People

Professor Chris Alden is Director of LSE IDEAS.

Professor Christopher Coker is  Director of LSE IDEAS.

Dr Emilia Knight is the Centre Manager of LSE IDEAS.
Email: e.knight@lse.ac.uk

Stuart Austin is Associate to the Engelsberg Chair, currently Margaret MacMillan (2021/22).
Email: s.j.austin@lse.ac.uk

Indira Endaya is the Publications Designer at LSE IDEAS.
Email: i.endaya@lse.ac.uk

Mireia Franch is the Finance Administrator in LSE IDEAS.
Email: m.franch@lse.ac.uk

Hugo Jones is Programme and Research Associate at LSE IDEAS.
Email: h.jones6@lse.ac.uk

Jessica Keating is the Communications Officer at LSE IDEAS.
Telephone: 020 7955 6101
Email: j.keating1@lse.ac.uk

Marta Kozielska is a Projects & Research Associate at LSE IDEAS.
Email: m.m.kozielska@lse.ac.uk

Dave Sutton is the Events Coordinator at LSE IDEAS.
Email: d.c.sutton@lse.ac.uk

Dr Aaron McKeil is a Course Convenor and Course Tutor on the Executive MSc International Strategy and Diplomacy programme at LSE IDEAS.
Email: a.mckeil@lse.ac.uk

Gosia Brown is Executive MSc International Strategy and Diplomacy Programme Manager.
Email: g.m.brown@lse.ac.uk

Saniya Kulkarni is the Programme Assistant for the Executive MSc in International Strategy and Diplomacy Programme.

Sarah Coolican is Programme Manager for the Central and South-East Europe Programme.

Cosmin Marian is co-ordinator of the Central and South-East Europe Programme Desk at Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Mădălina Mocan is the Central and South-East Europe Programme Desk Manager at Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Lukas Fiala is the China Foresight Project Coordinator.
Email: l.d.fiala@lse.ac.uk

Hugo Jones is the China Foresight Project Assistant.
Email: h.jones6@lse.ac.uk

Dr Luc-André Brunet is Deputy Director of the Cold War Studies Project, Co-Director of the Peace and Security Project, and a Visiting Fellow at LSE IDEAS.
Email: l.brunet@lse.ac.uk

Molly Avery is a Managing Editor of the journal Cold War History and PhD candidate in the Department of International History at LSE.

Jack Basu-Mellish is a Project Assistant for the Cold War Studies Project.

Grant Golub is a Project Assistant for the Cold War Studies Project.

Marral Shamshiri-Fard is a Managing Editor of the journal Cold War History and PhD candidate in the Department of International History at LSE.

Professor Mary Kaldor is the Executive Director of the Conflict Research Programme.

Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic is the Deputy Director on the CRP and manages the CRP Fellowships programme.

Professor Alex de Waal is the Co-Director for Research on the Conflict Research Programme. Alex is the Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation at The Fletcher School, Tufts University.

Matthew Benson is the Research Manager on the Conflict Research Programme.

Alice Bryant is the Programme Manager for the Conflict Research Programme.

Professor Chris Alden is Head of the Digital IR Project. He is Director of LSE IDEAS and Professor of International Relations at the LSE.

Kenddrick Chan is Deputy Head of the Digital IR Project. He is also an LSE IDEAS Associate.

Julia Ryng is Project Coordinator for the Digital IR Project.

Professor Chris Alden is Co-Director of the Global South Unit and Professor in International Relations at LSE.

Dr Alvaro Mendez is Co-Director of the Global South Unit and Senior Research Fellow at LSE.

Hugh Sandeman is Project Head of Global Strategies and a Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE IDEAS.

Vlad Zigarov is Programme Coordinator for IDEAS Europe.

Seeta Persaud is Managing Editor of the Journal Nations and Nationalism.

Dr Luc-André Brunet is Co-Director of the Peace and Security Project, Acting Director of the Cold War Studies Project and a Visiting Fellow at LSE IDEAS.
Email: l.brunet@lse.ac.uk

Dr Eirini Karamouzi is Co-Director of the Peace and Security Project and a Visiting Fellow at LSE IDEAS.

Tessy Antony de Nassau is Co-Founder of Professors Without Borders and Director of Logistics.

Dr Caroline Varin is Co-Founder of Professors Without Borders and Programs Director.

Majeks Walker is Co-Founder of Professors Without Borders and Director of Operations.

Dr Dimitrios Stroikos is Head of LSE IDEAS Space Policy. He is also Editor-In-Chief of Space Policy: An International Journal. He is an LSE Fellow at the Department of International Relations.

Saniya Kulkarni is the Project Coordinator of LSE IDEAS Space Policy.

Dr Alvaro Mendez is Project Coordinator and a Senior Researcher at the Sustainable Banking Initiative.

Francisco Javier Forcadell is Senior Researcher at the Sustainable Banking Initiative.

Dr Mary Martin is Director of the UN Business and Human Security Initiative.

Dr Alvaro Mendez is the Co-Director of the Global South Unit, based at LSE IDEAS and the Department of International Relations at LSE. He is an expert in foreign policy analysis, international development, US foreign policy, Chinese foreign policy and the foreign policy of Latin American states.

