Bill Durodié

Professor Bill Durodié is a Professor of Politics, Languages and International Studies at the University of Bath, UK,[1] as well as a former head of department there.[2]

Professor Bill Durodié
In Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, July 2012

Education

Durodié was educated at the Royal College of Science, part of Imperial College London, where he studied Physics. After completing a final year undergraduate project to map different types of supernovae onto the Morphological Catalogue of Galaxies, he was invited to start a PhD in Astronomy at the University of Manchester under the supervision of Professor Franz Daniel Kahn. His first research publication was in theoretical astrophysics,[3] based on a paper he presented at Princeton University in 1986.[4]

Early career

He then changed course, first pursuing a career in teaching (becoming Head of Maths at two inner-city comprehensive schools) and then urban regeneration (working in both the public and private sectors). During this time he also studied for a Master's degree in European Social Policy at the London School of Economics, and subsequently embarked on another PhD, this time in Politics, at the University of Oxford.

In 2007, he completed his doctorate in Risk Communication through the Centre for Decision Analysis and Risk Management in the School of Health and Social Sciences of Middlesex University (UK).[5]

As a Professor

His inaugural professorial lecture: The Politics of Risk and Resilience – Fear and Terror in a World without Meaning, was delivered on 29 October 2015.[6][7]

In the debate around the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, rejecting all of the official campaigns, he argued on the grounds of democratic accountability and moral autonomy for the UK to give up its membership of the European Union.[8][9] Eurasia Review reported that he told them that soon after the vote that, despite the largest mandate in British history, politicians and others would seek to deliver Brexit in name alone, but not in spirit.[10]

He was formerly Professor in the School of Humanitarian Studies at Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia,[11] where he was Program Head for the Conflict Analysis and Management programs. He maintains an on-going role as an Associate Faculty member there.[12] Before that he held positions coordinating the Homeland Defence research programme and then the Health and Human Security research programme within the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore,[13] as well as in the Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis at Cranfield University, part of the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom at Shrivenham,[14] and in the War Studies Group of King's College London.[15]

In 2014 he was appointed as a Visiting Professor to CELAP – the China Executive Leadership Academy in Pudong – one of China's top four national 'Party Schools', in Shanghai – a position officially renewed in 2018.[16][17][18] He has also conducted short courses for officials through the Shanghai Administration Institute,[19][20] and writes on the West's evolving relations with China,[21][22] as well as events surrounding the protests in Hong Kong.[23][24] He was an Associate Fellow of the International Security Programme at Chatham House in London for over a decade.[25]

Appointed as a Visiting Professor to the Shanghai National Party School, China, September 2014.

His main research interest is to examine the causes and consequences of contemporary perceptions of risk, as well as how these are framed and communicated across a wide range of contemporary social issues. His work explores the limitations of risk management and of the so-called precautionary principle. He has questioned the motivations behind the growing demand to engage the public in dialogue and decision-making in relation to science.[26] He has also sought to draw attention to the parallels between Islamist terrorism and contemporary Western nihilism, noting that many who engage in the former draw their roots from the latter and specifically stating that 'Islam, for them at least, was more a motif than a motive'.[27]

He publicly defended the need for BP to continue its exploration work in the Gulf of Mexico at the time of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill,[28] and he supported the initial response of the Japanese authorities to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant emergency.[29][30] On the other hand, he has questioned the dynamic behind environmental campaigns against pulp and palm-oil producers in Indonesia,[31] as well as the British government's interpretation of the implications of the 2011 England riots.[32]

His work proposes that Securitization (international relations) theory is too limited a framework through which to understand the British government's new Prevent Duty.[33] This latter imposes new obligations on public bodies to tackle so-called Radicalization, which he proposes is better understood as being driven by a process of disengagement.[34] He has also addressed what he sees as the demise of strategic thinking and a concomitant crisis of diplomacy, most recently evidenced by the responses of senior British government ministers to the Sergei Skripal, former-spy poisoning episode in the UK.[35]

His 2011 articles investigating how the World Health Organization addressed the 2009 flu pandemic,[36][37][38] anticipated the cultural and institutional responses to COVID-19 which, he proposed, would lead to considerably more fatalities than the virus itself.[39] His concern since, was that the episode would lead to: "suspicion, avoidance and intolerance towards others, an unwillingness to embrace life’s uncertainties, fear of future emergencies, a dystopian, anti-human outlook and narrative, and all too willing acceptance of the curtailment of civil liberties, combined with a paralysing dependence on others".[40]

Giving the Vincent Briscoe Annual Security Lecture, Imperial College London, November 2017.

Publications

His publication list includes articles in academic journals,[41] and on the reading lists of various universities[42][43][44][45] – as well as a media profile from both writing press commentaries and appearing in broadcasts.

