Christopher Coker is Director of ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ IDEAS. He was Professor of International Relations at ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, retiring in 2019. He is a former twice serving member of the Council of the Royal United Services Institute, a former NATO Fellow and a regular lecturer at Defence Colleges in the UK, US. Rome, Singapore, and Tokyo. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the National Institute for Defence Studies In Tokyo, the Rajaratnam School for International Studies Singapore, the Political Science Dept in Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok and the Norwegian and Swedish Defence Colleges. His publications include Rebooting Clausewitz (Hurst, 2015), Men at War: what fiction has to tell us about conflict from the Iliad to Catch 22 (Hurst, 2014); The Improbable War: China, the US and the logic of Great Power War (Hurst, 2015); Future War (Polity, 2016), and The Rise of the Civilizational State (Polity, 2019). His most recent book is Why War? (2020).
Ben Hodges holds the Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies at the Center for European Policy Analysis. General Hodges has served in a variety of Joint and Army Staff positions to include Tactics Instructor; Chief of Plans, 2nd Infantry Division in Korea; Aide-de-Camp to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe; Chief of Staff, XVIII Airborne Corps; Director of the Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell on the Joint Staff; Chief of Legislative Liaison for the United States Army; and Commander, NATO Allied Land Command (İzmir, Turkey). His last military assignment was as Commanding General, United States Army Europe (Wiesbaden, Germany) from 2014 to 2017. He retired from the U.S. Army in January 2018.
Guy Monson is Chief Investment Officer and a managing partner of Sarasin & Partners. He has played a major role in developing Bank Sarasin’s London based subsidiary, Sarasin Investment Management Ltd (SIML) since 1988. Monson founded and is a senior fund manager on the EquiSar Global Thematic funds and is also a senior fund manager on the GlobalSar family of balanced funds. He also manages a range of institutional global thematic equity and global balanced mandates in various regulatory jurisdictions.
Susan Scholefield has had a distinguished career in the Civil Service. Roles in the Balkans Secretariat, Northern Ireland Office, and in the Cabinet Office as Head of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat were followed by a series of top level positions in the Ministry of Defence, latterly as Director General, Human Resources and Corporate Services. In 1999 she was awarded a CMG in the New Year’s Honours for her work on Bosnia.
Leon Hartwell is the Sotirov Fellow at ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ IDEAS and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) in Washington D.C. His research interests include conflict resolution, genocide, transitional justice, diplomacy, democracy, and the Western Balkans. Previously, Hartwell was CEPA’s Acting Director of the Transatlantic Leadership Program and a Title VIII Fellow. From 2012 to 2013, he was also the Senior Policy Advisor for Political and Development Cooperation at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Zimbabwe, where his work included government and civil society engagement, political reporting, peace building projects, and supporting human rights defenders. In 2019, Hartwell completed a joint doctoral degree summa cum laude at Leipzig University (Germany) and Stellenbosch University (South Africa). His thesis analyzed the use of mediation in the resolution of armed conflicts.