About the Speaker

Fiona Hill, Ph.D. is a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. In November 2022, Hill was appointed chancellor of Durham University, U.K., a high-profile ceremonial and ambassadorial role. In spring 2023, Hill was a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. She served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the U.S. National Security Council from 2017 to 2019, and as national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council from 2006 to 2009. In October and November 2019, Hill testified before Congress in the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. She is author of “There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century” and co-author with Clifford Gaddy of “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin” (Brookings Institution Press, first edition 2013, second edition 2015).

Prior to joining Brookings, Hill was director of strategic planning at the Eurasia Foundation in Washington, D.C. From 1991 to 1999, she held a number of positions directing technical assistance and research projects at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, including associate director of the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project, director of the Project on Ethnic Conflict in the Former Soviet Union, and coordinator of the Trilateral Study on Japanese-Russian-U.S. Relations.

Hill has researched and published extensively on issues related to Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, regional conflicts, energy, and strategic issues. Her first book with Clifford Gaddy, “The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold,” was published by Brookings Institution Press in December 2003, and her monograph, “Energy Empire: Oil, Gas and Russia’s Revival,” was published by the London Foreign Policy Centre in 2004.

Hill holds a master’s in Soviet studies and a doctorate in history from Harvard University where she was a Frank Knox Fellow. She also holds a master’s in Russian and modern history from St. Andrews University in Scotland, and has pursued studies at Moscow’s Maurice Thorez Institute of Foreign Languages. Hill’s Reith Lecture on “Freedom of Fear” for the BBC was broadcast in December 2022 to an audience of over 200 million. That same month, Hill was awarded the Insignia of Knight First Class of the Order of the Lion of Finland.