Oliver Yule-Smith

Oliver Yule-Smith is an Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Statecraft and National Security at King’s College London. He is a historian of the twentieth century, focusing on British and European diplomatic history, the development of national strategy and the construction of the post-1945 international order. His forthcoming book, The Problem of China in the British Foreign Office Mind: Understanding a Rising Superpower, 1922–1985 (Bloomsbury Academic, December 2025), challenges the idea that the concept of a "rising China" did not emerge until the 1980s or later, instead asserting that a small cadre of British China officials in the UK Foreign Office were continuously exploring what China’s return to great power would mean for both the UK and the wider international order as early as the 1920s. 

His new research project further explores the relationship between ideas and policy, focusing on how a group of American and British politicians, diplomats, and intellectuals understood and acted on the shift from international order to disorder in the interwar period. In addition, Oliver will be continuing his policy engagement work with UK government. Previous projects have seen him work with the UK National Security Secretariat, the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence to provide policy papers, literature reviews, historical explainers, lectures, workshops, and simulations. From 2020 to 2022, he participated in an innovative pilot project that saw doctoral students embedded within the National Security Secretariat during and in the wake of the government’s Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy. 

Prior to Harvard, he was a postdoctoral fellow with the Ax:son Johnson Institute for Statecraft and Diplomacy and based at King’s College London. He holds a Ph.D. in history from King’s College London, a double M.A. from Sciences Po and King’s College London and a B.A. (Hons) from King’s College London.