Geoffrey Till


Geoffrey Till, FKC is a British naval historian and emeritus Professor of Maritime Studies in the Defence Studies Department of King's College London. He is the Director of the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies.

Early life and education

The son of Arthur Till, a Royal Air Force officer, and Violet Till, Geoffrey Till studied at King's College London, where he received his B.A. in 1966. Then, he went on to complete his MA in 1968 and PhD in 1976 at the Department of War Studies, King's College London.

Academic career

His first academic appointments were at the Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, and the Department of Systems Science at the City University, London. In 1983, he was appointed visiting lecturer at King's College London and in 1989, he was appointed professor of history at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, also teaching at the Open University. On a NATO Defence Fellowship, he was a visiting scholar at the United States Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. In 1989, Till held the Foundation Chair in Military Affairs at the United States Marine Corps University, Quantico, Virginia.
With the closure of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, Till moved to the Joint Services Command and Staff College, where he served as the Dean of Academic Studies, a position he help concurrently with his King's College London chair and headship of the Department of the Defence Studies Department, until September 2006, when he received a Fellowship of King's College London.
He has also been Visiting Professor at the Armed Forces University, Taiwan and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Singapore. He is also a Member of Council of the Royal United Services Institute.
He has written extensively on maritime history and strategy. Till has been Reviews Editor for the Journal of Strategic Studies since it was launched in 1978, General Editor of Brassey’s Seapower: Naval Vessels, Weapons Systems and Technology series since 1987, contributing its first volume on modern sea power, and general series editor of the Frank Cass series on naval policy and history. He sits on the executive committee of the Maritime Policy & Strategy Research Center.

Awards

In 2018, The U.S. Naval War College selected Geoffrey Till as the 2018 Hattendorf Prize Laureate.

Published works