Sophia Goodfriend Named 2025 Harry Frank Guggenheim Research Fellow at Pembroke College Cambridge

June 23, 2025

(CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom) — Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge has appointed Dr. Sophia Goodfriend as its next Harry Frank Guggenheim Research Fellow. Goodfriend will take up her post in October 2025.

Goodfriend is a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative. Her research examines the impact of big data and machine learning on military conflict in the Middle East. Outside of academia, she is an independent researcher with civil society organizations in the region and a freelance journalist.

The Harry Frank Guggenheim Research Fellowship was established at Pembroke College in 2011. It is a three-year award supporting post-doctoral research that increases the understanding of the causes, manifestations, and control of violence in the present world. Priority is given to candidates who make a compelling case for the relevance of potential findings for policies intended to reduce these ills. Goodfriend will be the fourth holder of the fellowship, which is sponsored by The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.

“Sophia Goodfriend is an outstanding scholar, and she is doing sharply contemporary research work on how AI impacts military conflict in the Middle East,“ said Lord Smith of Finsbury, Master of Pembroke. “This is important and challenging work, and her inclusion in Pembroke’s fellowship will enhance our knowledge and the breadth of our understanding of the world around us and its geopolitical fault lines.”

“I am delighted to join Pembroke College as the Harry Frank Guggenheim Research Fellow,” Goodfriend said. “My research and writing examine the impact of AI on military conflict in the Middle East and beyond. This research fellowship will provide a valuable opportunity to finish my first academic manuscript, an ethnographic account of how algorithmic surveillance and weapons systems are upending what it means to wage and live with war in Israel and Palestine. I hope that this research will further The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation’s essential work to understand the causes and controls of contemporary violence. I am honored to have the support of the foundation and to join a robust community of students and scholars at Pembroke College.”

“At a time when the rapid development of AI is having a profound effect on so many areas of human society, Sophia Goodfriend’s research on its uses in military conflict is crucial to our understanding of its developing impact on war and the people affected by it,” said Daniel F. Wilhelm, president of The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. “We are pleased to be able to support such important scholarship through the Harry Frank Guggenheim Research Fellowship and our continued partnership with Pembroke College.”

About Pembroke College

Founded in 1347, Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Its mission is to bring together the brightest students from the broadest range of backgrounds; nurture outstanding research; provide the very best educational opportunities; and by doing so, help to make a difference to the world.

Today, Pembroke is home to 440 undergraduate students, 300 postgraduate students, seventy-five fellows, and 180 staff. It supports a wide range of academic activities, including public lectures, seminars, conferences, and visiting scholar schemes. The fifty-fourth and current Master is Lord Smith of Finsbury PC. He will be succeeded as Master by Professor Polly Blakesley on October 1, 2025.

About The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation

The Foundation was established in 1929 by Harry Frank Guggenheim (1890–1971). An alumnus of Pembroke College, Guggenheim was a business leader, diplomat, and newspaper publisher. He served in both world wars and later focused the work of the Foundation on problems of violence, believing that humanity had failed to match its progress in science, technology, medicine, and industry with similar improvements in human relations.

Following Guggenheim’s death, a bequest established the Foundation’s current program of research grants to support distinguished and emerging scholars investigating pressing issues of violence worldwide.

For more information, contact:
Nyeleti Honwana, Senior Program Officer
info@hfg.org | 646.428.0971