The first Oxford Intelligence Group event of 2021 will discuss using fiction to illuminate the functioning, contradictions, and complexities of the world of secret intelligence.

Claire Smith worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, now FCOD, for 27 years in London, China, Germany, and Pakistan. She worked for the Cabinet Office Assessments Staff, was a member of the JIC; and was seconded to the German Foreign Ministry. For the last 12 years, she has run her own business, been a non-executive director of an international engineering consultancy, chair of governors at a London primary school, visiting professor, lecturer and speaker at a number of universities, a member of a UK government appeals panel and chair of an educational trust.

Her first degree is in German and French, with a heavy emphasis in literature. She wrote about using fiction in intelligence studies for the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies.