A more secure world through social science

When I started my Masters course at King's I'd been involved in human rights activism for close to a decade, since I was a teenager. So what King's gave me wasn't the starting point, but something I really needed: a theoretical grounding, the tools to think critically about work I was already doing, and ways to advocate with more credibility.

Different modules - covering international relations and ethics, humanitarian issues, peace and justice, and human security - pushed me to properly interrogate ideas I'd been taking for granted, and engage with them in a deeper, more sophisticated way. And running alongside my degree, the Amnesty International student society at King's gave me and my fellow colleagues a space to test those ideas against real campaigns, real people, real consequences.

That combination - rigorous theory on the one hand, and grounded activism on the other - has shaped my work ever since, across organisations that I’ve served, including Front Line Defenders, EuroMed Rights and the Democratic Progress Institute, and later as founder of Refugee Rights Europe. Today I lead EU advocacy for the International Rescue Committee in Brussels, and I really believe that my work across these organisations has been influenced by the foundations I acquired at King’s.

It’s against this backdrop that I’m delighted to be here tonight for the launch of “Secure Futures”. When I think of secure futures, and what that concept means - I think about the people I've worked alongside for nearly two decades who have had very little security to speak of - people who've crossed borders and risked their lives at sea and who then spend years in administrative limbo at Europe's borders. I think about those caught in the cross-hairs of conflict, and those who have survived some of the gravest crimes against humanity. And I think about people in our own societies living below the poverty line, those facing systemic racism and discrimination, and I think of communities living under the shadow of different extremist ideologies around the world. A more secure future has to include all of us - and our solutions have to be inclusive, forward-thinking and ambitious.

This is exactly where I believe social science earns its relevance. The challenges named in the Secure Futures framework - conflict, climate change, economic uncertainty, inequality - don't just need naming. They need evidence, careful analysis, and new imagination, because the solutions we currently have clearly aren't enough. Many policy areas -as we know- are driven far more by political anxiety than by evidence. This is indeed where I see social science's role most clearly: generating the evidence that's often missing from these debates, preparing the next generation of practitioners and policymakers to ask better questions, to insist on rigour, and to hold power to account when policy drifts away in the wrong direction – away from the people affected by these policies.

So if there's one thing I hope current SSPP students take away from their time at King's - just like I did - it's this: you don't need to choose between driving positive change and being a rigorous thinker. The two make each other better. Some of the most useful work I've done has come from both being restless enough to act, but disciplined enough to make the case properly.

So SSPP gave me that combination once, and from what I can see of the Faculty today - the breadth of the research, the seriousness of the engagement work, the fact that we're here tonight launching a strategic vision that puts real-world insecurity at its centre – I believe it’s still doing exactly that. I'm delighted to have come from here, and very glad to see where it's headed.