The speaker for this year's Vincent Briscoe Security lecture has been announced.

The Institute for Security Science and Technology (ISST) has announced that Ambassador Yvette Stevens, Former Permanent Representative of Sierra Leone to the United Nations (UN) in Geneva, will deliver the annual Vincent Briscoe Security lecture.

Ambassador Stevens will give this year’s lecture, titled ‘National security and resilience in the 21st century – the role of science and technology’, at Imperial College London on 7 November 2024.

Ambassador Stevens’ lecture will look at security in the broader sense – beyond the military context – considering how science and technology innovations can impact human security, including our energy, cyber and environmental security.

An engineer by training, Ambassador Yvette Stevens’ UN career spanned 1980 to 2008. Her experience includes working at the International Labour Organisation, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), Department of Economic and Social Affairs and UN Office of the Special Adviser on Africa in New York. More recently, Ambassador Stevens has worked for the Sierra Leone Government and is currently an Executive in Residence at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.

Ambassador Stevens is also an Imperial alumna (MSc Electrical Engineering 1973).

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About the Vincent Briscoe Security lecture

The annual Vincent Briscoe Security lecture is given by an expert in security and resilience to an audience at Imperial College London.

The Briscoe lectures explore the current security landscape and consider security challenges likely to affect society in the future. The series aims to bring together the public and those interested in security and resilience, inviting open discussions around how to better prepare against the vast range of security issues society could encounter. These include – but are not limited to – cybersecurity, military and conflict, the built and natural environmental, political security and global health threats.

The lectures highlight the impact of security and the importance of resilience to wider society, calling for cross-disciplinary action to ensure all-around preparedness.

The Briscoe lecture is hosted by Imperial’s Institute for Security Science and Technology (ISST). The ISST’s mission is to challenge the perception that security is about war and conflict. The ISST demonstrates the breadth and depth of security and resilience, both of which touch everyone in society, wherever they are in the world.

The first Vincent Briscoe Security lecture was delivered in 2010. Previous Briscoe lectures have been delivered by: Ambassador Mircea Geoană, NATO Deputy Secretary General; Jeremy Fleming, former Director of GCHQ; Cressida Dick, former Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police Service; Michael Chertoff, former US Secretary of Homeland Security to President George W Bush.