Cursed by inequality: The history and future of societal collapse
Lecture Theatre 4.04, Bush House, Central London (and livestreamed online)
18.15 to 19.30, Monday 20 October 2025
The Fairness Foundation and the Future Threats Lab at King’s College London are pleased to host Dr Luke Kemp for this discussion of his provocative new book, Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse. In this riveting history of humanity, Kemp reveals the pivotal role of inequality in provoking societal collapse, and considers the implications for our own increasingly unequal societies.
For the first 300,000 years of human history, hunter-gathering Homo sapiens lived in fluid, egalitarian civilizations that thwarted any individual or group from ruling permanently. Then, around 12,000 years ago, that began to change. As we congregated in the first cities, began to rely on lootable resources and developed more powerful weapons, small groups began to seize control of valuable commodities. This inequality in resources soon tipped over into inequality in power, and we started to adopt more hierarchical forms of organisation. Goliath-like states and empires – with vast bureaucracies and militaries – carved up and dominated the globe.
Now we live in a single global Goliath. Growth obsessed, extractive institutions like the fossil fuel industry, big tech and military-industrial complexes rule our world and produce new ways of annihilating our species, from climate change to nuclear war. Our systems are now so fast, complex and interconnected that a future collapse will likely be global, swift and irreversible. All of us now face a choice: we must learn to democratically control Goliath, or the next collapse may be our last.
What lessons can we learn from this radical retelling of history for our current, fragile political moment, in the UK and beyond? Join us for a thought-provoking (and hopefully not entirely pessimistic) conversation about the risks posed by inequality in Britain today to our society, democracy, economy and environment and what we can do about them to avert disaster.
Luke will be joined by Dr Danny Sriskandarajah, CEO of the New Economics Foundation, in a conversation hosted by Dr Jeni Mitchell, Director of the KCL Future Threats Lab, and Will Snell, CEO of the Fairness Foundation.
This is the third of an ongoing series of events hosted by the Inequality Knocks Project, a collaboration between the Future Threats Lab, King’s Policy Institute and the Fairness Foundation.
Schedule
18:15 – Welcome and introductions (Jeni Mitchell)
18:25 – Goliath’s Curse (Luke Kemp)
18:45 – Discussion with Danny Sriskandarajah (Will Snell)
19:05 – Audience Q&A
19:30 – Event ends
Speakers
Dr Luke Kemp is a Research Affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at the University of Cambridge. He has advised and led foresight studies for multiple international organisations, including the WHO and Convention on Biological Diversity. His work has been covered by media outlets such as the BBC, the New York Times, and the New Yorker. Luke holds a PhD and Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies (First Class Honours) with the Australian National University. He is the author of the bestselling book Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse.
Dr Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah has been Chief Executive of NEF since January 2024. His previous roles include CEO of Oxfam GB, Secretary General of CIVICUS, Director of the Royal Commonwealth Society, Interim Director of the Commonwealth Foundation and various posts at the Institute for Public Policy Research. He is a Trustee of the Guy’s & St Thomas’ Foundation, a member of the UN’s High Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs, and a member of Quadrature Climate Foundation’s Advisory Board. Danny holds a Masters and Doctorate from Oxford University, and an undergraduate degree from the University of Sydney, and is the author of Power to the People (Headline Press, 2024).
Dr Jeni Mitchell is a lecturer in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, specialising in future war studies, space studies and the evolution of rebellion. She is founder and co-director of the Future Threats Lab, a King’s research group that takes a human-centric approach to the most dire threats facing humanity and its habitats. She is also an associate of the Freeman Air and Space Institute and the King’s Wargaming Network. Jeni’s current research focuses on future threat perceptions, futures research methods, and the evolution of the ‘apocalyptic imaginary’. Her most recent publication is ‘War in Ukraine and the Apocalyptic Imaginary’ in Beyond Ukraine: Debating the Future of War (Hurst, 2024). Jeni holds an MA and PhD from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.
Will Snell is Chief Executive of the Fairness Foundation. After working in the civil service and for a range of non-profits in the international development sector, he set up Tax Justice UK in 2017 and then launched the Fairness Foundation in collaboration with Julian Richer in 2021, becoming its founding Chief Executive. At the Fairness Foundation, Will leads a small team, and works with a broad range of partners and experts, to persuade politicians to treat inequality in the UK as a policy priority, making the moral, political and policy arguments for action to tackle inequality in all its forms. Will was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in October 2023.