Elke Schwarz

Elke Schwarz is a Professor of Political Theory at Queen Mary University of London, School of Politics and International Relations. Prior to this role, she held academic positions at UCL, Anglia Ruskin University, and Leicester University. Her work focuses on the intersection of ethics, technology, and warfare, particularly in the context of military artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous weapon systems, drones, and robots.

Elke holds a BBA from Belmont University (USA), an MA in Conflict Studies from King’s College London, and a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She is the author of Death Machines: The Ethics of Violent Technologies and has published widely on topics such as algorithmic ethics for lethal autonomous weapons systems and the ethics of military AI.

Her research interests include ethics, military AI, autonomous weapon systems, digital technologies, apocalyptic studies, war studies, critical security studies, political theory, philosophy of technology, and posthumanism. She has received notable fellowships, including the 2024 Leverhulme Research Fellowship, the 2022/23 CAPAS Fellowship, and the RSA Fellowship. She also secured a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant (2017–2019) for research on military ethical values in autonomous weapons systems.

Elke is actively involved in public engagement, serving as Vice-Chair of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC), an Associate of the Imperial War Museum (IWM), and collaborating with organizations like Drone Wars UK, Stop Killer Robots, and the Alan Turing Institute. Her work bridges academia, policy, and civil society to address ethical and security challenges posed by emerging technologies.