Andro Mathewson

I am a PhD candidate in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, where my research examines the strategic impact of emerging military technology — in particular, the diffusion and use of unmanned systems in contemporary armed conflict. My work spans scholarly writing and applied open-source research, and pays close attention to the war in Ukraine as the most consequential testing ground for these systems to date.

Alongside the doctorate, I build public datasets and digital tools that turn open sources into something useful for analysts, journalists, and fellow researchers. The most visible of these is the Unmanned Systems Tracker, an open database of unmanned systems observed in current conflicts.

My doctoral research is supported by the Scottish International Education Trust, and I am a Junior Associate Fellow at the NATO Defense College. I have written for outlets including the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Modern War Institute at West Point, the National Interest, and Bellingcat, where I was a 2024 Tech Fellow. Before King's I read International Relations at the University of Edinburgh and Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.