In this BASIC Q&A, we talk to Policy Fellow Declan Penrose.
Declan is a PhD student at the University of Manchester and works part-time on BASIC’s Emerging Voice Network (EVN) for high-potential, early-career professionals in the nuclear policy field. Declan is also a member of the EVN.
Earlier this year, Declan was among just 10 young leaders awarded a ‘Nuclear Futures Fellowship’. Here, he talks about the fellowship and how it will benefit his work at BASIC.
Q1. What is the Nuclear Futures Fellowship?
The Nuclear Futures Fellowship is a joint initiative between the Ploughshares Fund and Horizon 2045. Ploughshares is a philanthropic organisation that aims to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons and helps fund the EVN’s activities programme. Horizon 2045 is an innovative research group that develops collaborative processes for learning and leading across existential threats. The fellowship is awarded to a small group of young leaders who want to build the adaptive leadership practices, tools, and relationships necessary to help the nuclear field progress in a constantly changing environment. It is an opportunity to learn new skills and, most crucially, a field-building exercise.
This year, the fellows travelled twice to Washington, D.C.. The first time, we attended an intensive week of training using ‘foresight’ and ‘mapping’ methodologies. During the second visit, we showcased our new skills at a ‘Nuclear Futures and Strategic Planning Symposium’, attended by many of the Ploughshares Fund’s large network. We also developed ideas for our ‘Capstone Project,’ which each fellow works on within their respective organisations for nine months after the symposium. Supported by $10,000 of funding from Ploughshares, the projects allow fellows to implement the skills learned throughout the fellowship, which in turn helps to field-build foresight practitioners, introduce more experts to the methodology, and ultimately help mitigate the threat of nuclear weapons and interconnected security threats.
Q2. Why did you apply for it?
In the summer of 2023, I was encouraged by BASIC Executive Director Sebastian Brixey-Williams to apply for a futures and foresight training course run by the School of International Futures, as I had become increasingly interested in methodologies that can be used to track interconnected security threats. Sebastian has received similar training and strongly advocates for foresight methodologies. Furthermore, I was aware that BASIC Non-Resident Fellow Chris Spedding had worked with N-Square (an organisation that now forms part of Horizon 2045) to create the excellent BASIC-N Square UK Nuclear Threat Community Network Map. I found the project fascinating, and Chris spoke highly of the Horizon 2045 team. As a result, I was increasingly curious about the methodology, what it could mean for my professional development and the benefits it could have for the nuclear field.
Having completed the initial training, I realised futures and foresight methodology had great potential for my work with BASIC and my PhD research, and the Nuclear Futures Fellowship would enable me to take my skills to the next level. The fellowship and training would particularly benefit my work with the EVN’s global membership, as foresight planning is typically a collaborative process between individuals of diverse expertise and perspectives. Having the next generation of nuclear experts be more aware of futures thinking could be vital for the field adapting throughout the 21st century and beyond. I realised that the fellowship could help train me to train EVN members to use this exciting methodology. I also believe that fluency in futures and foresight has great potential for research in BASIC’s other programmes. I can pass my skills on to the rest of the team, and this methodology opens up new possibilities for future projects and collaborations.
As my PhD studies the role of affect and emotions in nuclear disarmament discourse, there is also potential for some interesting research into the role of affect and emotions in foresight planning and thinking about the future. Thinking about the future can evoke many emotions based on your affective connections to looking ahead. For example, it can evoke hope for a better future but also fear and anxiety as the future is ultimately unknowable, and there may be issues and drivers of change that could worsen the situation. In the nuclear field especially, most thinking about the future is apprehensive at best due to the current geopolitical situation.
When I saw the call for applications for the fellowship, the decision to apply felt like a no-brainer.
Q3. What happens next?
Over the next few weeks, I will work with my fellowship supervisor, BASIC’s Acting EVN and Communications Manager Michelle Houghton, the Horizon 2045 team, and Ploughshares to finalise the plan for my capstone project. My aim from the moment I saw the fellowship advert was to develop a project that would benefit the EVN. To this end, my project will be a two-part exercise involving EVN members and early-career experts in other security fields. Part one will be a mapping exercise where young experts across multiple fields will be asked to identify what they believe are the key issues and drivers that will shape the future of global and planetary security. This information will then be converted into a map using the Kumu programme, and the map will become a free resource on the BASIC website. The second part of the project will be a scenario development exercise with some survey participants using the map to imagine several possible future scenarios, which will also accompany the map on the BASIC website. Both activities will culminate in a report and a highly publicised online launch event open to the broader security community.
This project will, therefore, benefit EVN members by getting them to think about the drivers of change in the field and the future through the mapping and scenario exercises. The resulting map and scenarios allow early-career researchers to engage with the findings. The second benefit to the EVN is the opportunity to continue field building with other early-career experts in other security fields, such as climate, biosecurity, and emerging technologies. It will also afford an excellent follow-up to the work carried out by members during our last two policy cycles on ‘De-Siloing Existential Threats’. By reaching out to those in other fields and building relationships, we could take this work further by encouraging collaborations between different security fields, strengthening our understanding of interconnections between existential threats and our policies, and learning from each other. If these relationships and habits are built at an early-career stage, we could bring about change by making such cross-field collaborations the norm. Furthermore, early-career experts may go into their careers with some of these relationships in place due to such initiatives.
I am very excited about my fellowship and capstone project and the long-term impact it will have on the EVN and wider security research and policymaking.