Professor Michael Clarke

Professor Michael Clarke is currently the Director General of the Royal United Services Institute. Until July 2007 he was Deputy Vice-Principal and Director of Research Development at King's College London, where he is now also Visiting Professor of Defence Studies. He was, from 1990 to 2001 the founding Director of the Centre for Defence Studies at King's. He was appointed Professor of Defence Studies in 1995. He was the founding Director of the International Policy Institute at King's College London from 2001-2005 and Head of the School of Social Science and Public Policy at KCL in 2004-05.

He has previously taught international politics at the Universities of Aberystwyth, Manchester and Newcastle upon Tyne, and also at the University of New Brunswick, and the Open University. He has been a Guest Fellow at The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, and a Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.

He has been a Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Defence Committee since 1997, having served previously with the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee 1995-6, and the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Bribery in 2009. In 2004 he was appointed the UK member of the United Nations Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. In 2009 he was appointed to the Prime Minister's National Security Forum and in 2010 to the Chief of Defence Staff's new Strategic Advisory Group. He also serves on the Strategic Advisory Panel on Defence for UK Trade and Industry.

His recent publications include: The Afghan Papers: Committing Britain to War in Helmand 2005-06, London, RUSI/Routledge 2011; United Kingdom: Strategic Posture Review, World Politics Review, November 2011; 'Does War Have a Future?, in Lindley-French and Boyar eds., The Oxford Handbook of War, Oxford, OUP, 2012.