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Past Event
Seminar

Spies, Lies, and Disinformation: How History Can Help

RSVP Required Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

The Intelligence Project will host a lunch with Gillian Bennett, Former Chief Historian of the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, from 12:00-1:15pm in One Brattle 350. Paul Kolbe will moderate.

Lunch will be provided on a first come, first served basis. Please RSVP below.

Date: Time: - Location: Room 350

About

Please join the Intelligence Project for a lunch seminar with Gill Bennett OBE, former Chief Historian of the British Foreign Commonwealth Office, on "Spies, Lies, and Disinformation: How History Can Help."

In this seminar, Gill will speak about the changing landscape of disinformation in the digital age. Specifically, she will explore how using intelligence tools can help with detecting & protecting against disinformation and how despite significant advancements in technology, lessons from historical efforts to counter disinformation can help us today. 

Biography

Gill Bennett MA, OBE, FRHistS was Chief Historian of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office from 1995-2005, and Senior Editor of the FCO’s official history of British foreign policy, Documents on British Policy Overseas. As a historian in Whitehall for over forty years, she provided historical advice to twelve Foreign Secretaries under six Prime Ministers, from Edward Heath to Tony Blair.

A specialist in the history of secret intelligence, she published a ground-breaking biography, Churchill’s Man of Mystery: Desmond Morton and the World of Intelligence, in 2006. She was also part of the research team working on the official history of the Secret Intelligence Service by the late Professor Keith Jeffery, published in 2010. She is a Senior Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. 

Gill is now involved in a range of research projects, including some for various government departments. Publications include Six Moments of Crisis: Inside British Foreign Policy (2013), and her most recent book, The Zinoviev Letter: The Conspiracy That Never Dies (2018). She is now working on a study of espionage, deception and disinformation.
 

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