Areas of Expertise
- Drones and autonomous weapon systems
- AI in security and defence
- Ethics of military technologies
- Political philosophy
- Defence technology industry
Short Bio
Elke Schwarz is British Academy Global Innovation Fellow in DGAP’s Center for Security and Defense. Her work focuses on the nexus of ethics, technology, and politics/warfare with a specific emphasis on new and emerging military technologies. These include military artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous weapon systems, drones, and robots. She is the author of Death Machines: The Ethics of Violent Technologies (Manchester University Press). Her work on military AI and autonomous weapon systems has appeared in a wide range of international publications.
Schwarz is also professor of political theory at Queen Mary University, London; vice-chair of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC); an associate with the Imperial War Museum (IWM); and a Royal Society of Arts Fellow. She was also a 2022/23 fellow at the Center for Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS) and 2024 Leverhulme research fellow with a project on the politics of apocalyptic AI.
Schwarz serves on a number of editorial boards for publications and book series on politics and technology. She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), an MA in conflict studies from the War Studies Department at King’s College London (KCL), and a bachelor in business studies from Belmont University (USA).
Languages
English, German
[Last updated: October 2026]
