Louise Richardson

A native of Ireland, she studied history at Trinity College, Dublin before gaining a PhD from Harvard University, where she spent twenty years on the faculty of the Harvard Government Department and latterly as Executive Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She currently sits on the boards of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and numerous charities including the Booker Prize Foundation.

A political scientist by training, she is recognised internationally as an expert on terrorism and counter-terrorism. Her book What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat (2006) is widely accepted as one of the most influential in the field.

Her awards include the Sumner Prize for work towards the prevention of war and the establishment of universal peace, and honorary doctorates from the Universities  of Aberdeen, Edinburgh and St Andrews in Scotland; Trinity College Dublin and Queen’s College Belfast in Ireland; Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) in Russia; Notre Dame University in the USA and the University of the West Indies.

She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Academy of Social Sciences in the United Kingdom, an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She was made DBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2022.

After a seven-year term as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, she joined the Carnegie Corporation of New York as President in January 2023.

Louise Richardson is a member of the Booker Prize Foundation’s board of trustees.