Leverhulme Centre for Research on Slavery in War

Description

The Leverhulme Centre for Research on Slavery in War is the world’s first major initiative to address this gap, bringing together leading researchers and practitioners to build a new field, transform global understanding, and drive real-world change. We will bring new conceptual and analytical approaches to a 5,000-year-old problem so we can transform its future.

Why Now? Why this Centre?

• A Global Challenge: Slavery in war remains rampant and poorly understood. With more active conflicts in the world than at any time since the Second World War, the ILO estimates that slavery is increasing globally in part as a result of conflict. From forced labour and child soldiers to sexual exploitation and trafficking, the practices and impacts of slavery in conflict zones are vast and complex.
• A Transformative Mission: The Centre will be the first to systematically investigate the slavery-war nexus across history and into the future, with interdisciplinary methods and sources that span the social sciences, humanities, and data sciences — including novel forecasting techniques, survivor narratives, and Earth Observation data analysis.
• A Step-Change in Response: By reshaping and creating innovative tools and early warning systems, the Centre aims to support the global goal of eliminating forced labour, modern slavery, and human trafficking. Our future-oriented methodologies aim to transform early warning of slavery practices within shifting conflict dynamics, while close engagement with local communities will ensure human-centric and survivor-informed response strategies.

Currently active

Yes

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

Founding year

2025

Contact details

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Categorisation

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University affiliation(s)

King's College London (KCL)
London

Partner Infrastructures

Rights Lab

The Rights Lab is the world’s largest group of modern slavery researchers, and home to many leading modern slavery experts. Through their five research programmes, they delivers new and cutting-edge… read more about Rights Lab

Nottingham

Partner Universities

University of Nottingham