Alexander Evans is Associate Dean for Strategic Development at the LSE School of Public Policy. A Professor in Practice in Public Policy, he directs the LSE's Professional Skills Accelerator and the MPA in Data Science for Public Policy. He teaches graduate courses on international diplomacy and technology, data science and policymaking. He is also Director of the LSE IDEAS Ratiu Forum.
He joined the British Diplomatic Service in 2003. He has served in 10 Downing Street as an Adviser to the Prime Minister, as Strategy Director and Exco member in the Cabinet Office, and Director Cyber in the Foreign Office. He was a member of the Policy Planning Staff. His overseas roles include serving as Deputy and Acting High Commissioner to India and (briefly) Pakistan, leading the United Nations Security Council expert group on Daesh, Al Qaida and the Taliban, and being a senior advisor to the late Ambassador Richard Holbrooke in the U.S. Department of State during the first Obama Administration.
Alexander is a former Henry Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress, Senior Fellow at Yale, and Gwilym Gibbon Fellow at Nuffield College Oxford. He has a Ph.D. in politics from SOAS. He has also worked in think-tanks in New York, Washington DC and London (the Asia Society, Stimson Centre, Chatham House, Policy Exchange, the Adam Smith Institute and the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation). He has worked as a regulator and journalist.
In 2024 he was a Visiting Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is a current Research Fellow at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and a Senior Research Fellow at the British Centre for Army Leadership.
He was awarded an OBE in 2010 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2023.
Education
Ph.D. in Politics, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
World Fellow, Yale
B.Sc. International Relations, London School of Economics
Affiliations
Director, LSE IDEAS Ratiu Forum (2024-date)
Non-Executive Director and Trustee, Internet Watch Foundation (2024-date)
Non-Executive Director and Trustee, International Longevity Centre (2023-date)
Advisory Council, Wilton Park (2023-date)
Advisory Council, British Library (2022-date)
Teaching
PP415: Technology, Data Science and Policy
PP423: Anticipatory Policymaking
PP432: International Organisations, Policymaking and Diplomacy in a Contested World
Online Certificate in AI Policy, Regulation and Governance
Research and Publications