ALI ANSARI is a professor of Modern History and founding director of the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews. His research interests include Iranian historiography, nationalism and British-Iranian relations. He is a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, and is honorary vice-president of the Governing Council of the British Institute of Persian Studies. He has written for the Spectator and the New Statesman, among other publications, and his books include Modern Iran Since 1921: the Pahlavis and After; Confronting Iran: the Failure of American Foreign Policy and the Roots of Mistrust; and The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran.
BENEDETTA BERTI is head of policy planning in the Office of the Secretary General at NATO. She is also associate researcher at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy at Vrije Universiteit Brussels, visiting professor at the College of Europe and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. An Eisenhower global fellow and a TED senior fellow, in the past decade she has held research and teaching positions at West Point, the Institute for National Security Studies and Tel Aviv University, among others. Her research focuses on armed groups, internal wars, and protection of civilians.
JOHN BEW is a professor in History and Foreign Policy at the Department of War Studies, King's College London. He leads the department's Grand Strategy Programme, which aims to bring more historical and strategic expertise to statecraft, diplomacy and foreign policy. In 2019, Professor Bew joined the Number 10 Policy Unit and led the recent update to the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy. He has written for the New Statesman, the Times Literary Supplement and New Republic, among other publications, and his books include Citizen Clem: a Life of Attlee; Realpolitik: a History; and Castlereagh: Enlightenment, War, and Tyranny. ELISABETH BRAW is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she focuses on defence against gray-zone threats. She is a member of the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy's advisory board, a member of GALLOS Technologies' advisory board, a member of the UK National Preparedness Commission and a member of the steering committee of the Aurora Forum (the UK-Nordic-Baltic leader conference). She is a columnist with Foreign Policy and Politico Europe, where she writes on national security and the globalised economy, and regularly writes op-eds for the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Times and (writing in German) the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. She is the author of two books: The Defender's Dilemma: Identifying and Deterring Grayzone Aggression, and God's Spies: the Stasi's Cold War Espionage Campaign Inside the Church KRISTIN VEN BRUUSGAARD is director of the Norwegian Intelligence School, and an affiliate with the Oslo Nuclear Project at the University of Oslo. An expert in Soviet and Russian nuclear strategy, nuclear and non-nuclear deterrence, and crisis dynamics in Europe and the Arctic, she served as the deputy leader of the Norwegian Government Defence Commission 2022-2023, providing advice on future Norwegian security policy for the next 10-20 years. Her work has been published in Foreign Affairs, Security Dialogue, Journal of Strategic Studies, Survival, War on the Rocks, Texas National Security Review, Parameters, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and by the Cambridge University Press. She was awarded the 2020 Amos Perlmutter Prize from the Journal of Strategic Studies for her article 'Russian nuclear strategy and conventional inferiority'. DAVID BUTTERFIELD is a senior lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge and a fellow and director of studies in Classics at Queens' College, Cambridge. His primary areas of research are Latin literature, textual criticism, and the history of scholarship. His publications include Varro Varius: the Polymath of the Roman World; The Early Textual History of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura; and A E Housman: Classical Scholar. He is editor of the Classics website Antigone, literary editor of The Critic, and is currently finishing the new Oxford Classical Text of the philosopher-poet Lucretius. JONATHAN CLARK is emeritus Joyce C and Elizabeth Ann Hall distinguished professor of British History at the University of Kansas. He was previously a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and Peterhouse, Cambridge An expert on English history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Professor Clark has been highly influential in shaping the way in which historians categorise the chronology of 'the long-eighteenth century' (a concept he devised) and has explored the commonalties and conflicts in its politics, religion and political thought. His books include Thomas Paine: Britain, America, and France in the Age of Enlightenment and Revolution; A World by Itself: a History of the British Isles; and Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion, and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism. His next book will be The Enlightenment: a History. CLAIRE COUTINHO has been the Member of Parliament for East Surrey since 2019. Since her election to parliament, she has held the positions of Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Treasury and Minister for Disabled People, and is now the Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing at the Department for Education. In 2023 she took the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act through its final parliamentary stages and into law. Before her election to parliament, Claire was appointed as a special advisor at HM Treasury, where she worked as an aide to the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Rishi Sunak. She has worked in the commercial sector at Merrill Lynch and KPMG, and is a visiting fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford and former senior fellow of the influential think tank Policy Exchange.