Dr Mohammed Abdel-Haq is a Professor in Banking and a Director of the Centre for Islamic Finance at the University of Bolton. He is also Executive Director of the Centre for Opposition Studies. Mohammed also has a wealth of practical experience from a long career in banking in major financial institutions. He was a Member of the UK Government Task Force for Islamic Finance. Mohammed is the co-author of a book on Islamic finance and has written articles on various issues related to public life.

Rosa Balfour is director of Carnegie Europe. Her fields of expertise include European politics, institutions, and foreign and security policy. Balfour is also a member of the steering committee of Women in International Security Brussels (WIIS-Brussels). Prior to joining Carnegie Europe, Balfour was a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. She was also director of the Europe in the World program at the European Policy Centre in Brussels and has worked as a researcher in Rome and London.

Eric Beckett Weaver (DPhil, Oxon) is a historian teaching comparative politics at the University of Debrecen. His work is concerned with the politics, social movements, and modern history of Southeast and Central Europe.

Iain Begg is a Professorial Research Fellow at the LSE European Institute. His main research work is on the political economy of European integration and EU economic governance. He has directed and participated in a series of research projects on different facets of EU policy and his current projects include studies on the governance of EU economic and social policy, the EU's Europe 2020 strategy, evaluation of EU cohesion policy and reform of the EU budget.

Dr Paul Belesky is the Associate Director in the Geopolitics Hub at KPMG Australia and an Adjunct Research Fellow in the Centre for Policy Futures at the University of Queensland. He is an affiliated Global Research Fellow in the Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies at the University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China. Previously, he was an associate member of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, based near Oslo, Norway. He holds a PhD in International Political Economy and Masters Degree in International Relations from the University of Queensland. His research expertise includes geopolitics and economics in East Asia and China’s political economy, foreign policy and trade relations.

Linda Benräis is Adjunct Professor of Comparative Law and Mediation at ESSEC Business School and Director of ESSEC's IRENÉ programmes "Governance and Conflict Resolution". She coordinates international and European programmes related to governance, human rights, and international mediation. She has 18 years of experience as an EU legal consultant and trainer in international legal cooperation, legal and judicial reforms, international mediation and other ADR in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and South-East Asia.

Mats Berdal is Professor of Security and Development in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, where he is also the Programme Director for the MA in Conflict, Security and Development and Director of the Conflict, Security and Development Research Programme (CSDRG). He joined Department of War Studies, King’s College London in 2003, having previously been Director of Studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London from 2000 to 2003.

Sumantra Bose is a Professor of International and Comparative Politics at LSE. Bose is the author of seven books - of which the latest, Secular States, Religious Politics: India, Turkey, and the Future of Secularism - has been published worldwide by Cambridge University Press in 2018. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Columbia University.

John Breuilly is Emeritus Professor of Nationalism and Ethnicity at LSE. His academic interests are in interdisciplinary study of nationalism and the history of modern Europe, especially that of Germany. He was until recently President of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN), and is one of the editors of ASEN’s journal Nation and Nationalism (N&N).

Javier Carbonell is the Seminar Series Chair of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) and the editor of LSE Eurocrisis Blog. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh and he completed an MSc in International Relations at the LSE. He is also a member of the Global Populist Parties Dataset (LSE Systemic Risk Centre) and the New Nationalism Project (University of Toronto) research groups.

Kenddrick Chan is an Associate at LSE IDEAS. His research focuses on the intersection of technology, nationalism, and international relations. His written work has appeared in various academic and industry outlets such as the University of Oxford, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, PwC, and others. He is also an editor at the Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism journal and a Young Leader with the Pacific Forum.

Arjun Chawla is a Research Associate at The Risk Advisory Group's Asia practice in Hong Kong. Previously, he worked with the South Asia Programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, and Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations, in Mumbai. He co-authored a chapter in 'Democracy Under Threat' published by Oxford University Press India in 2017. Currently, he writes on geopolitics and geo-economics with a focus on South Asia. He holds a master's degree with distinction in international relations from The London School of Economics and Political Science.

Brian Davey is a senior project consultant in the field of international education and development, specialised in strategic marketing and international student recruitment in Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Current projects involve design, development and marketing of custom programmes for several European and American universities. Brian has a Bachelor degree from the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley and an MBA from the European University.

Guy de Jonquières is a Senior Fellow at European Centre for International Political Economy. He was previously working as a special correspondent and as an intern at The Financial Times and as international business editor and world trade editor. In 2001, Guy de Jonquières received the BP/European University Institute prize for essay on transatlantic economic relations, and in 2007 he was awarded as the opinion writer of the year by the Society of Publishers in Asia.

Charles Dunst is an associate with The Asia Group's Research and Analytics practice, analyzing political and economic developments across the Indo-Pacific. He is also a contributing editor of American Purpose, Francis Fukuyama's magazine. Mr. Dunst regularly publishes in the media and has written opinion articles for outlets like The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2018 and 2019, he was a foreign correspondent in Cambodia, reporting for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, and the Los Angeles Times on topics including U.S. deportations to Cambodia and Vietnam, China's growing influence in the region, and Myanmar's foreign policy. Mr. Dunst holds an MSc with distinction in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a BA with honors in world politics from Hamilton College.

Jonathan Fenby has written eighteen books, eight of them on China, most recently 'Will China Dominate the 21st Century?'. He is a founding partner and China Director of the emerging markets research service, Trusted Sources serving global financial institutions and companies.

