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Fellows

Lyndon Burford

independant researcher, UK (CAT Program)
Theories of Change and Nuclear Disarmament
14 October 2024 - 18 October 2024
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Lyndon Burford is a nuclear weapons policy researcher and visual artist from Aotearoa-New Zealand, with a background in film theory and production. His work focuses on how the politics, psychology, and technologies of nuclear weapons systems intersect with broader societal power structures, existential threats, and harms caused by the testing and development of nuclear weapons.

He joins the Paris IAS in October 2024 for a group research stay as part of the CAT collaborative program, working with researchers Kjølv Egeland, Heba Taha, Tom Vaughan, and Jana Wattenberg.

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Research Interests

Nuclear disarmament, national identity, nuclear disarmament verification, societal verification, Web3 / blockchain

Theories of Change and Nuclear Disarmament
(Collaborative project, awarded a NetIAS Constructive Advanced Thinking grant, 2021-2024)

Theories of Change and Nuclear Disarmament (TCND) seeks to initiate interdisciplinary conversations between researchers on the question of nuclear disarmament and how it might be achieved. Scholarly conceptions of 'change' as a concept are relatively limited within the fields of international relations (IR) and security studies, with mainstream theories often reproducing an implicit methodological 'continuationism' which discounts the possibility of meaningful change of, or within, the international system. Nuclear weapons are therefore too often accepted as an inevitable presence in world politics. TCND engages researchers from diverse disciplines on the concept of 'change’ and asks whether accounts of change processes from outside of IR might allow us to think about nuclear disarmament in a new light. Questions include: how much must change—is nuclear disarmament possible only in the context of much wider, sweeping changes in world socio-economic order, or can it be achieved through smaller, targeted interventions? Would the advent of a more just and peaceful world guarantee nuclear disarmament, or would nuclear weapons somehow remain? How can lower-order social changes be leveraged to feed into this process? How can interdisciplinarity contribute to answering these questions?

Key Publications

Burford, Lyndon, “Decentralized Security: Using Blockchain and Environmental Monitoring Technologies to Help Eliminate Nuclear Threats and Harms,” Horizon 2045, April 2024, https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/o0pqgluou3tdkw0qk6fg5/Horizon-2045-Decentralized-Security.pdf?rlkey=k4kxn16hbmfyy5o6tsbk49fbt&dl=0.

Burford, Lyndon, The Trust Machine: Blockchain in Nuclear Disarmament and Arms Control Verification (London, UK: Centre for Science & Security Studies, King’s College London, October 2020), https://www.kcl.ac.uk/csss/assets/the-trust-machine-report.pdf.

Burford, Lyndon and Kate Dewes, “New Zealand and Disarmament: Where National and Global Interests Converge,” in Small States and the Changing Global Order: New Zealand Faces the Future, ed. Anne-Marie Brady (Springer, 2019).

32531
2024-2025