Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman
Vice-Principal (Strategy & Development)
Email: kcl-vppa2@kcl.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)20 7848 3984
Fax: +44 (0)20 7848 3668
Address: King's College London
James Clerk Maxwell Building
57 Waterloo Road
London SE1 8WA
Areas of interest
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Contemporary Defence and Foreign Policy Issues
Biography
Sir Lawrence Freedman has been Professor of War Studies at King's College London since 1982, and Vice-Principal since 2003. He was educated at Whitley Bay Grammar School and the Universities of Manchester, York and Oxford. Before joining King's he held research appointments at Nuffield College Oxford, IISS and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1995 and awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 1996, he was appointed Official Historian of the Falklands Campaign in 1997. He was awarded the KCMG (Knight Commander of St Michael and St George) in 2003. He was appointed in June 2009 to serve as a member of the official inquiry into Britain and the 2003 Iraq War.
Research Projects
Strategic Scripts for the 21st Century
This project involves three linked strands, each geared to developing the idea of 'strategic scripts' as a means of addressing a broad range of security issues.
The first will explore the extent to which strategies can be presented as scripts, rather than as plans, and how this might be a useful device for translating research into policy in areas of actual or potential conflict. This will consider the distinctive features of this research compared with other areas of public policy.
The second and third strands will apply the concept of strategic scripts to two contrasting areas of security policy. One will examine the interaction between the current push for substantial nuclear disarmament, even up to full abolition, and established theories of deterrence, and take in the 2010 Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. The other will contrast the strategic scripts of al Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups, from 1998 to 2011, and compare them with those developed within two other radical traditions, Marxism within industrialised countries and the secular, anti-colonial third world movements which came to the fore in the 1950s and 1960s.
Events
The project will host a series of three workshops in the Autumn 2010-Winter 2011 on the future of nuclear weapons. The first workshop, to be held on 28 October, will deal with the topic of nuclear use.
The project will also be hosting a conference in June 2011 entitled: 'Making it Personal: Anglo-American Perceptions of Middle East "Adversaries" and the Shaping of Strategy'.
For a list of publications, please see:
Freedman-Publications.-2013.-Prof-Sir-Lawrence