Valentina Finckenstein is a Program Manager and Research Associate at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Beirut, Lebanon. Her work focuses mainly on MENA security and geopolitics, resources and EU-MENA relations. Previously, she was a research associate for LSE IDEAS and worked for the Vice-President of the European Parliament Alexander Lambsdorff. She holds an MSc in International Relations from LSE.

Jennifer Gaskell (née Welch) is an experienced researcher, facilitator and peacebuilding practitioner with expertise in international institutions, the Syrian, Burundi and Eastern African contexts and field experience in Cyprus, Burundi and the Somali region. She has over 13 years’ professional experience in communications and multi-stakeholder change processes across a range of sectors. She is the co-founder of Build Up, a social enterprise working to amplify citizen participation in peacebuilding through technology, arts and research.

Gidon Gautel is currently an Analyst in the space industry. Previously, he was the Project Coordinator of China Foresight and Project Manager of the Economic Diplomacy Commission at LSE IDEAS. Gidon holds a BSc in Government and Economics with first class honours from LSE, and an MSc in Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Management with distinction from Imperial College Business School. His interests include the interplay between US-China relations and technological development, with a particular focus on space.

Daphne Halikiopoulou is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Reading. She is interested in party politics and voting behaviour with a focus on the far right, populism and nationalism in Europe. She is the author of The Golden Dawn’s ‘Nationalist Solution’: explaining the rise of the far right in Greece (with Sofia Vasilopoulou) and numerous articles on European far right parties. She is joint Editor-in-Chief of the journal Nations and Nationalism and co-editor of the Springer book series in Electoral Politics. She gained her PhD from LSE.

Andrew Hammond was a Government Special Adviser when the UK last held the Presidency of the EU. He has since worked for consultancy firms advising or organisations in the public, private, and third sectors on strategy and performance, including navigating complex political and economic landscapes that impact operations, reputation, policy and investments.

Tanya Harmer is Associate Professor at LSE's Department of International History. Dr Harmer obtained her BA at the University of Leeds before moving to LSE to obtain a MA and PhD in International History for which she was awarded an AHRC scholarship. She has held visiting teaching positions at Columbia University in New York (2012-13) and the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (2010, 2013).

Julia Himmrich is an expert on European foreign and security policy, particularly in regards to EU post-conflict policy in the Western Balkans and the foreign policy dimension of migration. She has held research positions in think tanks, including as Dahrendorf Post-Doctoral Fellow at LSE IDEAS, and taught at LSE and King’s College London. She holds a PhD from the LSE International Relations Department. Her areas of expertise are: politics of independence and secession, the Western Balkans (Kosovo-Serbia conflict), German foreign policy, EU foreign and defence policy, and international migration policy.

John Hutchinson is Visiting Senior Fellow in the Government department.  He is currently Vice-President of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism and Co-Editor-in Chief of Nations and Nationalism. He has authored and edited eleven books in the field of nationalism, most recently Nationalism and War, published by Oxford University Press in 2017. His current project is the ‘Herderian explosion' that explores the contours the contemporary resurgence of religio-political movements outside the West in resistance to secular nationalism.

Valur Ingimundarson is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Iceland. His current research focuses on the return of geopolitics in the North and the resurgence of nationalism and populism in Europe.

Michael Innes is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the Department of Politics, SOAS. His research  focuses broadly on Cold War and international history, with special interests in East and Southeast Asia, international security, comparative institutions and the geopolitics of information. Michael's first book, Streets Without Joy: A Political History of Sanctuary and War, 1959-2009 (2020), is an investigation of wartime sanctuary discourses in American foreign policy. 

Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck, University of London. His work focuses on majority ethnicity and national populism in the West. He is a Vice-President of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN), and one of the editors of ASEN’s journal Nation and Nationalism (N&N).

David Landon Cole is the Coordinator of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN). He is currently completing a PhD in Politics at the University of York, looking at opposition to the radical right. Prior to returning to university, he had a career in defence and aerospace and was previously Vice-President of the Atlantic Treaty Association.

Ashley T. Lenihan is a visiting fellow at LSE’s Centre for International Studies, the Head of Policy & Engagement at the British Academy of Management, and a Senior Policy Advisor at the Academy of Social Sciences, leading its Brexit response. Her current research focuses on the relationship between national security and foreign investment, and she is the author of ‘Balancing Power without Weapons: State Intervention into Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions.’ Dr Lenihan was previously an investment-banking analyst at DLJ/Credit Suisse First Boston. She obtained her PhD in Government and Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

George Magnus is Research Associate at the China Centre, Oxford University, and at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. George was the Chief Economist, and then Senior Economic Adviser at UBS Investment Bank from 1995-2016. He had previously worked as the Chief Economist at SG Warburg (1987-1995), and before that at Laurie Milbank/Chase Securities, Bank of America and Lloyds Bank. George’s book Red Flags: why Xi’s China is in Jeopardy was published in 2018 by Yale University Press.

Slobodan G. Markovich is a Full Professor and Head of the Centre for British Studies at the University of Belgrade. His current research focuses on the application of the theory of the unconscious to the analysis of contemporary political relations and on writing on the history of European pessimism. He obtained his BA in History at the University of Belgrade, MPhil in Historical Studies at the University of Cambridge, and PhD in Political Anthropology at the University of Belgrade.

