Professor Gwyn Prins Is the Director of the LSE Mackinder Programme for the Study of Long

Professor Gwyn Prins is a professor at the London School of Economics and the director of the LSE Mackinder Programme for the Study of Long Wave Events. He joined LSE in 2000 successively as Professorial Research Fellow and then (2002-7) took the first stint as the first Alliance Research Professor jointly at LSE and Columbia University, New York. For over twenty years he was a Fellow and the Director of Studies in History at EmmanuelCollege, Cambridge, and a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Cambridge. In the 1970s he lived and researched in Africa before returning to teach in Cambridge. During the later 1990s he wasSenior Fellow in the Office of the Special Adviser on Central and Eastern European Affairs, Office of the Secretary-General of NATO, Brussels, and the Visiting Senior Fellow in the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency of the UK Ministry of Defence. He continues to be involved in collaborative research work in the defence research community, principally on strategic assessment methods and latterly on naval and maritime issues. He was the Consultant on Security at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research of the British Meteorological Office, Bracknellfor four years to 2003helping climate scientists to understand why their findings did not translate smoothly into appropriate political action. Recent collaborative work on climate politics (with Professor S. Rayner in Nature “Time to ditch Kyoto” and a joint essay, The Wrong trousers: radically rethinking climate change) explains why the Kyoto Protocol was doomed to fail and what to do instead. He is involved in working groups studying the fundamentals of British security for the 21st century (co-author of “Risk, Threat and Security: the British Case” in the RUSI Journal February 2008). The Programme is also involved in research on possible futures for Europe. He broadcasts regularly on current affairs and lectures widely on many subjects, notably connected with strategy and defence, national and global security, including terrorism, European affairs, development and African issues, the politics of the environment and generally on trying to understand the deeper currents that swirl through today’s confusing world.