Alliances and War: from the Delian League to the First World War

Margaret MacMillan is Engelsberg Chair at LSE IDEAS for 2021/22. Margaret MacMillan is Emeritus Professor of International History at the University of Oxford and former Warden of St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. She specializes in the history of the British Empire and the international history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Her book Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War won the Samuel Johnson Prize. In 2021, Margaret won the Pritzker Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. Her most recent book is War: How Conflict Shaped Us, looking at the ways in which war has influenced human society and how, in turn, changes in political organization, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight.

Meet the chair

Christopher Coker is Director of LSE IDEAS and former Professor of International Relations at LSE. 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 Department in Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok and the Norwegian and Swedish Defence Colleges. He has published many books, including Rebooting Clausewitz; Men at War; and The Improbable War: China, the United States, and the Logic of Great Power Conflict, and his latest, Why War?