Professor Bill Durodié is a Professor of Politics, Languages and International Studies at the University of Bath, UK, as well as a former head of department there.
Education
Durodié was educated at the Royal College of Science, part of Imperial College London, where he studied Physics. After completing a final year undergraduate project to map different types of supernovae onto the Morphological Catalogue of Galaxies, he was invited to start a PhD in Astronomy at the University of Manchester under the supervision of Professor Franz Daniel Kahn. His first research publication was in theoretical astrophysics, based on a paper he presented at Princeton University in 1986.
Early career
He then changed course, first pursuing a career in teaching (becoming Head of Maths at two inner-city comprehensive schools) and then urban regeneration (working in both the public and private sectors). During this time he also studied for a Master's degree in European Social Policy at the London School of Economics, and subsequently embarked on another PhD, this time in Politics, at the University of Oxford.
In 2007, he completed his doctorate in Risk Communication through the Centre for Decision Analysis and Risk Management in the School of Health and Social Sciences of Middlesex University (UK).
As a Professor
His inaugural professorial lecture: The Politics of Risk and Resilience – Fear and Terror in a World without Meaning, was delivered on 29 October 2015.
In the debate around the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, rejecting all of the official campaigns, he argued on the grounds of democratic accountability and moral autonomy for the UK to give up its membership of the European Union. Eurasia Review reported that he told them that soon after the vote that, despite the largest mandate in British history, politicians and others would seek to deliver Brexit in name alone, but not in spirit.
He was formerly Professor in the School of Humanitarian Studies at Royal Roads University in Victoria, British Columbia, where he was Program Head for the Conflict Analysis and Management programs. He maintains an on-going role as an Associate Faculty member there. Before that he held positions coordinating the Homeland Defence research programme and then the Health and Human Security research programme within the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, as well as in the Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis at Cranfield University, part of the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom at Shrivenham, and in the War Studies Group of King's College London.
In 2014 he was appointed as a Visiting Professor to CELAP – the China Executive Leadership Academy in Pudong – one of China's top four national 'Party Schools', in Shanghai – a position officially renewed in 2018. He has also conducted short courses for officials through the Shanghai Administration Institute, and writes on the West's evolving relations with China, as well as events surrounding the protests in Hong Kong. He was an Associate Fellow of the International Security Programme at Chatham House in London for over a decade.
His main research interest is to examine the causes and consequences of contemporary perceptions of risk, as well as how these are framed and communicated across a wide range of contemporary social issues. His work explores the limitations of risk management and of the so-called precautionary principle. He has questioned the motivations behind the growing demand to engage the public in dialogue and decision-making in relation to science. He has also sought to draw attention to the parallels between Islamist terrorism and contemporary Western nihilism, noting that many who engage in the former draw their roots from the latter and specifically stating that 'Islam, for them at least, was more a motif than a motive'.
He publicly defended the need for BP to continue its exploration work in the Gulf of Mexico at the time of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and he supported the initial response of the Japanese authorities to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant emergency. On the other hand, he has questioned the dynamic behind environmental campaigns against pulp and palm-oil producers in Indonesia, as well as the British government's interpretation of the implications of the 2011 England riots.