Bill Emmott Keynote Speaker

Bill Emmott is a deeply experienced writer and thinker about geopolitics and geoeconomics, especially on Asia, globalisation and international security. He sees himself as on a constant mission to analyse and explain the emerging shape of the new world order, an order characterised by recurrent shocks and crises that put a high premium on the need both for resilience and learning ability.

He is chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies; chairman of the Japan Society of the UK; chairman of the board of Trinity College Dublin’s Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute; and Chairman of the Wake Up Foundation, which uses film to foster understanding of the challenges facing western societies which he co-founded in 2013 with an Italian film-maker, Annalisa Piras.

He was Co Director for the Global Commission for Post-Pandemic Policy whose purpose is to enable informed discourse and decision-making and to frame priorities and help build consensus on policy solutions to strengthen societal and global resilience.

Bill was Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, the world’s leading weekly magazine on current affairs and business, from 1993 until 2006.

The author of 15 books, on Japan, Asia, Italy and the 20th century, his latest is “Japan’s Far More Female Future-Increasing Gender Equality and Reducing Workplace Insecurity Will Make Japan Stronger‘ – published in September 2020 by Oxford University Press. The book analyses the economic impact of the growing number of females in higher education in Japan. His other books include. “The Fate of the West: The Battle to Save the World’s Most Successful Political Idea” (2017), ‘Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India, and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade‘ (2009) and ‘Good Italy, Bad Italy: Why Italy Must Conquer Its Demons to Face the Future‘ (2013).

He has also co-written and narrated an acclaimed documentary film about Italy’s political and economic decline, “Girlfriend in a Coma” (2013) and was executive producer of a controversial documentary about the EU and populism, “The Great European Disaster Movie” (2015). Both were broadcast on BBC Four, Sky Italia and other channels worldwide.

Bill is a member of the Global Advisory Board of the University of Tokyo and is an Ushioda Fellow at UTokyo’s Tokyo College; is a member of the senior advisory panel of Critical Resource, an extractive-industries and ESG consultancy; and is a consultant to Lansdowne Partners. He writes regular columns for La Stampa, Mainichi Shimbun, Nikkei Business and Project Syndicate.

He has honorary degrees from Warwick and City universities in Britain and Northwestern University in America, and is an honorary fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He was a Visiting Fellow in Practice at the Blavatnik School of Government in Oxford in 2015-17 and was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford in 2017-18.

In 2016 the Japanese government awarded him the “Order of the Rising Sun: Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon” for services to UK-Japan relations.