DAISY DUNN is an award-winning author and classicist who has published widely on a variety of biographical and classical themes. She was the recipient of the 2022 Classical Association Prize, in recognition of her efforts to bring classics to the public attention. She is now editor of ARGO, a journal published through the Hellenic Society. She writes regularly for the Spectator, the Daily Telegraph and Literary Review, among other publications, and her books include Catullus' Bedspread; In the Shadow of Vesuvius: a Life of Pliny; and Not Far From Brideshead: Oxford Between the Wars, which was a Waterstones, Daily Telegraph and Independent newspaper book of the year.
KENTARO FUJIMOTO is the director and deputy assistant minister of the Policy Coordination Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. He previously served in senior roles, including cabinet counsellor of the National Security Secretariat, counsellor in the Japanese Embassy in Washington, DC, and other offices within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which he joined in 1994. During his career, he was involved in major initiatives to transform Japan's national security policy, such as changing the interpretation of the constitution. He earned his MA from Johns Hopkins University SAIS in 1997 and graduated from the Law Faculty at the University of Tokyo in 1994.
FRANCIS GAVIN is the Giovanni Agnelli distinguished professor and the inaugural director of the Henry A Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS. Previously, he was the first Frank Stanton Chair in Nuclear Security Policy Studies at MIT and the Tom Slick professor of international affairs and the director of the Robert S Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas. He directs the Nuclear Studies Research Initiative, is a senior advisor to the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center, and is a life-member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Professor Gavin's writings include Gold, Dollars, and Power: the Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958-1971; Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age; and Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy. His book, Thinking Historically: a Guide to Statecraft and Strategy, is forthcoming.
KATJA HOYER is a historian and journalist. She is a visiting research fellow at King's College London and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Hoyer's expertise lies in German and European current affairs, which she comments on as a Global Opinions columnist for the Washington Post. She is a contributing writer for the Spectator ,the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt and other newspaper. She co-hosts the podcast 'The New Germany'. Her debut book Blood and Iron: the Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871-1918 was well-received by critics and academics. Her book Beyond the Wall is a new history of East Germany.
JULIAN JACKSON is emeritus professor of Modern French History at Queen Mary University of London. He is a fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society and has been honoured as both a Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques and as an Officier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. He is a leading authority on twentieth century France, having published a series of acclaimed works on the subject, including France: The Dark Years; The Fall of France, which won the Wolfson History Prize, and A Certain Idea of France, which won multiple awards and was longlisted for the 2019 Orwell Prize.
ALEXANDER LEE is an honorary research fellow in the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at the University of Warwick, where he specialises in the cultural and political history of Italy between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. He has previously held positions at the universities of Oxford, Luxembourg, and Bergamo. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a regular columnist for History Today and has written on a wide range of topics for the Sunday Telegraph, the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and the New Statesman, among other publications. His five books include Machiavelli: His Life and Times; Humanism and Empire: the Imperial Ideal in Fourteenth-Century Italy; and The Ugly Renaissance. He has also edited three further volumes, most recently The Culture and Politics of Regime Change in Italy, c.1494-c.1559.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL is the Laurence D Belfer professor of International Affairs at Harvard University. A native of Stockholm, Sweden, Professor Logevall earned his PhD in US foreign relations history from Yale University. He is a former president of the Society for Historians for American Foreign Relations. He is the author or editor of 11 books on American politics and foreign policy. His book Embers of War: the Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam won the Pulitzer Prize for History, among other prizes. His most recent book is JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956, which received the Elizabeth Longford Prize and was The Times Biography of the Year as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
JAMES MARRIOTT is a columnist at The Times covering society, literature and the arts. Previously he worked as an assistant on The Times's books desk. He previously worked in the rare book trade, specialising in seventeenth-century poetry.
RORY MEDCALF is head of the National Security College at the Australian National University. His career spans diplomacy, academia, intelligence analysis, journalism and think tanks. He was a senior strategic analyst with Australia's peak intelligence agency, and a diplomat with service in India, Japan and Papua New Guinea. In 2022 Professor Medcalf was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for service to international relations and tertiary education. He is a member of the ASEAN Regional Forum Register of Experts and Eminent Persons and the Scientific Advisory Council of the Finnish Institute for International Affairs. His publications include the book Indo-Pacific Empire.
