Dr Huw Dylan

Huw Dylan is a Reader in Intelligence and International Security at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. He is also an Associated Researcher at the Centre for Intelligence Studies in the Norwegian Intelligence School. His work is focused on intelligence in the Cold War and beyond, with a specific focus on deception operations, intelligence in diplomacy, and covert action. He has published widely on these fields in academic journals and in the press. His first monograph, Defence Intelligence and the Cold War, was published with Oxford University Press. His latest published book was The CIA and the Pursuit of Security, with Edinburgh University Press. He is currently working on an AHRC funded project on ‘Writers in Intelligence: The Secret State and the Public Sphere.’  

Research Interests

• Intelligence Studies
• Cold War History
• Deception Operations
• Covert Action
• Secret Diplomacy
• Intelligence Culture

Teaching

Huw Dylan leads and contributes to many academic and executive education courses focused on intelligence and security. These include the core of the MA Intelligence and International Security, Intelligence in Peace and War. His teaching at the MA level is concentrated on The Past and Present of British Intelligence, which traces the origins and operations of the UK’s intelligence machinery; Espionage; A Global History, which offers an international perspective on the development and evolution of intelligence; and Influence: Covert Action, Active Measures, and Deception, which examines the manner in which states seek to use secret power to pursue their goals.

He has supervised a number of PhD students to completion, and is happy to offer PhD supervision in the following broad areas:

• Intelligence history
• Contemporary intelligence and security issues
• Warning, deception, and surprise
• British Cold War history
• US Cold War history

Publications

Books

• Defence Intelligence and the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 2014)
• The CIA and the Pursuit of Security (Edinburgh University Press, 2020)
• The Palgrave Handbook of Security, Risk, and Intelligence (Palgrave, 2017) 

Research articles

• ‘SIS, Grigori Tokaev, and the London Controlling Section : New perspectives on a Cold War defector and Cold War deception’ in War in History, Vol. 26, No. 4.
• ‘Operation TIGRESS : deception for counterintelligence and Britain’s 1952 atomic test’ in Journal of Intelligence History, Vol. 14, No. 1.
• ‘Super-weapons and Subversion: British Deterrence by Deception Operations in the Early Cold War’ in Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 38, No. 5.

For a full list of publications see his pure profile.