Share
Former Visiting Fellow, Centre for Science and Policy
Dr Tristram Riley-Smith was a CSaP Visiting Fellow in 2012, researching opportunities to improve the relationship between National Security and Academia (www.csap.cam.ac.uk/links/13/435/). This led to his appointment in 2013 as National Impact Champion for UKRI’s Partnership for Conflict, Crime & Security Research (PaCCS) and Director of Research in Cambridge’s Department of Politics & International Studies; he acted in these roles until his retirement in 2022, continuing as a CSaP Fellow until 2024. He co-authored Global Uncertainties: Collective Conversations from PaCCS (https://online.fliphtml5.com/yatyz/aqkk/).
Tristram is a founding member of the universities network formed to promote academic engagement in solving challenges in national security and resilience (now branded as the Network for Security Excellence and Collaboration or NSEC). This has led to a number of collaborative initiatives involving CSaP, including this 2024 project on the electromagnetic environment (see https://www.csap.cam.ac.uk/news/article-building-resilience/).
His portrait of the USA - The Cracked Bell - was published on both sides of the Atlantic in 2010. It is informed by his grounding in Social Anthropology and a 3-year posting to the British Embassy in Washington DC after 9/11. [Tristram previously worked in Government Service, specialising in defence, security, and infrastructure protection.]
Tristram remains closely engaged with Cambridge University activities, not least because he is re-connecting with research interests from over 40 years’ ago, as an anthropologist of art working in South and South-East Asia. One current project could take him back to Thailand, to follow up on his 1984 film The Birth of a Buddha - The Meridian Trust (meridian-trust.org).
He can be contacted via email: tr356@cantab.net.