Benjamin Martill is a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. He was previously a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Dahrendorf Forum, a joint initiative between LSE and the Hertie School in Berlin.

Janne Haaland Matlary is a Professor of International Politics at the University of Oslo, specialising in energy policy, security policy, strategy, and political risk. She served as State Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway from 1997 to 2000. 

Dr Michaela Muscat Spaak is Malta's alternate Permanent Representative to the International Maritime Organization. During Malta's Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2017, she was responsible for coordinating the external maritime policy negotiations at the IMO. Michaela is committed to improving gender equality in maritime diplomacy. She is one of the cofounders and coordinators of IMOGEN, a forum for IMO delegates to coordinated policies aimed at achieving gender equality. In March 2021, Michaela led the launch of IMOGEN’s first-of-its-kind mentorship programme, matching female students with an interest in maritime diplomacy with Ambassadors and diplomats from 25 countries. In 2017 Michaela was appointed member of the Malta - UK Business taskforce and is currently the programme adviser at the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council, co-host of the 2021 CHOGM Business Forum in Rwanda.

Cristian Nitoiu is an expert on EU and Russian foreign policy, EU-Russia relations, Eastern Europe, international relations, the European public sphere or international political communication. He is currently a Lecturer in Diplomacy and International Governance at Loughborough University London. He has held research positions at Aston University, Trinity College Dublin and the College of Europe (Natolin campus, ENP Chair).

Jose Javier Olivas Osuna leads an interdisciplinary comparative project on populism and secessionism (ICPPS) at the National Distance Education University (UNED) in Madrid. He is developing new multidimensional tools to measure the demand- and supply-sides of populism and studying the interaction between populism, nationalism, and borders. His research interests also include Brexit, responses to COVID19 and civil-military relations. Jose Javier has also done public policy consulting work for the EU and other international organisation. He holds PhD in Government (LSE), an MSc in Public Policy and Administration (LSE). He previously completed University degrees in Economics and Business (ETEA, University of Córdoba), Market Research (ETEA) and European Studies (EDHEC, Lille).

Tim Oliver focuses his research on transatlantic relations, European geopolitics, British-European relations, British government and politics, and the UK’s foreign, security and defence policies. He was awarded a PhD in International Relations from LSE. Tim is Senior Lecturer for the Institute for Diplomacy and International Governance at Loughborough University. He has also taught at LSE, UCL and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

Stephen Paduano is the Executive Director of the LSE Economic Diplomacy Commission and an associate at LSE IDEAS. He received a B.A. with Honours from Stanford University and an MSc with Distinction from the London School of Economics, where he was awarded the Fred Halliday Prize. He is currently pursuing a PhD at LSE on U.S. and Chinese foreign and economic policy in sub-Saharan Africa, for which he was also awarded the Michael Leifer Scholarship. He has written about these issues—British and African current events—for The Atlantic, The Economist, Foreign Policy, The New Republic, and NPR, and he has done TV and radio appearances for CNN, Sky News, and others.

Megan Palmer is a former manager of the Central and South-East Europe Programme at LSE IDEAS. She is currently a PhD researcher at the University of Nottingham researching late Habsburg Transylvanian social and urban history. Her research interests include the development and role of nationalism in Central Europe, everyday experiences and expressions of political, ethnic and social identities, and Romanian and Hungarian modern history. She is currently collaborating with CSEEP’s Romania Desk on a research project investigating Romania’s ethnic minorities, past and present.

Jacob Parakilas is an author, consultant and analyst working on US foreign policy and international security. His current research focuses on the effectiveness of US security assistance to fragile states and how such assistance fits into wider American security strategies. He is an advisor to the Simulation Centre at Chatham House. He was Deputy Head of the US programme at Chatham House from 2014 to 2019. 

Julia Pulido is Full Professor of International Relations and Security at the European University of Madrid (UEM). She is Director of the ‘International Security, Public Policies and Global Governance’ Research Group at UEM. She is a member of the Salamanca University Observatory on Transnational Organized Crime and the Elcano Royal Institute Working Group on Illicit Traffic and Criminal Networks. Her research interests include strategic intelligence, organized crime, insurgencies and international security. She is lieutenant reservist in the Spanish Army.

James Rogers is Assistant Professor in War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark and a Visiting Research Fellow at Stanford University (2019/2020). He is a member of the Centre for War Studies and the Danish Institute of Advanced Study. His research focuses on drone warfare, contemporary security policy, and the history of warfare. James has previously been a Visiting Fellow of the Department of International Security Studies, Yale University, The Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy, Yale University, the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, and Associate Lecturer in International Politics at the University of York.

Stefano Ruzza is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Turin. He is also a co-founder of T.wai - Torino World Affairs Institute, with responsibility over the “Violence and Security” research program. His research interests focus on conflict transformation (with a focus on Myanmar and Uganda), non-state armed actors in international relations and on private military and security companies. He lectures regularly in advanced educational programs of the Italian Army, is responsible for the Italian translation of the world-renown SIPRI Yearbook Summary, and directs the summer school 'Engaging Conflict'.

Zhand Shakibi is a Visiting Professor in Russian Studies at the University of Tehran. His research focuses on modern Iranian history. He was previously at LSE as a Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the Department of Government.

Antonio Varsori is Professor of History of International Relations at the Department of Law, Political Science and International Studies at the University of Padua. He is member of the committee for the publication of the Italian Diplomatic Documents at the Italian Foreign Ministry. He is the chairman of the Liaison Committee of Historians of Contemporary Europe at the European Commission and a member of the Academic Council of the European Space Agency History Project. He has been member and chairman of the NATO Science for Peace and Security Advisory Panel on Human and Societal Dynamics. He has written numerous monographs, articles, edited volumes and book chapters on International Relations and Italian and European history. 

Vuk Vuksanovic is a senior researcher at the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy and since April 2020 an associate of LSE IDEAS. He received his PhD in international relations at the LSE. He has published widely on modern foreign and security policy issues, primarily on the great power politics in the Balkans and wider Eurasia, for media and policy outlets in the UK, the US and the EU. He is on Twitter @v_vuksanovic.

Michael John Williams is Director of the International Relations Programme at New York University and Editor-in-Chief of the journal International Politics. His research at IDEAS focuses on the strategic role of Britain post-Brexit and the relationship between the UK and the US. He was previously Head of the Transatlantic Security Program at RUSI and Reader in International Relations at the University of London. Educated at the universities of Delaware, Hamburg, Bayreuth, Bath, Berlin, and Moscow, he earned his doctorate at The London School of Economics and Political Science.

Geoffrey Yu was formerly Chief Investment Office for UBS Wealth Management UK. He led a team dedicated to asset allocation and investment recommendations for UBS clients based in the UK and beyond. Previously, Geoffrey spent a decade as a currency strategist with UBS in London and Zurich. As an established analyst and commentator on foreign exchange markets and developments in China, he is widely quoted in the financial press and regularly serves as a guest host on Bloomberg Television and CNBC. Brought up in the UK and China, Geoffrey holds a double BA from Carleton College in the USA and an MSc in Finance from LSE.

Dr Yu Jie (Cherry) is Senior Research Fellow on China in the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House. She speaks and writes frequently at major media outlets such as BBC and Financial Times, and regularly briefs senior policy practitioners from the G7 member governments, the UK Cabinet Office and the Silk Road Fund in Beijing, as well as major FTSE 100 corporates. Yu Jie has testified at the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee and International Trade Committee. She was previously Head of China Foresight at LSE IDEAS. Prior to LSE, she was a management consultant, specializing in Chinese state-owned enterprises investments in Europe and Chinese market entry strategies for European conglomerates at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. Dr Yu has been recognized as a 'Leading Woman' of the London School of Economics for her contribution in teaching and engaging the debates on China’s foreign affairs.

Vlad Zigarov is Programme Associate for the Central and South-East Europe Programme. He holds an MSc in International History from LSE and an MA from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at UCL. He previously studied Philosophy, History and International Affairs at the University of Bucharest and worked in a number of state and private organisations in Romania and the UK.

Anne Applebaum held the Philippe Roman Chair for the 2012/13 academic year. She is a Washington Post columnist and a Pulitzer-Prize winning historian. She is also Professor of Practice at LSE's Institute of Global Affairs where she runs Arena, a program on disinformation and 21st century propaganda.

Michael Burleigh held the Engelsberg Chair for 2019/20. He is a leading historian who focuses primarily on Nazi Germany. He is the author of The Third Reich: a new history, which won the 2001 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction; Moral Combat, Blood and Rage; and Earthly Powers. His most recent book is The Best of Times, the Worst of Times. He has also won a British Film Institute Award for Archival Achievement and a New York Film and Television Festival Award Bronze Medal.

Barry Buzan is a Professor Emeritus at the Department for International Relations at LSE. Professor Buzan is also honorary professor at Copenhagen and Jilin Universities.

Matthew Connelly was the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs for the 2014-2015 academic year. He is a Professor in the Department of History at Columbia University. He works in international and global history.

Michael Cox is Founding Director of LSE IDEAS. He was appointed to a Chair at the LSE in 2002. He helped establish the Cold War Studies Centre at LSE in 2004 with Arne Westad, and later they were both Founding Directors of LSE IDEAS in 2008. Professor Cox has lectured to universities world-wide as well as to several government bodies and many private companies. He is currently visiting professor at the Catholic University in Milan. He is the author, editor and co-editor of over 30 books, including most recently a collection of his essays The Post-Cold War World, as well as new editions of J M Keynes’s, The Economic Consequences of the Peace and E H Carr’s Nationalism and After. He is now working on  a new history of LSE entitled, The “School”: LSE and the Shaping of the Modern World.

Niall Ferguson was the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs for the 2010-2011 academic year. Professor Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Ramachandra Guha held the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs for the 2011-2012 academic year. Dr Guha is a historian and biographer and has taught at the universities of Yale and Stanford.

Chen Jian held the Philippe Roman Chair during the 2008-09 academic year. Professor Jian is the Hu Shih Professor of History and China-US Relations emeritus at Cornell University. His specialties include modern Chinese history, history of Chinese-American relations, and Cold War international history.

Paul Kennedy was the inaugural holder of the Philippe Roman Chair during the 2007-08 academic year. Professor Kennedy is one of the world's most well-known international historians, whose books include The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers  (1987) and Preparing for the Twenty-First Century (1993).

Gilles Kepel held the Philippe Roman Chair during the 2009-10 academic year. Professor Kepel is best known for his books on the Middle East and North Africa, and for his work on Islamism, including Islamism in Europe.

