Alyson Bailes

Visiting professor, Department of political science, University of Iceland

Alyson Bailes has been the Director of the Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) since July 1, 2002. She graduated from Oxford in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts degree (First Class Honors) in Modern History and a Master of Arts in 1971. Alyson Bailes started her diplomatic career in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1969. Ms Bailes served in several posts in the FCO – in Budapest, the UK Delegation to NATO, Bonn, Beijing and Oslo as well as in London – and in the Ministry of Defence. In between posts she served as a researcher at the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London, as Vice President for the European Security Programme at the Institute for EastWest Studies (now EastWest Institute) in New York, and as Political Director of the Western European Union in Brussels. Returning to the Diplomatic Service, Ms Bailes became British Ambassador to Finland from November 2000 to June 2002. She left that appointment, and resigned from the British Service, to take up her post at SIPRI from July 2002.