Ali M. Ansari

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 uni