Dr Paul Flather spent his early years in India and ended up reporting on Indian affairs and doing his primary research on Indian democracy. His family fled Lahore, where his great-great grandfather had founded hospitals, schools, colleges and charities, in 1947 at partition settling in Delhi. He was sent to school in the UK and has remained ever since, seeing himself as a child of the Commonwealth with feet in both countries.
He is currently an Associate Fellow of the Asian Studies Centre, St Anthony’s College, Oxford, recently retiring as Fellow of Corpus Christi and Mansfield Colleges (1994-2020), former director of international affairs for the University (1994-1999) and founding Secretary-General of the Europaeum association of leading European university (2000-17).
He chairs several charity boards The Forum for Philosophy (acting president) the Oxford Adam von Trott Memorial Committee (until 2022), the Vicky Noon Educational Foundation, which has provided more than £3 million to support Pakistani scholars study at Oxbridge.
After graduating from Balliol College, Oxford, he worked variously for the BBC, Times Newspapers, the New Statesman among other journals, before being elected as a full time Chair of the London’s Post-Schools education committee. He worked with dissident groups in the region during the 1980s, and was appointed founding CEO/Secretary-General for the Central European University in Prague, Warsaw and Budapest, and helping to initiate many regional Soros-backed Open Society initiatives. He was recently awarded the Jan Masaryk Silver Medal by Czechia.
He has created many scholarship schemes, including the Soros Hospitality, Jenkins Scholarships, Noon Scholars scheme, Adam von Trott, and Commonwealth scheme. He has lectured all over the world, chairing sessions, and coordinating conferences and summer schools, including high level sessions for the British Council on how to battle corruption. He has published widely, and advised the EU on relations with India in the lead up to the 1997 50th anniversary of its independence.
He joined the Moot in 2004, and has chaired the Round Table’s Web Advisory Group.
