Bush House sits at the corner of Aldwych and the Strand. For most of the twentieth century it was the headquarters of the BBC World Service, broadcasting the news around the world. King’s College London teaches inside those walls now, and that’s where the two of us met.

A year has passed since. Giorgi lives in Tbilisi, rooted in Georgian civil society and social justice work. Ethan’s path took him through Nairobi’s social justice scene before returning to Spain.

What we learned outside of class: on the field and on the road is not separate from the theory books we read for our Conflict, Security and Development Masters in Bush House. Where we would all meet after class, rain or shine, smoke a cigarette (mostly Ethan, admittedly) and discuss the lecture. That’s how we came up with ‘Strand of Thought’.  A lot of our peers from that program have gone on to do incredibly interesting work. Most of us circling the same questions, trying to make sense of a world that keeps moving the goalposts.

Strand of Thought is a humanist publication, built on our experience and yours. We want to talk about the world the way we talk about it with friends: in a pub, outside a lecture theatre, cigarette in hand. Experience covers ground that theory can’t reach on its own, and the two are better read together than apart. That means skipping the news format (of which there’s already plenty, more than anyone’s sanity can handle). While we do not wish to discard academia entirely, we do aim to strip it of its usual distance. We are looking for an empathetic reading of conflict, security and development, built as much on genuine human interaction as it may be on books and articles.