On Thursday, 21 May 2026, at 1 PM BST, the Emerging Voices Network (EVN) hosted an online launch event for our latest EVN Policy Cycle report. We were joined by Dr Hassan Elbahtimy, who was the keynote speaker for the event. Dr Elbahtimy is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and editor of the NPT Briefing Book. He is a Trustee and Executive Committee member of the British International Studies Association (BISA) and currently chairs BISA’s L.H.M. Ling Outstanding First Book Prize. He is also an Associate Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. The focus groups then presented on their future pathways and policy recommendations before an interactive Q&A Session with the audience.
The EVN, supported by Ploughshares, tasked emerging experts in the nuclear field to look ahead and imagine what potential futures could lie ahead for the NPT. The perspectives and expertise of early-career experts must be taken into account to bring fresh ideas and a longer-term approach to tackling the NPT’s greatest challenges. The EVN organised a policy cycle, utilising foresight methodologies, where 28 EVN members in four focus groups envisaged a desirable and an undesirable future pathway for the NPT over five workshops. Then, with both pathways in mind, the groups designed a set of policy recommendations designed to simultaneously push the NPT towards their desired pathways and away from the undesirable future.
These scenarios and policy recommendations have been compiled into a report. You can find the report here. Across the focus groups, the report highlights consistent themes and issues which the participants felt were essential to deciding the difference between a desirable and undesirable future for the NPT and non-proliferation. If there is one lesson to learn from this report, it is that the next generation of nuclear experts does not feel that we are at a crossroads between a desirable and undesirable future pathway for the NPT. Instead, we are already heading down an undesirable path, and immediate and significant course correction is required to achieve a positive, sustainable future for the NPT and non-proliferation.
