Academic director and faculty

Professor Chris Alden teaches International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and is Director of LSE IDEAS. He is a Research Associate with South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA).

Professor Christopher Coker is Director of LSE IDEAS. His publications include Rebooting Clausewitz (Hurst, 2015), Men at War: what fiction has to tell us about conflict from the Iliad to Catch 22 (Hurst, 2014); The Improbable War: China, the US and the logic of Great Power War (Hurst, 2015); Future War (Polity, 2016), and The Rise of the Civilizational State (Polity, 2019). His most recent book is Why War? (2020).He was Professor of International Relations at LSE, retiring in 2019. He is a former twice serving member of the Council of the Royal United Services Institute, a former NATO Fellow and a regular lecturer at Defence Colleges in the UK, US. Rome, Singapore, and Tokyo. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the National Institute for Defence Studies in Tokyo, the Rajaratnam School for International Studies Singapore, the Political Science Dept in Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok and the Norwegian and Swedish Defence Colleges. 

Dr Mary Martin is director of the UN Business and Human Security Initiative at LSE. Her research focuses on the role of the private sector in conflict and peacebuilding and private security in the international system. She was co-ordinator of the Human Security Study Group 2006-1010, reporting to the High Representative of the European Union. Dr Martin holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Cambridge. Her expertise focuses on Conflict, Peacebuilding, Human security and International Relations.

Dr Robert Falkner is an Associate Professor of International Relations and the Research Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. Previously, he held academic positions at the universities of Oxford, Kent and Essex, and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University. His research focuses on global environmental politics and international political economy, with a particular focus on climate policy and the role of business in international relations. He has published widely in these areas, including The Handbook of Global Climate and Environment Policy (edited, 2016) and Business Power and Conflict in International Environmental Politics (2008). Dr Falkner is an associate fellow of Chatham House and a Distinguished Fellow of the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at Toronto University. He also serves on the editorial boards of the journals Global Environmental Politics, Global Policy, Polity, and Schmollers Jahrbuch: Journal of Contextual Economics.

Jie (Cherry) Yu is is senior research fellow on China at Chatham House, focusing on the decision-making process of Chinese foreign policy as well as China’s economic diplomacy. She frequently comments in major media outlets such as BBC News and the Financial Times; and regularly briefs senior policy practitioners from the G7 member governments, the Silk Road Fund in Beijing. She also frequently advises major FTSE 100 corporates and leading European financial institutions on China’s political landscape. Yu Jie has testified on China’s foreign affairs at various UK Parliament committees and was previously head of China Foresight at LSE IDEAS. She remains as an associate fellow with LSE IDEAS. Prior to LSE, she was a management consultant, specializing in Chinese state-owned enterprises investments in Europe and Chinese market entry strategies for European conglomerates at the London Office of Roland Berger. The London School of Economics and Political Science recognized her as one of its ‘Leading Women’ in 2018 for her contribution in teaching and engaging the public debates on China’s foreign affairs. She is a “Young Leader” for the Shangri-La Dialogue.       

Professor Michael Cox is a Founding Director of LSE IDEAS. He was Director of LSE IDEAS between 2008 and 2019.

He was appointed to a Chair at the LSE in 2002, having previously held positions in the UK at The Queen's University of Belfast and the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth. He helped establish the Cold War Studies Centre at the LSE in 2004 and later co-founded LSE IDEAS in 2008 with Arne Westad.

Professor Cox has lectured to universities world-wide as well as to several government bodies and many private companies. He has also served as Chair of the United States Discussion Group at Chatham House, as Senior Fellow at the Nobel Institute in Oslo; as Visiting Professor at the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies in Canberra, Australia, and as Chair of the European Consortium for Political Research. He is currently visiting professor at the Catholic University in Milan.

Sebastián Nieto Parra is the Head of Latin America and the Caribbean at the OECD Development Centre, and leads the annual flagship Latin American Economic Outlook as well as Revenue Statistics in Latin American and the Caribbean and the OECD Multi-dimensional Country Reviews in the region.

His research interests include financing for development, economic development, infrastructure and connectivity policies and political economy in emerging economies. Before joining the OECD, Mr. Nieto Parra was an economist for Latin America at Santander Bank, Madrid. Prior to that, he worked on the regulation of the financial sector and the development of the mortgage market, both at the Central Bank of Colombia and the Colombian Ministry of Finance.