Email: r dot j dot aldrich at warwick dot ac dot uk
Tel: 02476 523523
Room: E1.11
Advice and feedback hours: Wednesdays 1.00 & Thursday 2.00

Profile

Richard J. Aldrich is a Professor of International Security at the University of Warwick and joined PAIS in September 2007. His main research interests lie in the area of intelligence and security communities. His most recent book is The Black Door: Spies, Secret Intelligence and British Prime Ministers, co-authored with Rory Cormac which explores the interaction between intelligence and the UK core executive. This will be published by Collins on 29 April 2016.

Over the last few years he has led an AHRC project entitled "Landscapes of Secrecy: The Central Intelligence Agency and the Contested Record of US Foreign Policy, 1947-2001" which received follow on funding. This involved a team of eight scholars at the universities of Nottingham and Warwick who examined the creation of the public record of the CIA in realms such as history, memoirs, novels, film and the press. The end of project conference took place at the University of Nottingham in the East Midlands Conference Centre and the full conference is now available as a podcast. Some of the work of the team was published in a special edition of the journal History.

Research interests

He also maintains related interests in the future of cyber security, liberty and privacy, set against a background of accelerating globalization. These wider interests extend to developments in information technology, including public key cryptography. The technology of secrecy - particularly secure communications - has exerted an important but largely neglected influence upon the conduct of international relations. In 2010, he completed a history of GCHQ which was published by Collins and helps to lead the new Warwick Cyber Security GRP. In September 2016 he will take up a Levehulme Major Research Fellowship to investigate the future of secrecy.

Additional interests include contemporary history and how the past connects to the present. He advises a number of UK government departments on issues of records management, declassification and corporate memory.

He was co-editor of the journal Intelligence and National Security for eight years and now co-edits the companion book series Studies in Intelligence with Christopher Andrew.

Resources for Secret Intelligence: A Reader

Teaching and supervision

Normally he teaches on the following modules:

Nine Ideas of International Security: PO135 - BA Year 1 - term one. This is co-taught Davinia Hoggarth and nine colleagues from PaIS.

Vigilant State: The Politics of Intelligence: PO382 - BA Year 3 - both terms; This is co-taught with Jules Gaspard and Daniela Richterova.

Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency; PO972 - MA - term one

Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism; PO973 - MA - term two