ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEMBER
Ian Wiggins is Director of International Affairs at the Royal Society, the UK’s National Academy of Science, where he leads the Society’s global engagement. Before joining the Royal Society in 2022, Ian worked at the University of York in a number of roles, including Director of Operations, and served as the inaugural Director of the York-Maastricht Partnership, the university’s strategic relationship with Maastricht University.
Ian is a former British diplomat. He worked at the Foreign Office headquarters in London on counter-terrorism, climate change and energy policy, and held diplomatic postings in Moscow and Washington, D.C., where he served as Deputy Head of the Embassy’s Political Section during the 2016 US presidential election.
Alongside his role at the Royal Society, Ian is a member of the Advisory Council for Wilton Park, an executive agency of the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, and serves on the International Science Council’s Committee for Finance, Compliance and Risk. Outside the Society, he is Chair of Trustees of Excel Learning Trust, a charity that runs seven schools in York.
Ian is a chemist by training and holds a Master’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Nottingham.