Dr Leslie Vinjamuri

Director, US and the Americas Programme; Dean, Queen Elizabeth II Academy for Leadership in International Affairs

Headshot of Leslie Vinjamuri

Biography

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri is director of the US and Americas programme and dean of the Queen Elizabeth II Academy at Chatham House. 

She led a multi-authored Chatham House initiative that looked at G7 proposals for countering China’s influence in the developing world. This led to the publication of Building Global Prosperity: Proposals for Sustainable Growth (Chatham House, 2022).


She is co-editor and contributing author (with Charles A. Kupchan) of Anchoring the World: International Order in the 21st Century, a publication by members of the Lloyd George Study Group on World Order, a joint Centenary project of Chatham House, the Council on Foreign Relations, and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, published by Foreign Affairs. And also Human Rights Futures (with Jack Snyder and Stephen Hopgood, Cambridge University Press, 2017), US Foreign Policy Priorities (Chatham House, 2020), and  ’Trials and Errors: Strategies of International Justice” (with Jack Snyder).  

At Chatham House, Leslie leads research initiatives on America’s Changing Global Role, Reimagining Multilateralism, and the US, Geopolitics, and International Development. Her publications have appeared in numerous edited volumes and journals including Foreign Affairs, International Security, Ethics and International Affairs, and Survival.

She is a regular commentator in the international news media and has contributed pieces in the Financial Times, Guardian, Sunday Times, Telegraph, and the Independent

She is professor of International Relations at SOAS University of London, deputy chair of the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission and a trustee of the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs.

She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and on the Advisory Board of LSE IDEAS and the LSE Phelan United States Centre, and is vice president of the board for the Institute for Integrated Transitions.

From 2014-2016 she was director of the Center on Conflict, Rights and Justice (and previously co-director). She was previously on the academic faculty of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and a fellow of the John M. Olin Institute at Harvard University.

She began her career at Congressional Research Service and also worked in the Asia Bureau at USAID. Leslie received a BA from Wesleyan University (Phi Beta Kappa), an MSc (Distinction) from the London School of Economics, and a PhD from Columbia University.  

In the news