Lord Hannay to give Woolf College Inaugural Lecture

Lord Hannay, Chair of the Board of the United Nations Association-UK (UNA-UK) is to deliver the Woolf College Inaugural Lecture at the University of Kent on Tuesday 31 March 2009.

In his talk, entitled Energy security and climate change: what role for Europe?, Lord Hannay will discuss why only a united response to these two challenges will protect the interests of European countries and enable Europe to play a proper role in solving global problems and why the two challenges are closely linked together.

University Vice-Chancellor Professor Julia Goodfellow said. 'We are honoured to welcome Lord Hannay to the Canterbury Campus. Woolf College is at the heart of our new graduate school, and it is only fitting that we have someone of his calibre and experience to deliver its inaugural lecture.'

Lord Hannay, whose book New World Disorder: The UN After the Cold War - an Insider's View was published last year, joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1959 and was initially posted to Tehran and Kabul. Between 1965 and the early 1970s, he was involved in the negotiations that led to the UK 's entry into the European Communities.

During the 1970s he spent four years with the European Commission in Brussels and was then, after his return to the diplomatic service, involved with energy and Middle Eastern policy. From 1979 to 1983, he was Under-Secretary (European Communities) at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He was minister at the British Embassy in Washington DC in 1984-5, and was then promoted to ambassador and permanent representative to the European Communities from 1985-90. From 1990 to 1995, he was ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations.

Following his retirement from the diplomatic service, he was the British Special Representative for Cyprus between 1996 and 2003, and a member of the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, which submitted its report in December 2004.

Contact: mediaoffice@kent.ac.uk

Story published at 4:38pm 30 March 2009