The Centre for Social Justice Research (CSJR) collaboration with Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) has provided undergraduate and Masters students with an opportunity to learn from the anti-militarism work of the charity and to support its vital investigative research and advocacy role. Founded in 1974, CAAT has a long and proud history of resisting the arms trade, including through parliamentary work, research and awareness raising, and mobilising campaigns and protests across the UK. They have won awards for their work, taken legal action against the UK government, and been spied on by corporate spies.
The collaboration was organised as part of the CSJR work-based learning programme, which provides students with opportunities to develop research and employability skills by working with key organisations within the social justice and civil society sector.
Resisting the Arms Trade: Bolstering networks of anti-militarism organising
As part of the collaboration, students undertook a series of trips and workshops put on by a range of groups involved in anti-militarism organising and transnational solidarity. At the CAAT offices, students received presentations on the research work of the organisation, learning about how this shapes communications and campaigns. Students received a presentation on CAAT’s successful multi-year legal challenge against the UK government’s sale of arms to Saudia Arabia, which are fuelling the ongoing the war in Yemen.
Students also visited Housmans, a not-for-profit radical bookshop and once home to CAAT; Shadow World Investigations, an organisation that investigates the global arms trade and provides training to journalists, activists and students; and MayDay Rooms, an archive and resource for social movements, experimental and marginal cultures and their histories. Having learnt about the various social justice organisations resisting militarism, students undertook skills-based training on investigative research methods, engaging with a range of primary source material disclosed through legal challenges and freedom of information requests. Students then had an opportunity to deploy their research skills through an investigation into UK arms sales to Israel, highlighting the complicity of the British government in the genocide in Gaza.
This collaboration comes at an acute geopolitical moment, whereby students have been engaging in live debates and court hearings on the issue of UK arms exports to Israel. As part of a 2025 summer internship, Kulsuma Miah and Muazzuma Miah attended the High Court hearing of Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) and Al-Haq’s landmark challenge of the UK government’s continued supply of F-35 parts to Israel. This, alongside conducting media reviews and researching Hansard reports, speaks to the symbiotic quality of this collaboration, whereby students conduct helpful and necessary tasks whilst gaining a unique work-based learning opportunity. Reflecting on the internship, Muazzuma Miah spoke about the ‘mindblowing’ experience of ‘being in the room where decisions are being thought about and made’.
Unredacted: a UK national security archive
After completing the project with CAAT in 2024, students had the opportunity to apply for a paid internship with Unredacted, a research unit based at the University of Westminster that investigates and documents secretive UK state and corporate practices in the context of national security. Student interns received training in primary source identification and document indexing, undertaking a variety of research and administrative tasks designed to expand Unredacted’s national security archive.
The project with CAAT is one of a number of collaborations that have been established through the CSJR work-based learning programme, which is funded by the Quentin Hogg Trust. Ibtehal Hussain and Dr Jac St John would like to extend their thanks to Katie Fallon (Advocacy Manager, CAAT), Andrew Feinstein (Shadow World Investigations), Rosa Schling (On the Record), friends and comrades at May Day Rooms and Housmans, and Sophia Dias and Taylor Mills (student videographers).
CSJR x CAAT interns 2024: Adam Nixon, Amber Zattara*, Courtney McAree, Francesco Serra, Margarida Sincletica Moreira, Nur Erika Hatsuda*, Sharmeen Dar*, Yasmine Diwany, Yusuf Gerashi, Jasmin Messaoudi, and Huda Adaw.
CSJR x CAAT interns 2025: Peter Allstone-Reeve, Ziaur Chowdhury, Kulsuma Miah*, Muazzuma Miah*, Miruthulani Murali, Leslie Louie, Jade Sea, Cain Varley, James Walji, and Amelie Windsor-Williams.
*Recipients of the CSJR paid summer internship award.