I graduated with MLitt from the Centre for Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV) at University of St Andrews in 2015. My dissertation was ‘Students for a Democratic Society to Weather Underground – how did a non-violent, anti-war, peace movement became a violent terrorist group advocating the violent overthrow of the US Government? This dissertation looked at the social, political and psychological elements that drove this escalation from non-violence to political insurrection and presented a multi-causal explanation for this process with particular focus on the role of the State response to political dissent. The dissertation supported the contention that an extravagant and ill-conceived response to political dissent by the Nixon administration played a significant part in the escalation.
Following St Andrews, I graduated from Wolfson College, Oxford in 2017 with MSt in Historical Studies. My second dissertation was ‘The British Left and Malayan Independence, 1954-1957’. This dissertation looked at the role of the British Left in promoting Malayan independence during the Malayan Emergency and wider policies of the British Government in the post-colonial period. The dissertation centred on recently de-classified Hanslope Park archive of former restricted (‘Secret’) correspondence. The dissertation concluded that at Malayan ‘Merdeka’ in 1957, Britain maintained all the levers of external power. That is to say that Britain maintained control over their strategic commercial and defence related interests in Malaya and that Malayan independence ipso facto represented neo-colonialism and could not be considered to be a benevolent transfer of power.
Outside of academia, I am a company director with a British supply chain management group with a global network of offices and I am fortunate to be able to travel widely – particularly to the USA.