HENRIK MEINANDER is a professor of History at the University of Helsinki, formerly curator of the Mannerheim Museum in Helsinki and head of the Finnish Institute in Stockholm. A specialist in the history of sport, military history, and post-war political history, he has also written extensively about broader Finnish historical themes. He is a fellow of the Finnish Science Society, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters. In 2017 he was appointed as a Commander in the Royal Order of the Polar Star. His publications include A History of Finland and Mannerheim, Marshal of Finland: a Life in Geopolitics.
MUNIRA MIRZA is the chief executive of Civic Future, a non-partisan organisation devoted to identifying emerging talents and equipping them with the skills required to navigate the British political system. Previously, she was the director of the Number 10 Policy Unit between 2019-2022, where she chiefly advised the Prime Minister on UK domestic policy and before that served as deputy mayor for Education and Culture in London. She has worked in the cultural sector, academia and business, and served on the boards of the Royal Opera House, Institute of Contemporary Arts and Royal College of Music. She is the author of Politics and Culture: the Case for Universalism.
CHARLES MOORE, Lord Moore of Etchingham, is a journalist and biographer. He was editor of the Daily Telegraph between 1995 and 2003, its sister publication the Sunday Telegraph between 1992 and 1995 and the Spectator, between 1984 and 1990. He still writes regularly for all three, and frequently makes appearances in other print and television media. In 2020, he was elevated to a life peerage. He sits in the House of Lords as a non-affiliated peer. He was personally selected by Margaret Thatcher to be her authorised biographer, a task he would duly accomplish in three volumes: Margaret Thatcher: the Authorised Biography, Volume One: Not for Turning; Volume Two: Everything She Wants; and Volume Three: Herself Alone.
KENNETH PAYNE is a professor of Strategy at King's College London. His research focuses on political psychology and strategic studies. He has consulted for the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States and appeared before parliamentary inquiries in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. His works include I Warbot: The Dawn of Artificially Intelligent Conflict; Strategy, Evolution, and War: from Apes to Artificial Intelligence; The Psychology of Strategy: Exploring Rationality in the Vietnam War; and The Psychology of Modern Conflict: Evolutionary Theory, Human Nature and a Liberal Approach to War.
GUDRUN PERSSON is deputy research director at the Swedish Defence Research Agency and associate professor at the Department of Slavic Studies, Stockholm University. She is an expert in Russian foreign policy and Russian military strategic thought, and is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences and the Royal Swedish Society of Naval Sciences. In 2023 she received HM The King's Medal (8th size) 'for outstanding research in the field of security policy'. She has published numerous monographs and articles, including Learning from Foreign Wars: Russian Military Thinking 1859-73.
ALINA POLYAKOVA is president and CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) as well as an adjunct professor of European studies at Johns Hopkins SAIS. She is a recognised expert on transatlantic relations, European security, Russian foreign policy, digital authoritarianism, and populism in democracies. She was the founding director for Global Democracy and Emerging Technology at the Brookings Institution and prior to that served as director of research for Europe and Eurasia at the Atlantic Council She is the author of the book, The Dark Side of European Integration, which examines the rise of far-right political movements in Europe, as well as dozens of major reports and articles.
SERGEY RADCHENKO is the Wilson E Schmidt distinguished professor at the Henry A Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins SAIS. His expertise lies in the Cold War, nuclear history, and Russian and Chinese foreign and security policies. He has served as a consultant for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and as a political analyst at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is a frequent contributor to the Spectator, Foreign Affairs, Engelsberg Ideas, and the New York Times. His publications include Two Suns in the Heavens: the Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy; Unwanted Visionaries: the Soviet Failure in Asia; and To Run the World: the Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power.
ISKANDER REHMAN is an Ax:son Johnson fellow at the Kissinger Center, John Hopkins SAIS and senior fellow for Strategic Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council. His expertise lies in history, grand strategy, and US defence strategy in Asia. He has published a number of think-tank monographs, book chapters, and articles in journals such as Survival, the Washington Quarterly, the Naval War College Review and Asian Security. He is a contributing editor to War on the Rocks, and his work has also featured in the Guardian, Engelsberg Ideas, the Financial Times and the Economist, among others. He is the author of Planning for Protraction: a Historically Informed Approach to Great Power War and Sino-US Competition, an IISS Adelphi monograph.
