King’s Brexit thinktank to close after losing funding

An academic thinktank focused on the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with Europe is to close at the end of the year after it lost support from a major public research funder.

Anand Menon, the director of UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE), said in a statement that it was “time to bring down the curtain” after 12 years of operation. 

“UKICE will cease to operate at the end of this year. This is – for us at least – a sad occasion. However, we will soon be able to inform you of the exciting ways in which our work – blogs, reports, lunchtime seminars and more – will continue,” he added.

UKICE, which is based at the Policy Institute at King’s College London, was established in 2015 to provide analysis of the UK’s relationship with the European Union and later became a prominent source of commentary on Brexit and its aftermath.

The organisation was initially supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), which funded it for more than a decade, but that support came to an end in April 2025. Dozens of UK parliamentarians criticised ESRC’s decision to pull funding at the time, saying they relied on the organisation for key information. 

“Since that time, we have kept going courtesy of the generosity of King’s College London and donations from numerous other sources including the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, Amazon Web Services and the Spanish Government,” Menon said in his statement, while also thanking the ESRC for its past support. 

“I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished over the last decade and of the way we have assessed the Brexit process, the development of the United Kingdom since 2016 and the evolution of UK-EU relations,” he said. “UKICE has attempted to bridge the gap between social scientists and what some people call the ‘real world’.”

The thinktank has had a significant impact on debates about Brexit and the UK’s place in the world. To take one measure of impact, Menon appeared on the BBC’s Question Time debate show more times than any other academic between 2014 and 2024.

Its closure comes at a time when current prime minister Andy Burnham is looking at forging closer ties with the bloc. A key summit is planned for November.

seher.asaf@timeshighereducation.com