Chris Bellamy

Christopher Bellamy is Professor of Military Science and Doctrine and Director of the Security Studies Institute, Cranfield University. Born in 1955, he was educated at the Universities of Oxford, London, Westminster and Edinburgh. After service as an officer in the Royal Artillery and the MoD Civil Service, he completed his PhD at Edinburgh on The Russian and Soviet View of the Character of Future War (1991), supervised by the late Professor John Erickson. From 1990 he was Defence Correspondent of the Independent newspaper, and reported from Saudi Arabia and Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War, from south-east Turkey and northern Iraq during the Kurdish refugee crisis, from Bosnia many times between 1992 and 1997, and from Chechnya in January 1995. He was shortlisted for foreign reporter of the year in the 1996 British Press Awards for reporting from Chechnya. In September 1997 he joined Cranfield University at the then Military College of Science, Shrivenham. In 1999 he designed and implemented the Cranfield MSc in Global Security, and has since run it as Academic Leader. He was Associate Editor of, and a principal contributor to, the Oxford Companion to Military History (2001). He also maintains his involvement with the media as a commentator on modern security and strategic issues. In 1992 he married Heather Kerr, whom he met at the Independent. They live in west London.