Keynote SpeakerAnne Applebaum

Pulitzer Prize winning historian, journalist, commentator on geopolitics and acclaimed keynote, Anne Applebaum examines the challenges and opportunities of global political and economic change through the lenses of world history and the contemporary political landscape.

Informed by her expertise in Europe and her years of international reporting, Applebaum shares perspectives on, and the far-reaching implications of, today’s volatile world events. And as technology allows a new scale of media manipulation to authoritarian governments and changes the tenor of political discourse, she scrutinizes the misinformation, propaganda, and criminal exploitation that influence global affairs, as well.

From Syrian refugees to Putin’s disinformation narratives, from the EU and the European financial crises to responding to terrorism, from solutions to transition-government corruption to political populists’ game-changing campaign language, Applebaum provides both background and up-to-the-minute insights that are vital to understanding the risks and opportunities of today’s world political and economic climate.

Anne’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag: A History is about the Soviet concentration camps. Her book, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine, is the winner of her second Duff Cooper Prize and the 28th Lionel Gelber Prize 2018. In it, Anne proves what many suspected: Stalin set out to destroy the Ukrainian peasantry. Anne is the only author to win the Duff Cooper Prize twice. Her other books include Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1946, which won a Cundill Prize for Historical Literature, and Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe (updated edition published in 2023).

In 2024, she was awarded the prestigious ‘Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels’ ( Peace Prize of the German Book Trade) – previous winners include Salman Rushdie and Amartya Sen.   In 2021, Anne was awarded the ICFJ’s Excellence in International Reporting Award.  Also in 2021, Anne was presented with the 38th ‘Francisco Cerecedo’ journalism award. by King Felipe VI of Spain.

In July 2024, her book ‘Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World‘ was published by Penguin, it was a NY Times Bestseller.  The book was recognized as a “Best Book of the Year” by multiple publications, including The Economist, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and The Times, indicating its significance and impact.

Penguin also published ‘Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism” in 2020.  In this book, she outlines with great eloquence why elites in democracies around the world are turning towards nationalism and authoritarianism. The book became an immediate NYT best-seller in the non-fiction section.  Barack Obama listed this book as one of his favourite reads of the year.

She is a Senior Fellow of International Affairs and Agora Fellow in Residence at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.

Director of the Transitions Forum at the Legatum Institute from 2011-2015, an international think tank, Applebaum is the co-founder of the institute’s Democracy Lab, an online partnership between the institute and Foreign Policy magazine. An adjunct fellow of the Center for European Policy Analysis, she is former Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at the London School of Economics.

For many years, Applebaum wrote a biweekly foreign affairs column for The Washington Post which is syndicated internationally. She is now a staff writer at The Atlantic. She has been a contributor to Foreign Affairs, the New Republic and The New York Review of Books. She was formerly a member of The Washington Post’s editorial board; foreign and deputy editor of the Spectator magazine; and political editor of the Evening Standard. From 1988 – 1991 she covered the collapse of communism as Warsaw correspondent for The Economist.

Anne attended Yale University and was a Marshall Scholar at the London School of Economics and St. Antony’s College, Oxford.

Why Book Anne Applebaum as a speaker?

She brings Pulitzer Prize-winning historical authority to today’s headlines, helping leaders understand how authoritarian systems rise, endure and collapse and what that means for strategy now.

She decodes the global networks behind modern autocracy, drawing on Autocracy, Inc. to explain how dictators cooperate across finance, technology and propaganda and how democracies and businesses can respond.

She connects Europe’s past and present with rare clarity, combining deep expertise on the Soviet legacy and Eastern Europe with sharp insight into Russia’s war on Ukraine and the wider contest for the democratic world.

She equips audiences to recognise and counter misinformation and political manipulation, translating the mechanics of propaganda into practical guidance for leaders navigating polarised societies and high-trust communication.

She is one of the most respected public intellectuals on democracy’s future, recognised internationally including the 2024 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, and consistently trusted to brief senior audiences on global risk and resilience.