ANDREAS RÖDDER holds the chair for Modern and Contemporary History at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and is the Helmut Schmidt distinguished visiting professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS, supported by DAAD and the German Federal Foreign Office. He has been a member of the board of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation since 2006, participated in the Chatham House Commission on Democracy and Technology (2019-20), and has been appointed to the Commission on Integration established by the German Federal Government in 2019. He has published six major books, including a history of the Federal Republic of Germany, a history of German Reunification and a history of the 'German problem' in Europe since the nineteenth century.
KORI SCHAKE is a senior fellow and the director of Foreign and Defence Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). She was previously the deputy director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. She has worked at the US State Department, the US Department of Defense, and the National Security Council at the White House. She has also taught at Stanford, West Point, Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, the National Defense University, and the University of Maryland. In addition to being a contributing writer at The Atlantic and War on the Rocks, Dr Schake is the author of five books, among them America vs the West: Can the Liberal World Order Be Preserved?; and Safe Passage: the Transition from British to American Hegemony.
MICHAEL SCOTT is a professor in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick and director of the Warwick Institute of Engagement. He is a National Teaching fellow and principal fellow of the Higher Education Academy; fellow of the Royal Historical Society; member of the Royal Society Public Engagement Committee; trustee and director of Classics For All and an Honorary Citizen of Delphi. He was the recipient of the 2021 Classical Association Prize, in recognition of his efforts to bring classics to public attention. His publications include From Democrats to Kings: the Downfall of Athens to the Epic Rise of Alexander the Great; Space and Society in the Greek and Roman Worlds; and Ancient Worlds: an Epic History of East and West.
NATHAN SHACHAR studied Arabic, philosophy and Spanish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a foreign correspondent covering Israel-Palestine, Turkey and Spain. His books and essays have received some of the most prestigious Swedish literary awards, including the Övralid Prize in 2014. His works in English include The Gaza Strip: its History and Politics from the Pharaohs to the Israeli Invasion of 2009; The Lost World of Rhodes: Greeks, Italians, Jews and Turks between Tradition and Modernity; and The Johnson Line and Latin America.
EDWARD STRINGER is a former air marshal in the Royal Air Force who served as the director-general of the Defence Academy and Joint Force Development (DG JFD) until 2021. First commissioned in 1982, he initially served as a Jaguar pilot and weapons instructor, seeing action in the Gulf War, before holding successively more senior operational commands in the Balkans, Operation Northern Watch, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. In 2015, he was appointed as the assistant chief of the Defence Staff (Operations), where he had responsibility for everything from flood-relief to the Nuclear Deterrent. While DG JFD he had responsibility for developing the conceptual elements of UK fighting power, including concepts, doctrine, training, and education. He contributes regularly to publications including the Financial Times, The Atlantic and the Daily Telegraph.
LUCY WARD is an author and journalist. She initially worked as an education correspondent for the Independent, before spending more than five years as a Lobby correspondent in the UK's Houses of Parliament for the Guardian during Tony Blair's premiership. After a stint living in Moscow reignited her passion for Russian history, she published her debut book The Empress and the English Doctor, which tells the story of Catherine the Great's decision to summon the Quaker physician Thomas Dimsdale to St Petersburg to inoculate her and her son Paul against smallpox. The book was shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize 2022.
ANNA WIESLANDER is the director for Northern Europe at the Atlantic Council and concurrently serves as secretary general of the Swedish Defence Association, a non-political NGO which for nearly 130 years has promoted knowledge on defence and security among the Swedish public. She also chairs the Institute for Security and Development Policy, a Stockholm-based think-tank with a focus on Central and South-East Asia. She was previously deputy director at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, a Swedish think-tank focused on foreign policy, and before that served as head of Speaker's Office at the Swedish Parliament. In 2019 she was elected as a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences as well as the Swedish Society for International Affairs. She is frequently invited to speak on her areas of expertise by media outlets such as BBC, Reuters, Politico and The Atlantic.
PHILIP ZELIKOW is a professor of history at the University of Virginia and a distinguished visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. An attorney and former career diplomat, he served on the National Security Council staff in the George H W Bush White House, then taught at Harvard before moving to Virginia. He has served in one capacity or another in six administrations. His last full-time service was as the counselor of the Department of State, a deputy to Secretary Condi Rice. He directed the 9/11 Commission and led the Covid Crisis Group that produced 'Lessons from the Covid War: an Investigative Report'. His most recent book is The Road Less Travelled: the Secret Turning Point of the Great War.
