. The visit yielded significant new discoveries — detailed in a Northeastern news story and set to form the basis of a Digital Exhibition on the library’s website — and was followed by a second visit on 26 June to advance research further and discuss future collaboration between Northeastern and Lambeth Palace Library.
