Honorary graduates 2012-13

Nik Gowing (DLitt)

Tuesday 17 July 2012 9:00am

Nik Gowing has been a main presenter for the BBC’s international 24-hour news channel BBC World News, since 1996. He presents The Hub, BBC World Debates, and Dateline London, plus location coverage of major global stories.

For 18 years he worked at ITN where he was bureau chief in Rome and Warsaw and Diplomatic Editor for Channel Four News (1988-1996). He has been a member of the councils of Chatham House (1998–2004), the Royal United Services Institute (2005–present), and the Overseas Development Institute (2007-present), the board of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (1996-2005), and the advisory council at Wilton Park (1998-present). In 1994 he was a fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Barone Centre in the J. F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Nik has extensive reporting experience over three decades in diplomacy, defence and international security. He also has a much sought-after analytical expertise on the failures to manage information in the new transparent environments of conflicts, crises, emergencies and times of tension. His peer-reviewed study at Oxford University, Skyful of Lies and Black Swans, predicts and identifies the new vulnerability, fragility and brittleness of institutional power in the new all-pervasive public information space.