Join us at Exeter College for an exclusive discussion with Ambassador Waltz about his distinguished career:

• 32nd U.S. Representative to the United Nations

• Former National Security Advisor to President Trump

• First Green Beret elected to Congress (2018)

• 26+ years in the U.S. Army and retired Colonel

• Multiple combat tours in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Africa

• Served on three key House committees and was Defence Policy Director for two Secretaries of Defence.

Discussion on diplomacy in Russia, with reflections from the front line of international relations, Tom Dodd. His distinguished career includes:

• British Minister and Deputy Head of Mission, Moscow (2022-2025)

• HM Ambassador to Finland (2018-2021)

• Chargé and Deputy Ambassador, Kabul

• Head of the FCO Counter Terrorism Department and Head of the South East Asia Department

• Senior policy and leadership roles in the Home Office, with extensive experience in security, intelligence assessment, international affairs, and Russia-related issues.

In collaboration with the Oxford Global Law Society, Oxford Politics Society and Stubbs Society, we are delighted to host Dr Marko Milanovic for a discussion on the legal dimensions of the US-Iran conflict.

Dr Marko Milanovic is a Professor of Public International Law at the University of Reading, Special Adviser to the Prosecutor General of Ukraine on war crimes accountability, and a Senior Fellow at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence.

He is a leading scholar in international law and human rights, contributing to ICC investigations and serving as a UN-appointed expert on human rights violations in Belarus.

Achim Steiner has lived one of the most remarkable international lives of his generation. The son of a German farmer who emigrated to Brazil, he was born in Rio Grande do Sul in 1961, a dual citizenship that would come to embody a career defined by crossing borders. He began not in the grand halls of the United Nations but in the field, working on rural development in Germany before moving to the International Union for Conservation of Nature across Southern Africa and Washington. From there his career traced the fault lines of the planet's ecological crisis: advising on the contested waters of the Mekong, leading the World Commission on Dams, then returning to the IUCN as Director-General just as climate change became the defining challenge of the age. In 2006, nominated by Kofi Annan, the General Assembly unanimously elected him Executive Director of UNEP, a mandate renewed and extended as he steered global environmental policy through Cancún, Doha, and Paris. He crowned that effort at the helm of the UN Development Programme, before returning to Oxford as Senior Fellow of the Oxford Martin School.

Together with Oxford Strategic Studies Group, we are very excited to host Vincent Ni, Asia Editor for the National Public Radio.

Ni leads a team of Asia-based correspondents whose award-winning reporting spans from Afghanistan to Japan across all NPR platforms. As an international journalist, with experience working for the BBC and The Guardian in London, Ni has received various awards for coverage on topics such as the war in Gaza.

This seminar will take place at Lincoln College.

Juliet Campbell CMG has lived one of the most remarkable diplomatic lives of her generation. She joined the Diplomatic Service in 1957, among the very first women to do so, and from that pioneering start went on to a career that traced the great arcs of post-war history. By 1967 she was in the Foreign Office News Department, and she later returned to King Charles Street to serve in the European Integration Department just as Harold Wilson embarked on his "fundamental renegotiation of the terms of entry" to the European Communities—a defining moment in Britain's long and complicated romance with Europe. From there her postings read like a roll-call of the century's most consequential capitals: Paris, Beijing, and Jakarta. She crowned her diplomatic career as Her Majesty's Ambassador to Luxembourg, where she hosted Margaret Thatcher and a stream of other VIPs, before turning her formidable energies to academia as Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge.

Former US Ambassador Jonathan Cohen and former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Bennett Freeman will be discussing creativity in diplomacy acoss governments, international institutions, corporations and civil society.

This event will take place at Pembroke College and is followed by a balloted dinner.

In conversation with Shashank Joshi

Former Ambassador Jonathan R. Cohen

A fireside chat with Lord William Hague.

In collaboration with Oxford Speaks.

Lord Peter spent 40 years as a member of the Diplomatic Service. His final post was Ambassador in Paris (2012-16). Before that he was the UK’s first National Security Adviser (2010-12), and in that role was the coordinator of the 2010 National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review. He was Permanent Under Secretary at the FCO and Head of the Diplomatic Service (2006-10). He spent much of his career working on politico-military issues and crisis management, including spells as the FCO Political Director (2001-3) and Permanent Representative to NATO (2003-6). He holds Honorary Degrees from the Universities of London, Kent and Bath and is an Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College Oxford.

“Israeli policy over the last 2 decades”- in collaboration with Oxford Speaks.

Sir Mark Sedwill was Cabinet Secretary from April 2018 to September 2020 and National Security Advisor from April 2017 to September 2020. Prior to this, Mark was the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office (2013-17), FCO Political Director (2012-13), NATO Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan (2010-11), HM Ambassador to Afghanistan (2009-10) and Director of UKvisas (2006-8). He joined the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in 1989, serving in Egypt, Iraq, Cyprus and Pakistan.

Mark was educated at the University of St Andrews and the University of Oxford. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Directors and President of the Special Forces Club.

Academy Fellow in Human Rights at the Queen Elizabeth II Academy for Leadership in International Affairs, Chatham House. Shaharzad is a human rights activist from Afghanistan, currently in exile, with a diverse professional background in human rights, media and culture, and youth mobilization. Her work experience spans from establishing and running a consultancy firm in Kabul, supporting Afghan civil society and media in her role as Country Director of Open Society Afghanistan, to working with the government on development issues and most recently leading Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

Shaharzad completed an MPhil at Oxford University in 2011; previously she obtained her BA (cum laude) from Smith College in the U.S.