Dominic Lieven is a research professor at Cambridge University and his work focuses on Russian history. He was previously Head of the International History Department at LSE.

Margot Light is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at The London School of Economics and Political Science and Director of the Human Rights Programme in the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Ian Morris held the Philippe Roman Chair during the 2015-16 academic year. He is the Jean and Rebecca Willard Professor in Classics and Professor in History in the Department of Classics at Stanford University.

Danny Quah was a Professor in the Department of Economics at LSE and in his later years at the School, he was also Director of LSE's Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre. He is currently Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics and Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the University of Singapore.

Svetozar Rajak is an Associate Professor at the LSE Department of International History. He was previously Academic Director at LSE IDEAS, Head of the Southern Europe International Affairs Programme and Head of the Balkan Initiative. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Cold War History.

Timothy Snyder held the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs for the 2013-14 academic year. Professor Snyder is currently Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and specialises in the political history of central and eastern Europe as well as the Holocaust.

Arne Westad was a Founding Director of LSE IDEAS. He is the Engelsberg Chair for the 2020/21 academic year. Professor Westad lectures widely on China's foreign affairs, on Western interventions in Africa and Asia, and on foreign policy strategy.

Helmut K. Anheier is Professor of Sociology at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. He was President of the Hertie School from 2009 to 2018. His research centres on indicator systems, social innovation, culture, philanthropy, and organisational studies. Anheier is the principal academic lead of the Hertie School's annual Governance Report (Oxford University Press). He also holds a Chair of Sociology at Heidelberg University and serves as Academic Director of the Centre for Social Investment.

Gordon Barrass, CMG is a Visiting Professor at LSE IDEAS, where he specialises on strategy, assessments and perceptions. After more than 20 years in the British Diplomatic Service he served as Chief of the Assessments Staff in the Cabinet Office. He then spent nearly a decade helping PwC expand its business in China’s rapidly growing financial services sector.

Paul Cornish has held senior/professorial appointments in UK research institutes and universities: Chatham House; the UK Defence Academy; the Centre for Defence Studies at King’s College London; the RAND Corporation (Europe); and the Universities of Cambridge, Bath and Exeter. His work covers international security, national strategy, cyber security, arms control, the ethics of armed force, and civil-military relations. He has published widely on national strategy, international security, cyber security and cyber governance. His most recent book is 2020: World of War and he is editor of the Oxford Handbook of Cyber Security.

Dr John Hughes, CBE is Professor in Practice at LSE IDEAS. John was a British career diplomat for 35 years serving mainly in the Americas, together with secondments to the Cabinet Office, BAE Systems, and Shell. His final postings were as Ambassador to Venezuela and then to Argentina and Paraguay. In retirement he has been Chair of the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission, Chair of Canning House, a Robin Humphreys Research Fellow at the School of Advanced Study, London University, and a Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE. He is a member of the LSE IDEAS Advisory Board and is Chair of the British Argentine Chamber of Commerce.

Elena Korosteleva is Professor of International Politics and Jean Monnet Chair in European Politics, at the School of Politics and IR, University of Kent. She launched an interdisciplinary and cross-campus Global Europe Centre at Kent in 2013, and is currently leading a prestigious, 1st generation Global Challenges research COMPASS project (ES/P010849/1, £4mln, 2017-21), the only such award in the field of Politics and IR in the UK. The project explores new approaches to ‘governance’ with a focus on resilience as self-governance, peoplehood and capacity-building as the building blocks for changing domestic and regional orders, in a wider Eurasia. Elena’s other research interests encompass EU Foreign Policy, Global Security Strategy, and cooperative orders in a wider Eurasia. Elena is the author of nine monographs and over 50 articles.

Inderjeet Parmar is a Professor in International Politics at City, University of London. He is the PI and Co-Director, Think Tanks, Global Knowledge and World Orders,1919-2019 network. Inderjeet is also Co-Director of the Centre for International Policy Studies, City, University of London. His research interests include the liberal international order, US foreign policy, and think tanks. 

Lutfey Siddiqi is an Adjunct Professor at National University of Singapore and a Visiting Professor in Practice at LSE IDEAS. Previously Global Head of Emerging Markets for Foreign Exchange, Rates & Credit at UBS Investment bank and Managing Director at Barclays bank. World Economic Forum: Young Global Leader (2012), Global Futures Council (2014-2018). Advisory boards: LSE Systemic Risk Centre, Centre for Governance (Singapore); CFA Future of Finance, Bretton Woods Committee.

Professor Maximilian Terhalle is a Visiting Professor in Practice at LSE IDEAS. Earlier in 2021, he completed an IISS Adelphi Paper on “The Responsibility to Defend: Re-thinking Germany’s Strategic Culture” (with B. Giegerich). Following the German federal election in September 2021, Maximilian will adopt the Adelphi Paper as his starting point to further elaborate on the geopolitical state of European security in the transatlantic context, within which China’s strategic power has undoubtedly figured as the most impactful, yet least understood, external factor. During his two-year stint at LSE IDEAS, he will continue to consult to senior conservative MPs in Berlin. In 2019-20, Maximilian served as a Senior Adviser for Strategic Affairs to the UK’s Ministry of Defence. His spell at the MoD presents only the most recent, yet integral, part of a series of almost 12 years which he has spent abroad doing policy work, conducting research and teaching in the US, China, the UK and Egypt since 2000.

