Dr Robin Wilson is an experienced policy analyst, as his cv demonstrates, who works with public bodies and non-governmental organisations,
with intellectuals and practitioners.
He is a leading European expert on intercultural dialogue, or how diverse individuals can share a society on a basis of equality of human
dignity, which has quickly become a ubiquitous challenge in today’s world. He has worked on this issue for many years with pioneer organisations
at all levels, from the Council of Europe to a shared-neighbourhood association
in Belfast. He has particularly explored how football can be a vehicle to
advance intercultural dialogue.
His academic formation has been at the Universities of Cambridge, Birmingham and
Queen’s (Belfast). He has a deep intellectual hinterland, covering inter alia ‘identity politics’, nationalism, governance and social exclusion, which he deployed in addressing
the gamut of policy issues as director of Democratic Dialogue, the think tank
he established and ran for 11 years.
He has specialised in the contentious politics of his native Northern Ireland,
on which he was described in the Irish Times as a ‘respected commentator’. His PhD is on the travails of power-sharing there, in historical and comparative
context, of wider interest given the international concern to see what lessons,
if any, can be drawn from the Northern Ireland ‘peace process’.
He is also a skilled communicator. For eight years he was editor of the
current-affairs magazine Fortnight, which had a wide international readership, and he has contributed as an op-ed
writer and analyst to a plethora of press, broadcasting and new media
worldwide. He has frequently been chosen by the Council of Europe to act as
rapporteur-general at international conferences.
Robin Wilson
policy analyst