CSSC scholars present at the 2026 Society for Intelligence History Conference
Intelligence experts from the Center for Statecraft and Strategic Communication present research at a major international intelligence history conference in London
Last month, Center members Rikard Westerberg, Matthew Hefler, and Ronan Mainprize presented at the 2026 Society for Intelligence History conference, held in partnership with the King’s Centre for the Study of Intelligence at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.
Focusing on ‘Intelligence and Crisis in the Twentieth Century’, the SSE colleagues were joined on a panel by Gill Bennet, former Chief Historian of the UK FCO, and chaired by Professor Richard Aldrich, another of the world’s leading intelligence historians, to examine how intelligence shapes strategy, statecraft, and policy when things go wrong.
The panel highlighted some of the cutting-edge work being done at the CSSC and the AJI Intelligence and Security Programme of the Ax:son Johnson Institute for Statecraft and Diplomacy.
Rikard Westerberg explored Swedish intelligence, neutrality, and covert political action during the Cold War. Matthew Hefler discussed communications intelligence and Allied diplomatic crises during the Second World War. Ronan Mainprize examined the paradoxes that emerge when analysing intelligence’s role in crisis decision-making. While Gill Bennet presented on the problems that inconvenient intelligence can present to the makers of foreign policy.
CSSC would like to thank the excellent team at SIH and the King’s Centre for the Study of Intelligence for such a timely and engaging conference.
