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Institute of Advanced Study
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Humanity at the Margins of Power: Centring the Human in Techno-Security Futures

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Project description

This project seeks to understand the place of the human in a rapidly changing global environment in which security challenges present new stressors for human societies,  and technology plays a crucial mediating role.

Primary participants

Principal Investigator:

Professor Catherine Turner, Law
catherine.turner@durham.ac.uk 

Term:

Michaelmas 2025

Global security policy has undergone a seismic shift. We face new security threats, such as cyber and information warfare, strife for economic security – including access to minerals critical to the green energy transition – as well as planetary challenges. While much security policy in the past two decades has centred around human security and development, current trends focus on how to respond to technologically advanced threats at state level.

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Overview:

Global security policy has undergone a seismic shift in recent years, dominated by new security threats, such as cyber and information warfare, strife for economic security – including access to minerals critical to the green energy transition – as well as planetary challenges. While much security policy in the past two decades has centred around human security and development, current trends focus on how to respond to technologically advanced threats at state level.


The shift from bottom-up to top-down approaches overlooks the interconnectedness between the two. Top-down security policy often identifies societal resilience as key to withstanding new threats yet does not engage with the question of how humans respond as individuals or collectively to these threats.


While research in the field of conflict resolution has engaged with new technologies as a potential solution to new security threats this has been on a practical and instrumental level. Deeper questions about whether technology as a mediating factor enhances or diminishes human capacity for conflict management and resolution, and what ethical parameters should be in place as a result, remain understudied. This project combines disciplinary insights from philosophy, political science and computer science to place the human at the centre of theorising techno-security futures.

Research Questions:

  • How do humans respond collectively to existential threats, and what does that mean for the possibility of conflict management and resolution?
  • What is the effect of increased technological intervention on the capacity of society for managing and resolving conflict?

Objectives:

  • Theory building around how emerging threats disrupt the (often implicit) assumptions that underpin conflict resolution practice;

  • computational modelling and behavioural analytics such as simulations, (quasi)experiments, discourse networks or agent-based modelling to understand which kinds of solidarities, civic infrastructure or governance may form from or by undermined, through disruption to the current world security order;

  • defining ethical frameworks for human-machine interaction in conflict that extends beyond instrumentalist logics.