Sir John is currently an Associate Fellow of Chatham House, the Strand Leader for Middle East and North Africa at Cambridge University’s Centre for Geopolitics, a Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange, the London-based think tank, for whom he has written extensively on Islamism, extremism more generally and some wider Middle Eastern issues, and an adviser to the Conservative Middle East Council. Between 1980-2015, he served as a British diplomat, initially in Abu Dhabi (1983-86), Malaysia (1989-92) and Kuwait (1995-98) before being appointed HM Ambassador to Burma (1999-2002). He was later HM Consul-General, Jerusalem (2003-06), Ambassador to Syria (2006-07), FCO Director for the Middle East and North Africa (2007-09), Ambassador to Iraq (2009-11), Special Representative to the National Transitional Council and subsequently Ambassador to Libya (2011) and Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (2012-2015). He took an active part in Sir John Chilcott’s Iraq Inquiry. In March 2014, he was asked by then Prime Minister David Cameron to lead a Policy Review into the Muslim Brotherhood and Political Islamism. Between 2015-2017, Sir John was the Bahrain-based Middle East Executive Director for The Institute for Strategic Studies and a Senior Fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. He holds a BA and a PhD from Jesus College, Cambridge, and studied at The School of Oriental and African Studies in London (Arabic and Burmese) and through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with the London and Ashridge Business Schools.