He featured in the 2004 BBC British Academy of Film and Television Arts award-winning documentary series produced by Adam Curtis; 'The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear'.[46] The Guardian newspaper journalist Madeleine Bunting to describe him as: "one of the most perceptive commentators featured in the series".[47]

Manifesto Club

Durodié was one of the founding members of the Manifesto Club,[48] a network of individuals originally established to celebrate human achievement and challenge social, cultural and political pessimism, closely associated with the Spiked network of organisations emerging from the former Revolutionary Communist Party.[49][50][51] He is a regular speaker at Spiked's annual Battle of Ideas festival in London,[52][53] and is a regular contributor to Spiked's website.[54]

He gave the opening key-note address to the Society for Risk Analysis Europe Conference in 2016.[55] On 15 November 2017, following in the steps of former US Secretary for Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and the UK Minister of State for Universities and Science David Willetts, he became the 8th person and first alumnus to give the annual Vincent Briscoe Lecture to the Institute for Security Science and Technology at Imperial College London.[56][57]

Selected journal articles

References
  1. University of Bath Staff Profile
  2. Political Studies Association Directory 2016
  3. Towards a Self-Consistent Model of a Galaxy
  4. Structure and Dynamics of Elliptical Galaxies
  5. Middlesex University Research Repository
  6. Lecture Video
  7. Lecture Recording
  8. University of Bath, School of Management, Brexit Debate
  9. The Conversation – £4,300 to quit the EU? Bring me my cheque book
  10. Penza News (15 August 2016). "Lack Of Clear Plan For Brexit Has Negative Impact On British Economy And Social Moods – Analysis". Eurasia Review. Retrieved 21 February 2023.
  11. Royal Roads University, School of Humanitarian Studies, Old Bio
  12. Royal Roads University, College of Interdisciplinary Studies, Bio
  13. "RSIS Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies – People". Archived from the original on 2018-06-12. Retrieved 2018-11-07.
  14. "The Defence Academy Journal". Archived from the original on 2012-08-10. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  15. King’s College London Archive
  16. BILL DURODIé受聘担任学院兼职教授
  17. CELAP – Bill Durodié Appointed as CELAP’s Visiting Professor
  18. University of Bath – Professor Bill Durodié made Visiting Professor in China
  19. Shanghai Administration Institute
  20. Shanghai provincial government directors course
  21. Misinterpreting China and Lessons from the Huawei Debacle
  22. US-China trade war, The Australian
  23. Hong Kong's protesters shouldn't count on American virtue-signallers to solve their deadlock with Beijing, The Independent
  24. If this is what democracy looks like to these protestors, then Beijing will win hands down
  25. Chatham House Staff
  26. Times Higher Education Supplement – Why I ... think a dialogue with the public will undermine science
  27. "Reconstruction Vol.11, No.4 Post-9/11 Nihilism and the Mission for Meaning". Archived from the original on 2014-10-09. Retrieved 2015-05-18.
  28. Beyond Petroleum – The Limits of Risk Management
  29. Today – Disaster Hacks should stick to the facts
  30. Today – Sounding worse, when things are really getting better
  31. The Jakarta Post – Friction and vested interests in pulp and palm-oil production
  32. Journal of Risk Research Vol.15, No.4 – The Changing Nature of Riots in the Contemporary Metropolis: From Ideology to Identity
  33. Prevent Duty Guidance
  34. Leeds Salon – Radicalisation and Security
  35. The Lost Art Of Diplomacy
  36. H1N1 – The Social Costs of Cultural Confusion
  37. WHO’s learned nothing from the swine-flu panic?
  38. H1N1 – The Social Costs of Élite Confusion
  39. Futures Diagnosis Blog
  40. Daily Telegraph Feature
  41. Personal Website – Publications
  42. Harvard University, The Meaning of Madness – Course Outline
  43. "University College London, Policy Issues in the Life Science – Course Outline". Archived from the original on 2017-02-11. Retrieved 2017-02-10.
  44. "Universite du Quebec, Departement de Science Politiques – Descriptif du Cours" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-27. Retrieved 2012-07-12.
  45. University of Ottawa, Security and Conflict – Course Outline
  46. The Nightmare Delusion
  47. The Guardian – The Age of Anxiety by Madeleine Bunting
  48. Reason – Reclaiming the Enlightenment
  49. Shipman, Tim (2020-08-16). "Did No 10 power couple back peerage for ex‑communist Claire Fox? – News". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 2020-08-26.
  50. Bright, Sam (2019-11-06). "Boris Johnson's policy chief is a former member of the Revolutionary Communist Party". Scram News. Retrieved 2020-08-26.
  51. Mason, Rowena (2019-08-05). "Boris Johnson ushers in radical new era of special advisers". The Guardian. Retrieved 2020-08-26.
  52. Speaker Profile
  53. Battle of Ideas
  54. "Bill Durodié, Author at spiked". spiked. 2018-09-26. Retrieved 2020-08-26.
  55. SRA-Europe Conference 2016
  56. Big Data needs Big Ideas
  57. Research must transcend ‘dystopian mindset’ of the past half-century
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