Inaugural Lecture Series 2026 - 27: Professors Eleanor Knox and James Millen

Inaugural Lectures are given by our Professors to celebrate and present their outstanding achievements in research, education, innovation and impact. Together they showcase the richness, range and academic excellence of King's College London. In this special event, we will be celebrating across Faculties in a joint A&H and NMES inaugural. 

Thinking outside the container: spacetime philosophy for a new physics
Professor Eleanor Knox

The idea of space as the stage on which physical events play out dates at least as far back as the 5^th century BC. The twentieth century saw a shift from theorising about space and time separately to thinking about spacetime, but the metaphor of spacetime as a stage or arena has continued. Twenty-first century physics looks likely to render this untenable – theories of quantum gravity do not appear to postulate spacetime as a fundamental container for physical contents. This talk examines an alternative way of thinking about spacetime based on the role that it plays in our physical theories – spacetime philosophy should focus on what spacetime does, rather than what it is.

Eleanor Knox is a philosopher of physics. Much of her research focuses on the foundations of spacetime physics, and she is a leading proponent of Spacetime Functionalism—a view that addresses foundational issues in classical spacetime theories and navigates the challenges of emergent spacetime structure in quantum gravity. Her work also analyses the relation between physics theories and offers an account of what it is for higher-level structures to emerge from those at more fundamental levels.

Eleanor has been part of the philosophy department at King’s since 2011, initially as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and then as a Lecturer from 2014. Before coming to King’s she earned her BA, BPhil, and DPhil from Oxford University and held a Chandaria Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institute of Philosophy. She was the Senior Visiting Fellow at Pittsburgh’s Center for the Philosophy of Science and is a recipient of the Cushing Memorial Prize for History and Philosophy of Physics.

Big Quantum: the crazy mission to explore quantum mechanics at the nanoscale 
Professor James Millen

Do you believe in quantum physics? To the best of our knowledge, it describes everything in nature, yet the popular conception is that quantum effects only manifest at the tiniest scales. The predictions of quantum mechanics often feel unintuitive, could they possibly hold at the human level? In recent years an exciting new research community has formed trying to address this question in the lab, by levitating microscopic objects in vaccum. These experiments hope to uncover quantum behaviour at the scale of nanotechnology and biology, and to answer questions about the quantum nature of gravity in the lab. I will present the history of this field, my part in it, and where it is headed.

James was appointed Lecturer in Advanced Photonics at King’s College London in 2018, where he has built a research team exploring how physics changes at the nanoscale. His particular areas of expertise are quantum science and technologies, and microscopic thermodynamics. He was Chair of the EPSRC International Quantum Technologies Network LeviNet between 2022-2025. His lab also develops useful technologies in partnership with industry. James is the founding Director of King’s Quantum, a research centre dedicated to applying quantum science to real-world applications.

Before joining King’s, James was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the University of Vienna, in the group of Professor Markus Arndt. During this time he was awarded the Institute of Physics David Bates Prize for his pioneering contributions to theoretical and experimental quantum optomechanics. He worked at University College London from 2011-2015 with Professor Peter Barker.

James completed his PhD at Durham University under the supervision of Professor Matthew P A Jones, where he built the first ultra-cold gas of alkali earth atoms in the UK. During this time, he developed a love for public engagement. He is Lecturer in Quantum Theory to the Public at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and was academic lead for Quantum Untangled at the Science Gallery London, which attracted 60,000 members of the public.