With Britain's Integrated Review having recently passed its twelve-month anniversary, the Centre for Grand Strategy at King’s College London plans to host three events examining its successes, failures, and implications.

This panel discussion with Q and A would tap into long running debates regarding the nature of Britain’s international posture, particularly towards Europe. It would seek to address the following questions, chosen specifically in an attempt to move beyond the tradition ‘continental v. maritime’ debate. Indeed, how have British policymakers wrestled with maritime and continental strategy since the end of the Cold War? How does the IR compare to these older policies? How does Britain conceptualise priorities between regions in its grand strategic approaches? What are the traditional themes of British Grand Strategy? Where do these fit within the IR?

Speaker Biographies

Dr. Maeve Ryan is a Senior Lecturer in History and Grand Strategy at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, where she co-directs the Centre for Grand Strategy, leading on the centre’s major research projects and impact activities. A former Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Dr. Ryan’s research focuses on modern global history, the history of slavery, emancipation, human rights, and humanitarian governance, British foreign policy and diplomatic history, and on interdisciplinary approaches to the study of world order in the 21st century. Before joining King’s in 2016, Dr. Ryan was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of History at the University of Leicester. She also helped to found the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Geopolitics. She holds an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in History from Trinity College Dublin. Dr. Ryan is the Impact Lead for the School of Security Studies and the convenor of the annual Strategy Masterclass series. She is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA).

Prof. Alessio Patalano is Professor of War & Strategy in East Asia, where he specializes in maritime strategy and doctrine, Japanese military history and strategy, East Asian Security, and Italian defence policy. From 2006 to 2015, he was visiting professor in Strategy at the Italian Naval War College (ISMM), Venice. In Japan, Dr Patalano has been a visiting professor at Aoyama Gakuin University and at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), both in Tokyo, and currently is Adjunct Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies, Temple University Japan and Visiting Professor at the Japan Maritime Comman and Staff College. At KCL, Dr. Patalano is the co-Director of the Centre for Grand Strategy's new Indo-Pacific Programme; and Director of the Asian Security and Warfare Research Group, the leading UK forum for research and education on East Asia and the King's Japan Programme. Dr Patalano is also a senior fellow with the Royal United Services Institute and at Policy Exchange.

Dr Rob Johnson is the Director of the Oxford Changing Character of War Centre, Senior Research Fellow of Pembroke College, and Associate of the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Norwegian Defence University Staff College and Adjunct Professor of Strategic Studies at Rennes School of Business. Dr. Johnson’s primary research interests are in strategy, its development, and the history of war which informs it; and he has published on the issue of civil-military relations in the making of strategy, and has examined the problems of maintaining internal security, the dynamics of insurrection, and the role of auxiliary forces. He currently assists the UK and NATO armed forces in planning for reconfigured structures and missions and is focused on the difficulties of ‘planning future war’ using historical cases. In May 2022, he was appointed as Director of the Secretary of State for Defence's Office of Net Assessment and Challenge.

 

Dr Basil Germond, SFHEA, FRGS is a Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University, UK. An expert in naval and maritime affairs he has published two books and in excess of 30 academic articles and book chapters on seapower, maritime security, and the geopolitics of the sea. Dr. Germond has recently advised public policy stakeholders on questions related to the maritime dimension of Global Britain as well as the impacts of climate change on maritime security.

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