SJ Beard is an emerging research leader in the transdisciplinary field of Existential Risk Studies. Their work covers a wide range of topics, with a particular focus on the evaluation and mitigation of environmental breakdown as a contributor to global catastrophic and existential risk. They have published research into the ethics of human extinction and future generations; methods to study extreme, low probability, and unprecedented events; the history, present challenges, and possible future for Existential Risk Studies as a field, understanding and addressing the constraints that prevent decision makers taking action to keep us safe; and building existential hope in the possibility of safe, joyous, and inclusive futures for human beings on planet earth.
Much of their work focuses on understanding global systemic risks such as those relating to climate change and biosphere disintegration, which has been described by Vice as "bringing scientific precision to the doomsday scenario that wipes us off the planet." This draws on a comprehensive study of methods for assessing global catastrophic risk and includes considerations of injustice and public policy, as discussed on the Future of Life Podcast. Their first book with Julius Weitzdörfer, Double Deabt Disaster, assessed injustice as a barrier to recovery from mega-disasters. They have also edited two introductory volumes to the field of Existential Risk Studies, published with Open Book, and are currently working on a monograph on existential hope for Polity.
SJ is also a Borysiewicz Interdisciplinary Fellow, an advisor to the All Party Parliamentary Group for Future Generations, a BBC New Generation Thinker, and a member of the editorial board of the journal Futures. They have made radio programmes for the BBC, such as What do you do if you are a manically depressed robot? and I love my children but are they the biggest moral mistake I ever made?, and have also appeared on Radio and TV programmes, including Newsnight, Analysis, and the Naked Scientists.
Before joining CSER, SJ was a postdoctoral research fellow with the Future of Humanity Institute’s project ‘Population Ethics: theory and practice'. They have a PhD in Philosophy and an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy from the London School of Economics and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford. Alongside working on existential risk, they have published on population ethics and intergenerational justice and have a strong interest in big questions about the nature and future of morality.
SJ has extensive experience across politics and policy-making, including as a researcher in the UK parliament, think tanks, and NGOs and as a parliamentary candidate. They have taught moral and political philosophy at Cambridge, the LSE, and VU Amsterdam, supervise students through the Effective Thesis Project, and were formally a private tutor in economics.
Related research areas
View all research areasRelated resources
-
New Narratives in Global Catastrophic Risk - Part 1
Report by SJ Beard, Clarissa Rios Rojas, Xiaolei Zhang, Lorena Escudero
-
-
-
-
Exploring Futures for the Science of Global Risk
Paper by SJ Beard, Nathaniel Cooke, Sarah Dryhurst, Mike Cassidy, Goodwin Gibbins, Georgiana Gilgallon, Ben Holt, Ida Josefiina, Luke Kemp, Aaron Tang, Julius Weitzdörfer, Paul Ingram, Lalitha Sundaram, Rick Davies
-
A solution scan of societal options to reduce transmission and spread of respiratory viruses: SARS-CoV-2 as a case study
Peer-reviewed paper by William Sutherland, Nigel G. Taylor, David C. Aldridge, Philip Martin, Catherine Rhodes, Gorm Shackelford, SJ Beard, Haydn Belfield, Andrew J. Bladon, Cameron Brick, Alec P. Christie, Andrew P. Dobson, Harriet Downey, Amelia S.C. Hood, Fangyuan Hua, Alice C. Hughes, Rebecca M. Jarvis, Douglas MacFarlane, Silviu O. Petrovan
-
Scoping Potential Routes to UK Civil Unrest via the Food System: Results of a Structured Expert Elicitation
Paper by Aled Jones, Sarah Bridle, Katherine Denby, Riaz Bhunnoo, Daniel Morton, Lucy Stanbrough, Barnaby Coupe, Vanessa Pilley, Tim Benton, Pete Falloon, Tom K. Matthews, Saher Hasnain, John S. Heslop-Harrison, SJ Beard, Julie Pierce, Jules Pretty, Monika Zurek, Alexandra Johnstone, Pete Smith, Neil Gunn, Molly Watson, Edward Pope, Asaf Tzachor, Caitlin Douglas, Christian Reynolds, Neil Ward, Jez Fredenburgh, Clare Pettinger, Tom Quested, Juan Pablo Cordero, Clive Mitchell, Carrie Bewick, Cameron Brown, Christopher Brown, Paul J. Burgess, Andy Challinor, Andrew Cottrell, Thomas Crocker, Thomas George, Charles J. Godfray, Rosie S. Hails, John Ingram, Tim Lang, Fergus Lyon, Simon Lusher, Tom MacMillan, Sue Newton, Simon Pearson, Sue Pritchard, Dale Sanders, Angelina Sanderson Bellamy, Megan Steven, Alastair Trickett, Andrew Voysey, Christine Watson, Darren Whitby, Kerry Whiteside
-
-
-
-
Special Section: Population and Ethics in The Journal of Development Studies
Paper by SJ Beard, Partha Dasgupta, Natalie Jones, Diana Coole, Elizabeth Cripps, Martin Kolk, Mark Budolfson, Dean Spears
-
-
-
Public Mental Health and COVID-19: a compassion based approach to recovery and resilience
Report by SJ Beard, Kate Brierton, Paul Gilbert, Felicia Huppert
-
-
Informing management of lockdowns and a phased return to normality: a Solution Scan of non-pharmaceutical options to reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission
Report by William Sutherland, David C. Aldridge, Philip Martin, Catherine Rhodes, Gorm Shackelford, SJ Beard, Andrew J. Bladon, Cameron Brick, Mark Burgman, Alec P. Christie, Lynn V. Dicks, Andrew P. Dobson, Harriet Downey, Fangyuan Hua, Amelia S.C. Hood, Alice C. Hughes, Rebecca M. Jarvis, Douglas MacFarlane, Anne-Christine Mupepele, William H. Morgan, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, Stefan J. Marciniak, Cassidy Nelson, Clarissa Rios Rojas, Katherine A. Sainsbury, Rebecca K. Smith, Lalitha Sundaram, Hannah Tankard, Nigel G. Taylor, Ann Thornton, John Watkins, Thomas B. White, Kate Willott, Silviu O. Petrovan, Haydn Belfield
-
-
-
-
Existential Risk Assessment: A reply to Baum
Peer-reviewed paper by SJ Beard, Thomas Rowe, James Fox
-
-
Accumulating evidence using crowdsourcing and machine learning: a living bibliography about existential risk and global catastrophic risk
Peer-reviewed paper by Gorm Shackelford, Luke Kemp, Catherine Rhodes, Lalitha Sundaram, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, SJ Beard, Haydn Belfield, Julius Weitzdörfer, Shahar Avin, Dag Sørebø, Elliot M. Jones, John B. Hume, David Price, David Pyle, Daniel Hurt, Theodore Stone, Harry Watkins, Lydia Collas, William Sutherland
-
-
-
-
The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation
Peer-reviewed paper by Miles Brundage, Shahar Avin, Jack Clark, Helen Toner, Peter Eckersley, Ben Garfinkel, Allan Dafoe, Paul Scharre, Thomas Zeitzoff, Bobby Filar, Hyrum Anderson, Heather Roff, Gregory C. Allen, Jacob Steinhardt, Carrick Flynn, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, SJ Beard, Haydn Belfield, Sebastian Farquhar, Clare Lyle, Rebecca Crootof, Owain Evans, Michael Page, Joanna Bryson, Roman Yampolskiy, Dario Amodei