Dr Tim Reilly

Dr Tim Reilly is an Honorary Senior Fellow at Exeter University’s, Centre for the Public Understanding of Defence & Security. He was formerly an Institute Associate at the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University, and specialises in Sino-Russian Arctic relations, and associated Space activities. He now works regularly with U.S. Space Force (Washington DC) on the Arctic/Technology/space overlap. He was the reviewer of the latest U.S. policy paper on the Arctic region, including its space aspects (Golden Dome, Hypersonics, Greenland, etc) and integration with NATO.

Tim was called as an expert witness to both the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee on the Arctic, and the House of Lords Defence & International Affairs Select Committee on the Arctic. He is the author of strategic papers for the Cabinet Office, the MoD’s Strategic Net Assessment team, and Parliament’s Defence Committee. He is also an adviser to the Cabinet Office, and the UK’s Joint Expeditionary Force’s annual Exercise, Joint Protector (sub-NATO formation responsible for the European Arctic). Tim was a Lt Colonel in the MoD’s Specialist Group Military Intelligence (SGMI), as their Sino-Russian and Arctic Adviser. He has given several Arctic/Polar lectures at NATO locations throughout Europe. Some of his recommendations to the Secretary of State for Defence, and others including the CGS, were incorporated into the UK’s latest Arctic policy paper. Tim is also a regular guest lecturer on Arctic and space related matters, at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC; and he regularly writes in the papers on Russian/ Sino-Russian and Arctic matters, including The Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, NYT, La Tribune, etc.

After graduation, Tim initially served in the Parachute Regiment after officer training at Sandhurst and was deployed as an Arctic Warfare instructor in Norway in the 1980s. In the early nineties he worked extensively in the private security sector in Moscow/CIS with the USSR’s/RF’s Special Forces, Alpha and Wimpol. Later, he held various appointments in the oil industry including for Exxon, Chevron (on site at the latter’s Caspian project in Kazakhstan), and Government Affairs Adviser to Shell, in Ukraine & Russia. In the mid-noughties he was working for Kroll International as their VP for Oil & Gas.

Tim has spent over 30 years living aboard. He is a Russian speaker, and was educated at Cambridge, Durham, and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. He now lives in Cheltenham, UK.