H.E. Ambassador Fraser was appointed Ambassador of the Republic of Ireland to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 2022. He joined the Civil Service directly out of school, and soon moved to the Department of Foreign Affairs, working as a desk officer on the Middle East. After a period in the Department of Agriculture, Ambassador Fraser turned to Anglo-Irish relations, becoming director of the Northern Irish Division in 2004. He spent several years in the position of Assistant Secretary General of the Department of the Taoiseach, before being appointed Secretary General of this department, as well as Secretary General to the Government and Chairman of the National Economic and Social Council. His talk with the Society will focus on Ireland’s place in a wider geopolitical climate, UK-ROI relations, and the future of Northern Ireland.

Bonnie Glick is a senior adviser (non-resident) with the Project on Prosperity and Development at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). She was unanimously confirmed by the Senate to serve as the Deputy Administrator and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from January 2019 to November 2020. Bonnie worked for 12 years as a Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. Department of State. She later worked for IBM as a global account executive, where she coauthored three patents as part of the IBM Research Division. In her role as Deputy Administrator and COO, Glick's portfolio covered all agency programs worldwide (100+ countries) and all agency operations. Among the issues she championed were digital transformation, the significance of 5G as a development priority in emerging markets, private sector engagement, democracy and governance, global vaccine distribution, the Abraham Accords, and food security.

Former President of Colombia (2010-2018). Santos was the sole recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 for ending the longest armed conflict with the oldest guerrilla in the Western Hemisphere, as well as being the recipient of a series of other impressive accolades. These include the Global Statesman award during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, for his efforts to achieve peace in Colombia and for his distinguished career as a world leader, whilst Time magazine included him in the 2017 list of the 100 most influential public figures in the world, among other leaders such as Pope Francis and British Prime Minister Theresa May. He was the only Latin American leader included in that year's list.

Paul Docherty has spent most of his career in the British Council, the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. After reading Economic History at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, he taught English Language and Literature in Spain and at Moscow State University. He then joined the British Council after completing his M.Litt in Linguistics and his first overseas post was in Helsinki. He subsequently served as Cultural Attaché/Deputy Director of the British Council in Moscow, and Cultural Counsellor/Director of the British Council in Prague, Rome, and Paris. Postings in the UK included Director Communications, Director Scotland, and Director UK 2012. Paul has wide-ranging interests in international relations and diplomacy - especially cultural relations, public and cultural diplomacy and soft power – and has delivered guest lectures on these topics at universities and institutions across Europe and in the UK. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2008.

Principal of Hertford College, Oxford University, Tom Fletcher was previously the foreign policy adviser to three UK Prime Ministers (2007-11) and the UK’s Ambassador to Lebanon (2011-15). More recently he was a Visiting Professor at New York University (2015-20), advised the Global Business Coalition for Education, and chaired the International Advisory Council of the Creative Industries Federation. In 2018 he founded The Foundation for Opportunity which supports good people doing good things in public life. He also led a review of British diplomacy for the UK Foreign Office in 2016, and on the future of the United Nations for the UN Secretary General in 2017. Plus a report in 2018 on the skills the next generation need to thrive in the 21st century. He has published three books. ‘The Naked Diplomat: Power and Politics in the Digital Age’ (Harper Collins, June 2016), ‘Ten Survival Skills for a World in Flux’ (Harper Collins, February 2022) and ‘The Ambassador’ (Canelo, August 2022).

CEO Hermitage Capital Management, Head of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign and author of Red Notice. William Browder was the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005, when he was denied entry to the country and declared “a threat to national security” for exposing corruption in Russian state-owned companies. In 2008, Mr. Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, uncovered a massive fraud committed by Russian government officials that involved the theft of US $230 million of state taxes. Sergei testified against state officials involved in this fraud and was subsequently arrested, imprisoned without trial and systematically tortured. He spent a year in prison under horrific detention conditions, was repeatedly denied medical treatment, and died in prison on November 16, 2009. Since then, Mr. Browder has sought justice outside of Russia and started a global campaign for governments around the world to impose targeted visa bans and asset freezes on human rights abusers and highly corrupt officials.

Appointed in 2021 as Ambassador of Armenia to the United Kingdom, Ambassador Nersesyan studied in the new faculty of International Relations at Yerevan State University and entered his country’s new foreign service in 1997. The early years of his career focused on multilateral diplomacy: the OSCE and European Union. He was soon appointed Deputy Chief of Mission of Armenia’s Permanent Representative to the OSCE. After a role as Deputy Ambassador in the US, he became Assistant to Armenia’s President for international relations also covering the national security council for Armenia. coinciding with Armenia’s Velvet Revolution.

Appointed in 2021 as Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Mr. Suleymanov previously served as Azerbaijan’s long-time Ambassador to the United States of America for a full decade. Mr. Suleymanov also served as the nation’s first Consul General to Los Angeles and the Western States from 2005 to 2011 and as Senior Counselor at the Foreign Relations Department, Office of the President in Baku, Azerbaijan and as Press Officer of the Azerbaijani Embassy in Washington, DC. Mr. Suleymanov’s experience before joining diplomatic service includes working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Azerbaijan and Glaverbel Czech, a leading manufacturing company in East-Central Europe.