James graduated from Swansea University, with a BEng and an MSc in materials engineering. During his undergraduate studies, James completed a year-long internship with Airbus UK, gaining experience within both the part compliance and failure analysis teams.
After completing his Master’s degree, James earned a PhD in Materials Engineering at Imperial College London. His research focused on the development and characterisation of tungsten diboride ceramics, a highly effective neutron shielding material vital for the advancement of smaller spherical tokamak designs. In his thesis, he developed novel sintering manufacturing processes for tungsten diborides, enabling a number of mechanical and thermal properties to be experimentally characterised for the first time.
James’ PhD was partially funded by the Nuclear Energy Futures Centre for Doctoral Training, where he received specialist training from leading academics on key topics within the nuclear industry. He served as cohort representative, leading outreach activities including the Cambridge Science Festival and an exhibit at the Science Museum.
Following his PhD, James secured funding to continue as a postdoctoral researcher. His work focused on scaling up manufacturing processes industrial application and investigating the effect of varying the tungsten to boron ratio in his materials. James has published in two leading journals: Nuclear Fusion (IOP) and the Journal of the European Ceramic Society (Elsevier).
James joined Hawkins in November 2025 as an Associate based in our London office.
