Short bio:
John Alderdice has followed careers in both politics and psychoanalytic psychiatry.
From 1987 to 1998, he was Leader of Northern Ireland’s Alliance Party and one of the negotiators of the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. He was then the first Speaker of the new Northern Ireland Assembly until 2004 when he was appointed one of the four members of the international Independent Monitoring Commission charged with overseeing security normalization in Ireland. In 1996 he had been appointed to the House of Lords and at that time was one of its youngest ever life appointees. Since then, he has served as an active Liberal Democrat member with various roles and responsibilities at Westminster including from 2010 to 2014 as Chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party in the House of Lords during the Conservative/Liberal Coalition Government. Long active in international liberal politics he was from 2005 to 2009 the President of Liberal International (the global network of over 100 liberal political parties and organizations) and is now a Presidente D’Honneur and active on the LI Bureau.
After qualifying in medicine in 1978, he worked in the NHS and in private practice for over thirty years, for most of that time as a consultant in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, developing services and training in Northern Ireland. He retired from NHS clinical work in 2010, and from 2013 to 2022 he was the Director of the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict (CRIC) at Oxford until it was absorbed into The Changing Character of War Centre at Pembroke College, Oxford when he became the Executive Chairman of CCW. He continues as a Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford, and is a Professor of Practice at the University of Wales Trinity St David. He lectures, writes, and consults on the psychology of fundamentalism, radicalization, and terrorism and has been recognized with many national and international prizes, honorary degrees, and fellowships for his contributions in the field including the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Lord Alderdice is the Founding Chairman of The Concord Foundation.
Title:
Can understanding relationships and complexity help us address the spiral of chaos and conflict?
Abstract:
In recent years the character of armed conflict has changed dramatically and the stabilizing structures that emerged after the two global conflicts of the last century are dissolving before our eyes. In this lecture Lord Alderdice will propose three elements as a guide to the development of a necessary new paradigm to guide us through the current polycrises — the ideas emerging from complexity science; human emotions as a positive evolutionary advantage rather than an irrational flaw; and the significance of relationships between large groups rather than a rule-of-law approach based on individuals. This is a potentially radical agenda, but he suggests that leaders may be well-advised to pursue an approach that takes more account of complexity, emotions, and relationships, as a necessary evolutionary path for the survival of our civilisation.