Sir Oliver Letwin
Visiting Professor
Biography
Oliver Letwin was elected to the UK Parliament in 1997, having previously been a Fellow of Darwin College Cambridge, a civil servant in Margaret Thatcher’s policy unit, and an investment banker. He served in the Shadow Cabinet for 10 years including stints as Shadow Home Secretary and Shadow Chancellor. In Government from 2010 to 2016, he was an architect of the Coalition and a senior minister for 6 years, serving as Minister for Government Policy and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He chaired the Home Affairs Committee and a range of other Cabinet Committees, acted as Minister for National Resilience, and was a member of the National Security Council. In Parliament from 2016 to 2019, he played an active role in the Brexit debates. He has been a privy councillor since 2002 and was knighted in 2016. He retired from Parliament in 2019. Currently, he is a Visiting Professor at KCL, where he chairs the Project for Peaceful Competition, a Vice President of the Great Britain China Centre, a Fellow of the Legatum Institute, a Senior Adviser to the Faraday Institution and to Teneo, and a member of the Advisory Council of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at Cambridge. He holds MA and PhD degrees from the University of Cambridge, has published widely in academic and popular journals, and is the author of a number of books.