Nuclear Futures Fellows
Get to know the first cohort of the Nuclear Futures Fellows:
The first fruits of our partnership with Horizon 2045 is a fellowship program that builds upon our practice of collaboration and bold action-taking together: the Nuclear Futures Fellowship. Through the Nuclear Futures Fellowship, Horizon 2045 will support an important piece of Ploughshares’ new nuclear field building efforts, co-creating programs and experiences designed to instill long-term thinking, systems thinking, and cross issue awareness and collaboration as foundational field-wide capacities.
The Nuclear Futures Fellowship is designed for emerging and established leaders in the nuclear field who want to develop new and practical skills and qualifications to meet the needs of a dramatically changing global and political landscape. This fellowship will focus on navigating the field through today’s challenges while simultaneously exploring future opportunities to mitigate nuclear threats. Using Horizon 2045 tools, and frameworks such as strategic foresight, fellows will investigate levers of change in the nuclear field and use strategic scenarios to explore alternative futures of a world free of the nuclear threat.
2024 Nuclear Futures Fellows
Diya Ashtakala
Research Associate
Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Diya Ashtakala
Research Associate
Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Diya is a research associate with the Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). She was previously a research intern with PONI. Prior to joining CSIS, she worked as a graduate assistant at Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. Her research focuses on nuclear deterrence in South Asia, arms control, and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. She holds a MA in international affairs with a specialization in security studies from the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and a BA from St. Joseph’s College, India.
Tom Brookes
Programme Advisor
Nuclear Weapons for The Elders
Tom Brookes
Programme Advisor
Nuclear Weapons for The Elders
Tom works as a Programme Advisor on Nuclear Weapons for The Elders, a group, founded by Nelson Mandela, of independent global leaders who work together for peace, justice and human rights. In this role, he leads The Elders’ work on developing the organization’s strategic approach to nuclear issues and advising the group on their policy on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. He has previously worked on multilateralism and UN reform issues within The Elders’ Secretariat, particularly focused on UN Security Council engagement and on reform of the UN’s peace and security architecture. He has additional experience on peace and conflict issues prior to working for The Elders, including through working for the conflict mediation organization Inter Mediate, and having worked as a Production Assistant on the Oscar-nominated documentary film the Act of Killing which focused on the legacy of the 1965 mass killings in Indonesia. He has a MA in History from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University.
Julia Cournoyer
Research Analyst
International Security programme at Chatham House
Julia Cournoyer
Research Analyst
International Security programme at Chatham House
Julia is a research analyst in the International Security programme at Chatham House. Her research primarily covers projects related to nuclear weapons policy, emerging technology, and outer space security. Julia formerly interned at NATO, and previously worked as an international strategy consultant for ONHYS, a French technology company developing COVID-19 virus simulation software. Julia holds an MA in International Security from the Paris School of International Affairs (Sciences Po), and a BSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Jackson du Pont
Research Fellow
Janne E. Nolan Center on Strategic Weapons at the Council of Strategic Risks (CSR)
Jackson du Pont
Research Fellow
Janne E. Nolan Center on Strategic Weapons at the Council of Strategic Risks (CSR)
Jackson serves as a Research Fellow for the Janne E. Nolan Center on Strategic Weapons at the Council of Strategic Risks (CSR) where he addresses issues related to biological and nuclear risk reduction. Committed to addressing global challenges through new approaches to diplomacy, his work at CSR combines technical understandings of nuclear weapon systems and a qualitative rethink of arms control to identify pathways towards removing the most dangerous and destabilizing types of nuclear weapons in the near-term. Prior to CSR, he was a 2021-2022 Fellow for the John Kerry Initiative at Yale University where he contributed to research projects for Secretary Kerry. He graduated from Yale College with a degree in Global Affairs. Previously, Jackson worked at the Brookings Institute and their Center for Middle Eastern Policy, researching democratic promotion and disinformation campaigns. He also researched Iranian-American relations with the National Security Archive on their Iran Documentation Project. He hopes to use the experiences gained through the Nuclear Futures Fellowship to apply strategic foresight methodologies towards building a new generation of multilateral arms control—pushing ever closer to a world free from the threat of nuclear weapons.
Emma Claire Foley
Writer, Filmmaker
Emma Claire Foley
Writer, Filmmaker
Emma is a writer and filmmaker who has worked for nuclear disarmament campaigns for the past six years. Her commentary has been featured in Newsweek, NBC, the Guardian, and other international news outlets.
