Global catastrophic risks (GCRs) present acute governance challenges. Climate tipping points, pandemics, AI, nuclear escalation, and biodiversity collapse are transboundary, characterised by cascading impacts and deep uncertainty, and demand exceptionally high levels of international coordination and anticipatory governance. Such cooperation is increasingly difficult to sustain as multilateralism weakens, great-power competition intensifies, and new actors reshape authority in global governance.

This project develops an interdisciplinary research agenda for governing GCRs under conditions of systemic international transition. It convenes a small group of researchers at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), University of Cambridge, to advance theoretical and empirical approaches to cooperation, legitimacy, and coordination during what can be understood as a global interregnum — a period marked by institutional inertia, contested authority, and heightened uncertainty. Building on an international workshop held in Cambridge in May 2026 and an associated forthcoming peer-reviewed special issue on catastrophic risk and global political change, the project will establish an epistemic network of scholars and practitioners — the After Sendai Risk Network (ASRN) — over a twelve-month period.

The intellectual core is an agenda-setting scholarly article synthesising insights from the Cambridge workshop and articulating a new conceptual framework for analysing catastrophic risk governance under conditions of systemic international transition. This article, alongside the special issue, will establish the analytical foundations of the emerging network.

Two in-person meetings will support network development: a research meeting in Cambridge focused on collaborative writing and consolidation, and a hybrid side event alongside the UNDRR Regional Platform in Romania in early 2027. The side event will bring together project partners, invited scholars, and policy stakeholders, and will serve as ASRN's formal launch. The project will also prepare a COST Action (EU) proposal to lay institutional foundations for longer-term collaboration.