Dr. Thomas Cheney

Thomas Cheney is Lecturer in Space Governance within AstrobiologyOU, at the Open University. He is active in researching space law, policy and governance. His research focuses on planetary protection and taking an environmental approach, grounded in legal geography and environmental humanities, to space governance. He also researches space resources and property rights, the use of outer space, and arms control in outer space.

Thomas won Kings College London’s Centre for Science and Security Studies’ Arms Control Idol 2020. Thomas is also Executive Director of the Centre for a Spacefaring Civilization. Previously he was a co-lead of the Space Generation Advisory Council’s Space Law and Policy Project Group and has, among other things, represented SGAC at the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. He was also a member of the Hague International Space Resources Governance Working Group and participated in the development of Building Blocks for the Development of an International Framework on Space Resource Activities. 

He has a PhD in space law from Northumbria University, where his research focused on space resources and the associated issues of the relationship between property rights and sovereignty.