King's College London

Nearly 90% of recent armed conflicts have involved some form of slavery. In a world facing proliferating conflicts, the new Leverhulme Centre for Research on Slavery in War will look at how slavery has manifested in war throughout history, and how it can be forecasted and tackled in the future.

In the process, the centre hopes to shape a new interdisciplinary field of study and a step-change towards the global goal of eliminating forced labour, modern slavery, and human trafficking.

The centre will operate as a dual-site institution led by King’s College London’s School of Security Studies, the world’s largest academic community dedicated to the study of war and security, and the University of Nottingham’s Rights Lab, the global leader in modern slavery research.

Its funding was announced today by the Leverhulme Trust Board as one of three winners of its 2025 Leverhulme Research Centre competition. Each centre will be funded over ten years to support fundamental cross-disciplinary research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

Directed by Dr Maeve Ryan of King’s College London, the centre will be the first overarching and integrative attempt to understand the links between slavery and war as they have evolved historically and up to the present.

Professor Zoe Trodd, Director of the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham, said: “The relationships between modern slavery and war are poorly understood, creating gaps in understanding that mean governments, international institutions, and humanitarian actors are ill-prepared to prevent or respond to slavery in war and its deep, long-lasting impacts. One of the centre’s aims is to transform early warning of slavery practices within shifting conflict dynamics—bringing new analytical approaches to a 5,000-year-old problem so that we can transform its future.”

Since 2015, the Leverhulme Trust grant competition has aimed to encourage original research which would establish or reshape a significant field of study and transform understanding of an important topic in contemporary society.

The Leverhulme Trust said the quality of the bids received for the award this year was phenomenally high, and selecting the three winners was incredibly challenging. The other 2025 Leverhulme Research Centres are the Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life, based at Durham University, and the Leverhulme Centre for Humanity and Space, led by the University of Leicester.

Professor Anna Vignoles, Director of the Leverhulme Trust, said: “Over the last decade, the Trust has invested £100 million to set up ten UK-based Leverhulme Research Centres. These centres are bold and interdisciplinary; they embrace novel approaches and have reshaped and established new fields.

“In our centenary year, the Trust Board is proud to fund three new centres in the humanities and social sciences that seek to transform our understanding by addressing vital issues, such as how slavery in war can be forecasted and tackled.”