Robin Niblett Keynote Speaker

Sir Robin Niblett is a Distinguished Fellow at Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs), and was the Director and Chief Executive of Chatham House between January 2007 and July 2022. Robin is also a Distinguished Fellow with the Asia Society Policy Institute; Senior Adviser with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS); and serves on the International Advisory Board of Brown Advisory, the US investment firm.

From 2023 to 2025, Robin was Senior Adviser with Hakluyt, the London-based strategic advisory firm. Previously, he was the Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer of CSIS in Washington. During his final two years at CSIS, he also served as Director of the CSIS Europe Programme and its Initiative for a Renewed Transatlantic Partnership.

His book ‘The New Cold War: How the Contest Between the US and China Will Shape Our Century‘ was published in 2024.  Previous books include ‘Ready to Lead?: Rethinking America’s Role in a Changed World‘.

Robin is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on Geopolitics and was its Co-Chair from 2020-22. He served as Chair of the Experts Group for the 2014 NATO Summit and Chair of the British Academy’s Steering Committee of Languages for Security Project (2013).  He is a frequent panellist at conferences on geopolitics, Europe and transatlantic relations and has testified to British parliamentary Committees and US Congressional Committees. His commentary and analysis have appeared in Foreign Affairs, the Financial Times, the Washington Post, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian, among others. He is a regular commentator on Bloomberg ‘Surveillance’, BBC News, and CNN International.

Robin was appointed Companion of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 2015 New Year’s Honours and Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in HM The Queen’s 2022 Platinum Jubilee Birthday Honours, for services to international relations and promoting the UK as a global centre for foreign policy. He received his BA in modern languages and MPhil and DPhil in international relations from New College, Oxford.  His doctoral thesis was entitled ‘The European Community and the Central European Three, 1989–92 : a study of the Community as an international actor’.   In September 2026, he will taking up the Wardenship of New College, Oxford.