Dan Plesch is a Reader in International Studies and Diplomacy, and Director of the Centre for International Studies at SOAS, University of London. Plesch’s research in Strategic Studies currently focuses on applying lessons of war termination and peace building from World War Two to the 21st Century.
Human Rights After Hitler results from seven years of research into the United Nations War Crimes Commission and a successful initiative to have released its files, which had been classified in 1949. This work developed in partnership with a number of organisation including the International Bar Association and the Wiener Library.
Human Rights After Hitler builds on his earlier Beauty Queen’s Guide to World Peace (Politicos’, 2004), America, Hitler and the UN (IB Tauris, 2011), and his co-edited volume Wartime History for the Future United Nations (Routledge, 2015) with Professor Tom Weiss.
In 1986, he founded the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and directed it from Washington DC until 2001, when he became the Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies in London. Other posts include Honorary Visiting Fellow at the Department of Peace Studies at Bradford University, Research Associate at Birkbeck College, University of London, and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at Keele University.
Outside academia, he has acted as consultant and advisor to the UK and US governments, the BBC, CNN, Sky News, Kroll Security International, Oxfam, the Foreign Policy Centre and Greenpeace. He was the independent advisor to the UK government’s department of constitutional affairs on the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act, and gave the keynote address to the official conference on the London bombings of 7/7/05.
He is a member of the Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association, the International Studies Association, and the Academic Council of the United Nations.