James Crabtree

James Crabtree is a distinguished visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Crabtree is a geopolitical analyst and author, with extensive experience living and working in Asia. His book The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age, was named an Amazon book of the year and short-listed as a Financial Times & McKinsey business book of the year. Prior to joining ECFR, he was the Singapore-based executive director of the Institute of International Strategic Studies in Asia, where he led the organisation of the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit, and an associate professor in practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School, Asia’s leading school of public policy.

James spent ten years as a journalist and foreign correspondent, notably for the Financial Times, where he was both Mumbai bureau chief and comment editor. He is currently a columnist for Foreign Policy and writes for publications ranging from the Straits Times to The New York Times, the Guardian and Wired. He previously worked as a senior advisor in the UK prime minister’s Strategy Unit, under Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. Crabtree has worked for various think tanks in London and Washington, and spent several years living in America, initially as a Fulbright Scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.