[Editorial Board photo 2015]
Victoria Schofield has been elected as the new Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Commonwealth Round Table.
Victoria’s first regional study was of South Africa at a time when the apartheid regime was yet to be dismantled, resulting in the publication of her first feature article in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1977.
Outlining her move into the study of the South Asian region, Victoria wrote: ‘Benazir Bhutto was a close friend at Oxford, and when her father, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was sentenced to death for conspiracy to murder a political opponent in 1978, I put my fledging ambition to write professionally into a higher gear by travelling to Islamabad. The fruits of my endeavours were several articles in The Spectator and my first book, Bhutto: Trial and Execution’. Both as a commentator and journalist she has written extensively on India and Pakistan focusing on their dispute over the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
‘For over thirty years, I’ve remained dedicated to learning more about South Asian politics, both as a historian and journalist, travelling widely in the region.’
Victoria was the fourth female President of the Oxford Union Society following Benazir Bhutto. She has been the visiting Alistair Horne Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford and is currently an Associate of the Pakistan Security Research Unit at the University of Durham. Her publications include The Black Watch, Fighting in the Frontline 1899-2006, Wavell: Soldier and Statesman, Kashmir in Conflict, India, Pakistan and the unending war and Afghan Frontier: at the Crossroads of Conflict.
She takes over from Stuart Mole who has served for a six-year term. Stuart will continue to chair the Round Table’s CHOGM 2018 group.
