Edward Adam Roberts

Professor Sir Adam Roberts was President of the British Academy from 2009 to 2013. A distinguished scholar in the field of international relations, he is an expert on civil resistance, international law, the United Nations, and strategic studies; his publications include works on the United Nations and on Hugo Grotius. Sir Adam is Senior Research Fellow in Oxford University's Department of Politics and International Relations. He is also an Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. He was the Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford University from 1986 to the end of 2007. Sir Adam was a member of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London from 2002 to 2008, was a member of the UK Defence Academy Advisory Board from 2003 to 2015, and a member of the UK Government’s Council for Science and Technology from 2010 to 2013. Adam Roberts was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1990 and, in 2002, he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George for services to the study and practice of international relations. He is a leading British scholar on the laws of war and how they influence, and are influenced by, the actual practice of states and their armed forces. He also specialises in international institutions, and how they operate in a world still divided by the sovereignty of states, by rival ideologies, and by religious clashes. He has also written extensively about the phenomenon of civil (non-violent) resistance, including its roles in international politics from the Prague Spring of 1968 to the Arab Spring of 2011. He is often called upon by the government of the United Kingdom, by parliamentary bodies, by various NGOs, and by foreign governments and international institutions, to give evidence and expert advice.