Technological competition and international leadership
Debates about global power shifts often focus on military strength or alliance politics, yet these approaches struggle to explain contemporary change. This project analyses how leadership in emerging technological revolutions provides advantages that extend beyond economic growth and serves as a source of structural power. It examines how mastery of key technology clusters enables states to shape and control infrastructures, standards, and institutions, and shape the frontiers of international order.
Research outputs
- Curtis, Simon; Kitchen, Nicholas; Vasileiadis, Panos (forthcoming) Tomorrow’s World: Technological Mastery, Infrastructures of Diffusion and Hegemonic Change
Project Director
Dr Simon Curtis
Associate Professor in International Relations
Biography
Simon is Associate Professor in International Relations, and a Principal Fellow at the People Centred Institute for AI at the University of Surrey.
His books include Global Cities and Global Order (Oxford University Press), which was awarded the 2018 Hedley Bull Prize by the European Consortium for Political Research, and The Belt and Road City (Yale University Press, 2024).
His current research examines how technological infrastructures, cities, and urbanisation shape international order and great power competition. His work bridges international relations theory, political economy, science and technology studies, and urban studies.
Current work focuses on geopolitical competition between the United States and China over AI, clean energy, and the infrastructures of technological diffusion. It explores how states compete not only through technological innovation, but through building the infrastructures that enable those technologies to spread across societies and international systems. He is open to proposals from new doctoral candidates.
He is a WISC Global Fellow at the Development Research Institute at New York University. He was previously a Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics.
His research appears in peer reviewed journals, including: Review of International Studies; Millennium: Journal of International Relations; Global Studies Quarterly; International Relations; Cambridge Review of International Affairs; Global Society; New Global Studies; RUSI Journal. He writes for general audiences in outlets such as Foreign Affairs; Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Conversation; Diplomatic Courier; La Vanguardia; The Word Economic Forum; The Global Parliament of Mayors.
Project Experts
Dr Nicholas Kitchen
Associate Professor in International Relations; Executive Director, Centre for the Study of Global Power Competition (CGPC)
Biography
I joined Surrey in 2018 from the London School of Economics, where I had been Assistant Professorial Research Fellow and Head of Analysis at LSE IDEAS. I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Visiting Fellow at LSE IDEAS, and Treasurer of the US Foreign Policy Working Group of the British International Studies Association.