Skip Navigation Skip to Content Skip to Footer

Our People

Prof Dame Louise Richardson

Fellow, Honorary Fellow

President, Carnegie Corporation of New York

Louise Richardson, FRSE is a political scientist whose specialist field is the study of terrorism. She is President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford Before that, she was employed at the University of St Andrews where she served as the Principal and Vice Chancellor, and Harvard University where she served as executive dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Richardson is the author of What Terrorists Want, an account of terrorism written after the September 11 attacks. Other publications include When Allies Differ: Anglo-American Relations in the Suez and Falkland Crises, The Roots of Terrorism (ed) and Democracy and Counterterrorism: Lessons from the Past (co-edited with Robert Art). She has also published many journal articles, book chapters, and reviews on the subject of terrorism.

Between 2001 and 2008, in addition to her teaching and management roles, Richardson gave over 300 talks and lectures on terrorism and counter-terrorism to educational and private groups as well as policy makers, the military, intelligence, and business communities. She has testified before the United States Senate and has appeared on CNN, the BBC, PBS, NPR, Fox and a host of other broadcast outlets. Her work has been featured in numerous international periodicals.