Nicole Grajewski
Fellow
Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Nicole Grajewski
Fellow
Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Nicole is a fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and an associate researcher with the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard Kennedy School of Government. A specialist on Russia and Iran, her research examines both countries’ policies in the global order with a particular focus on Russian nuclear strategy and Iran’s nuclear decision-making. Nicole is also the author of Russia and Iran: Partners in Defiance from Syria to Ukraine (Hurst, forthcoming September 2024). She received her PhD and MPhil from the University of Oxford.
Declan Penrose
Policy Fellow
BASIC, Inclusive International Security Programme: Emerging Voices Network (EVN)
Declan Penrose
Policy Fellow
BASIC, Inclusive International Security Programme: Emerging Voices Network (EVN)
Declan is a Policy Fellow at BASIC working on the Inclusive International Security Programme where he helps run the Emerging Voices Network (EVN). He is also a PhD student at the University of Manchester where his thesis investigates the role of affect in nuclear disarmament discourse. He is also a passionate futures thinking advocate, with training from the School of International Futures last year and has begun to introduce EVN members to futures methodologies and Horizon 2045’s work. He is from the UK and went to Aberystwyth University where he studied Human Geography and International Politics (BA) and International Politics (MA). During the MA is when he first began to focus on nuclear weapons. He then went to the University of Chester to complete an MRes in Gender Studies where my dissertation looked at feminist contributions to the nuclear disarmament movement. Nuclear disarmament, gender, affect and
emotions, and activism are his primary research interests.He has also taken part in nuclear
disbarment advocacy. He was the Youth for TPNW Online Coordinator in 2022 for the TPNW Youth
MSP. He is a member of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and contributes to Youth and Student
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Sophia Poteet
Program Coordinator and Research Associate
James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Sophia Poteet
Program Coordinator and Research Associate
James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Sophia is a Program Coordinator and Research Associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, where her work focuses on issues of gender and nonproliferation and disarmament, nonproliferation-related sanctions, proliferation finance, and emerging technology controls. She co-leads the Young Women in Nonproliferation Initiative at CNS and is a Gender Champions in Nuclear Policy focal point. Outside of CNS, Sophia is a member of the 2024 cohort of Nuclear Scholars with the Project on Nuclear Issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She is passionate about working to foster a more diverse, inclusive, and transformative arms control and nonproliferation field, and is an advisory board member for the Emerging Voices Network at BASIC (the British American Security Information Council). Previously, Sophia has worked with the Small Arms Survey and the Nuclear Sites Project at the Global Decolonization Initiative. She holds a BA in International Relations from Boston University, where her thesis on gendered discourse in multilateral nuclear weapons treaty negotiations received the Sassano award for writing excellence in the social sciences. Her work has also appeared in Inkstick Media.
Alicia Sanders-Zakre
Policy and Research Coordinator
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Alicia Sanders-Zakre
Policy and Research Coordinator
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Alicia is the Policy and Research Coordinator at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. She directs the campaign’s research and policy development, including on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the humanitarian impact of nuclear
weapons.
Previously, she was a research assistant at the Arms Control Association and at the Brookings Institution. She has published hundreds of articles, editorials and reports on nuclear weapons, including in Arms Control Today, the Baltimore Sun, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Guardian, the National Interest, and War on the Rocks, The International Review of the Red Cross, Global Policy and The Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament. She has also provided expert analysis for several newspapers, radio and TV programs, including Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, the Boston Globe, Democracy Now!, Deutsche Welle (DW), Newsweek and Reuters and regularly speaks on expert panels at universities and other international conferences. Alicia holds a B.A. in International Security from Tufts University, a M.A.S in the International Law of Armed Conflict from the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, as well as a certificate of completion in International Nuclear Safeguards Policy from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.
Sina Toossi
Senior Non-Resident Fellow
Center for International Policy
Sina Toossi
Senior Non-Resident Fellow
Center for International Policy
Sina is a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy. He specializes in U.S.-Iran relations, Middle East foreign policy, and nuclear issues. His work experience includes extensive advocacy efforts to make diplomacy and human rights central to U.S. foreign policy, including co-leading campaigns for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and highlighting the humanitarian costs of U.S. sanctions. Previously, he was a senior research analyst at the National Iranian American Council, focusing on U.S. policy impacts in Iran, the Iranian government’s human rights abuses, and peacefully resolving U.S.-Iran disputes. Before that, he was a senior research specialist at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, where he researched the Iran nuclear deal, a Middle East nuclear weapons-free zone, and Gulf Cooperation Council relations. Sina’s writings have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and USA Today, among other outlets. He has been featured or quoted by BBC World News, CNN, the Guardian, Vox, AP, and more. In 2024, he received the Middle East Policy Council’s 40 Under 40 Award. He holds a Master’s in International Relations from American University and a Bachelor’s in Economics and Political Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.