Professor Linda Yueh is Visiting Professor at LSE IDEAS and Chair of the LSE Economic Diplomacy Commission. She also serves on the Advisory Board of LSE IDEAS and on the Policy Committee of the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE. She is Fellow in Economics, St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford and Adjunct Professor of Economics, London Business School. She is an Adviser to the UK Board of Trade and a member of the Independent Review Panel on Ring-fencing and Proprietary Trading of the UK Government. Professor Yueh is the Editor of the Routledge Series on Economic Growth and Development and the author of numerous books, including China’s Growth: The Making of an Economic Superpower and The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today.

General Sir Richard Barrons served as Commander Joint Forces Command, one of the six ‘Chiefs of Staff” leading the UK Armed Forces until April 2016. His military career includes leadership from Captain to General on military operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Dr Alexander Evans OBE is a former adviser in 10 Downing Street. He has led a U.N. Security Council expert mission, been Deputy and Acting High Commissioner to both India and Pakistan, and Director Cyber in the Foreign Office. He served in the U.S. government as a senior adviser to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. He was formerly a senior fellow at Yale, a Gwilym Gibbon fellow at Nuffield College Oxford and Henry Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress.

Tan Sri Dr Munir Majid is a Honorary Fellow at LSE. His work is focused on Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) regional politics and economy. As chairman of CARI Asean Research and Advocacy and of Asean Business Advisory Council Malaysia, he has been at the forefront of thought and practical business leadership for more effective regional integration. He was the founding chairman of the Malaysian Securities Commission and, over the past 50 years, has served in both the public and private sectors, and worked in academia, as a journalist, in banking, as regulator and corporate leader.

Gideon Rachman is the chief foreign affairs commentator for the Financial Times, where he authors a weekly column on foreign affairs and feature articles. Before joining the Financial Times in 2006, he was a senior editor and correspondent for The Economist and BBC World Service presenter. He has worked as a foreign correspondent in Washington, Brussels, and Bangkok, and is the author of Zero-Sum World and Easternization  which was launched at the LSE in 2017. 

Hugh Sandeman was an international banker for 30 years based in New York, Tokyo, London, and Frankfurt, and for the past decade has focused on India. He was previously Tokyo correspondent, international business editor and New York correspondent of The Economist.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri is Head of the US and the Americas Programme at Chatham House, and Dean of the Academy for Leadership in International Affairs, Chatham House. She was Director of the Centre on Conflict, Rights and Justice and a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in International Relations at SOAS, University of London. Leslie was also Chair of the International Relations Speaker Series at SOAS. Her research areas include transatlantic relations, US foreign policy, the politics of international intervention, human rights and justice, and UN Security Council Diplomacy.

Peter Watkins is a Visiting Professor, King's College London; an Associate Fellow, Chatham House; and a Non-Resident Fellow with the Atlantic Council. He was formerly the Director General Strategy & International (2017-18) and Director General Security Policy (2014-17) in the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD). In these roles, he was responsible for strategic policy & planning; the Defence dimension of the UK's cross-government response to Russia; defence relations with NATO, the EU and with key bilateral allies; and defence policy aspects of cyber, space and novel technologies.  Previous roles included Director General of the Defence Academy (2011-14) and Director of Operational Policy (2008-11).  Among earlier assignments, he was Private Secretary to the Defence Secretary (2001-03) and Counsellor (Defence & Aerospace), British Embassy Bonn/Berlin (1996-2000).  He was a Visiting Fellow, Harvard University (2006-07). 

Dr Christina Bache is a Visiting Fellow at LSE IDEAS. She is Chair of the UN Global Compact, Principles for Responsible Management Education, Working Group on Business for Peace and is Co-Chair of the International Crisis Group's Ambassador Council. She is currently conducting research on the impact of the private sector on peace in the Middle East and North Africa region for a book project with Palgrave Macmillan.

Dr Luc-André Brunet is the Acting Director of the Cold War Studies Project, Co-Director of the Peace and Security Project, and a Visiting Fellow at LSE IDEAS.

Dr Eirini Karamouzi is a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary History at the University of Sheffield and Visiting Fellow at LSE IDEAS. She is the author of Greece, the EEC and the Cold War, 1974-1979. The Second Enlargement and co-editor of the volume Balkans in the Cold War. She is co-director of the Cultures of the Cold War network, Editor in Cold War History Journal and Book Review Editor in Journal of Contemporary history. She works on the history of European integration, Modern Greece and currently runs as PI a Max Batley peace studies funded project on peace movements in Southern Europe during the Euromissile crisis. She tweets @EiriniKaramouzi.

Nicholas Kitchen is Co-Director of the Centre for International Intervention and Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Surrey. He teaches on IDEAS’ Executive MSc International Strategy and Diplomacy. Nick was previously Executive Director of the LSE Diplomacy Commission. His research interests lie in the relationship between power, ideas, and strategy in international relations, with a particular focus on the role of the United States. 

Effie G. H. Pedaliu is a Visiting Fellow at LSE IDEAS and has held posts at LSE, KCL and UWE. She is the author of Britain, Italy and the Origins of the Cold War and co-editor of Britain in Global Affairs, Volume II, From Churchill to Blair. The main themes of her work include American and British Cold War policy and strategy, European and Mediterranean security politics, and Human Rights in Southern Europe.

