Samir Puri was raised in 1980s London in a family that had traversed three continents in three generations, from Asia to Africa to Europe.
He later completed a PhD at Cambridge University in International Relations, worked at RAND, and then the Foreign Office, where his assignments covered counter terrorism, and a year in east Ukraine monitoring the onset of war in 2014.
After government service, Dr Puri became a lecturer in War Studies at King’s College London, and taught at Cambridge and Johns Hopkins. He has since left academia and in 2020 was appointed Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore.
His book, ‘The Great Imperial Hangover’, is a distillation of these varied perspectives: from the academic to the practical; from the personal to the political; and from the descendants of the colonized to those of the colonizers.
Books in order of publication:
Pakistan: Can the United States Secure an Insecure State? – 2010
Pakistan’s War on Terrorism: Strategies for Combating Jihadist Armed Groups Since 9/11 – 2011
Fighting and Negotiating with Armed Groups: The Difficulty of Securing Strategic Outcomes – 2019
The Great Imperial Hangover: How Empires Have Shaped the World – 2020
Oak Lawn Library Friends 