Biographical Note

SECRETARY-GENERAL APPOINTS THERESA A. HITCHENS OF UNITED STATES

DIRECTOR OF UNITED NATIONS INSTITUTE FOR DISARMAMENT RESEARCH

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Theresa A. Hitchens of the United States as the fifth Director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR).  She will take up her duties in Geneva in January 2009.

Ms. Hitchens brings to the independent Institute years of experience in research and writing on a broad array of subjects in the field of international security, defence, disarmament and non-proliferation.

She is currently Director of the Center for Defense Information (CDI) in Washington, D. C., in charge of CDI’s Space Security Project.

Prior to her present position, she was Research Director of the Washington affiliate of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC), charged with managing the organization’s programme of research and advocacy in nuclear and conventional arms control, European security and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) affairs.  Before that in Brussels, she worked for Defense News of Springfield, Virginia, covering transatlantic relations, the European Union, NATO and international security.  At the Defense News Washington office, she rose to international editor on security, covering arms trade issues, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and completed her career at the publication serving as editor for two years.  She also wrote Inside EPA’s first newsletter on defence issues, Inside the Pentagon, and worked on a daughter publication specializing in high-tech warfare, Electronic Combat Report.

Ms. Hitchens is on the Editorial Board of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and a member of Women in International Security, as well as the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Her latest publications include Future Security in Space: Charting a Cooperative Course, September 2004, CDI, Washington, D.C.; European Military Space Capabilities: A Primer, with Tomas Valasek, March 2006, CDI, Washington, D.C.; “Debris, Traffic Management, and Weaponization: Opportunities for and Challenges to Cooperation in Space”, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Fall/Winter 2007, Vol. XIV, Issue 1; and “The Perfect Storm: International Reaction to the Bush National Space Policy”, High Frontier, March 2007, Vol. 3, No. 2.

Ms. Hitchens holds a Bachelor of Science in journalism from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

Born on 11 August 1959, she has one son.

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For information media • not an official record