Richard Bellamy joined UCL in 2005 as the College’s first Professor of Political Science. He was the founding Head of the new Department of Political Science and Director of the School of Public Policy from 2005 to 2010. He was then Director of UCL’s European Institute, which he also established, from 2010 to 2013. Richard was educated at the University of Cambridge and the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. Richard was Academic Director of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) from 2002 to 2006, and is the department’s Official Representative of the ECPR, and Founding Chair of the Britain and Ireland Association for Political Thought from 2008 to 2013. He was a member of the 2014 REF Panel for Politics and International Relations. He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) since 2002 and of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) since 2008. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 2022 and a Member of the Academia Europaea (MAE) in 2024.