François Heisbourg

François Heisbourg is Chairman of the council of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. He is special advisor of the Paris-based Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique. His career has included positions in government (member of the French mission to the UN, international security adviser to the Minister of Defence), industry (vice-president of Thomson-CSF, the present-day Thales; senior vice president strategy at Matra Défense Espace, today part of EADS) and academia (professor of the world politics course at Sciences-Po Paris, director of the IISS). He is a member of the International Council of CNRS (the French Scientific Research Council), and has sat on a number of national and international blue-ribbon bodies (notably the French Defence and national security White Paper (2007 and 2012), the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, the International Commission on the Balkans, the EU Commission’s group of personalities on security research and development). He has written extensively on defence and security issues and is a frequent contributor to both specialist and main-stream media on such matters. His latest book is « Secrètes histoires : la naissance du monde moderne », Paris, éditions Stock, 2015.