Dr Saqib Qureshi has written for The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur Magazine, The Independent and 1828; and authored Reconstructing Strategy: Dancing with the God of Objectivity and the Amazon bestseller from 2020 The Broken Contract. He completed his academic studies at LSE with his undergraduate degree and PhD in International Relations. Saqib was also the Associate Producer for the feature length film ‘Rahm’ in 2016 and has worked at McKinsey & Co and HSBC Investment Bank, and for governments in Dubai, London and Washington DC. He is the founder and CEO of Building Capital Inc, one of Canada’s leading developers of student housing.

Dr Buğra Süsler is a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at LSE IDEAS. His research focuses on Turkey, the EU and the Middle East. He holds a PhD in International Relations and an MSc in Politics and Government in the EU from the LSE as well as a BSc in Politics from the University of Bristol. He has taught courses on Foreign Policy Analysis, EU politics, and emerging powers at the LSE and the University of Cape Town. He currently teaches a course on International Institutions and lectures on Turkish foreign policy at the LSE. His first book, Turkey, the EU and the Middle East: Foreign Policy Cooperation and the Arab Uprisings will be published as a part of Routledge Studies in Foreign Policy Analysis. 

Dr Seema Khan previously spent more than 20 years working across public administration, management, and implementation within the Pakistani government and Australian universities. She will undertake research into Pakistan’s approach towards the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Dr Moonis Ahmar is former Dean Faculty of Social Sciences and Meritorious Professor at the Department of International Relations, University of Karachi. He was also Chairman of the Department of International Relations at the University of Karachi and is Director of the Programme on Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution.

His field of specialization is conflict and security studies, focusing on the South and the Central Asian regions. Dr Ahmar has 36 years of academic experience in Pakistan and in different foreign universities and research think tanks. He is the author of three books, four monographs and has edited 15 books on different themes in international relations.

Dr Leon Hartwell is the 2022 Mladena and Dianko Sotirov Visiting Fellow at LSE IDEAS and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow with the Democratic Resilience and Transatlantic Leadership programs at the Center of European Policy Analysis (CEPA) in Washington D.C.  His research interests include conflict resolution, genocide, transitional justice, diplomacy, democracy, and the Western Balkans. Hartwell will undertake research into domestic and foreign policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the potential policy options available to the US, UK and EU in bringing about an end to the country’s ‘post-war paralysis’.

Vuk Vuksanović is a political scientist from Serbia who specialises in international affairs, with Master degrees from the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Belgrade and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Vuksanović brings a wealth of experience and expertise to LSE IDEAS from academia, the private sector and government. He worked for two years at the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Sector for Security Policy, Belgrade, and as an analyst and consultant for several policy think tanks providing political and geopolitical risk assessments pertaining to the regional markets of the Balkans, the Middle East and the post-Soviet space.

Vuk is currently completing his PhD research at LSE in international relations. His PhD deals with the Serbian balancing act between Russia and the West between 2008 and 2020, and he will use this Fellowship to focus on the growing Sino-Serbian partnership.

Bogdan Zawadewicz is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich (LMU), Germany. In his doctoral work he investigates the role of symbolic political cleavages in shaping separatists' strategies in Bosnia & Hercegovina and Ukraine. He has worked as a research associate at Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in Regensburg, Germany where he was a member of the research group "Frozen and Unfrozen Conflicts". He holds a Master's Degree in Political Science (University of Warsaw, Institute of Political Science). His research interests include the Balkans, Post-Soviet Space, separatism, conflict studies, field theory (Pierre Bourdieu), world-systems analysis. 

Asya Metodieva is a PhD Candidate at Central European University (CEU), Budapest. Her research is on foreign fighter mobilization in post-violent societies with a focus on the Western Balkans. Her dissertation investigates the construction of martial social identity within different fighter mobilization streams from the region contributing to two ongoing conflicts: Syria and Eastern Ukraine. Asya has been a teaching assistant for the Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism and Public Management classes at School of Public Policy, CEU. She holds MA in International Public Policy from CEU and MA in International Relations and Security Studies from Sofia University 'St. Kliment Ohridski'. Previously, Asya worked as a journalist for the Bulgarian National Television (BNT).

Roumiana Preshlenova is Associate Professor at the Institute of Balkan Studies and Centre of Thracology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia. She is also lecturer in Southeast European Studies, Faculty of History of Sofia University 'St. Kliment Ohridski'.

Mariah Thornton is a MPhil/PhD student at the Department of International Relations and a researcher at LSE IDEAS. She is the Stonex Scholar. Her research focuses on China’s foreign policy and strategy toward Taiwan, cross-Strait relations, as well as Taiwan in digital IR.

Dr Marcin Fatalski graduated from the Faculty of History at the Jagiellonian University. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Jagiellonian University and works there at the Institute of American Studies and Polish Diaspora. His research focuses on the modern history of international relations, US foreign policy, and nation-building/state-building policy. He has lectured at, among others, Radboud University Nijmegen, the University of Barcelona, Roma Tre University, Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Budapest, and the University of Veliko Tarnovo. He has conducted research in the Central Archives of Modern Records (Archiwum Akt Nowych), the Polish Institute of International Relations, and the Library of the John F. Kennedy Institute in Berlin.