Trevor Taylor has worked on defence acquisition, government-industry relations and export controls throughout his career and particularly from 1997 when he was appointed as Professor and Head of Department of Cranfield University at the Defence Academy of the UK at Shrivenham. Work before then included three years from 1990-1993 as Director of the International Security Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and being Professor of International Relations at Staffordshire University.
In 2009 he retired from full-time work with Cranfield and became Professorial Fellow in Defence Management at the Royal United Services Institute where he heads the Defence, Industries and Society research programme. Many of his publications are available on the www.rusi.org website.
His part-time activities have included serving two three-year terms as an elected member of the former Defence Manufacturers Association and today is a member of the Advisory Board of the Defence branch of the industrial body MAKE UK. He served for two years until 2017 as a Special Adviser to the House of Commons Joint Committees on Export Controls.
In terms of unpublished research, for what was then the UK MoD’s Defence Procurement Agency, he was commissioned to lead the Non-Advocate Review Team for the British Army’s tactical communications system Project Bowman in 2001-2. Then for the MOD’s Defence Equipment & Support organisation, he was selected to deliver a report on the lessons from the UK experience with the A.400M in 2010. With colleagues from King’s College London, he submitted extensive material informing the British Government’s Defence and Security Strategy document of March 2021. He has given invited evidence on multiple occasions to the UK Parliamentary Committees.
Dating from 2010, he remains a regular contributor to training courses on defence acquisition run by the IDARM centre, part of the Institute for Security Governance at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey.
He has a BSc(Econ) in International Relations and a PhD from the London School of Economics and an MA from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. His PhD addressed arms exports in US policy towards the Middle East. He was made Professor Emeritus by Cranfield University in 2010.
He has enjoyed being able to make multiple visits to Japan and other East and South-East Asian countries for research purposes and conference attendance.
