John, Lord Alderdice was born in 1955, qualified as a medical doctor in 1978, and as a member if the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 1982. He was from 1987 to 1998 Leader of Northern Ireland’s cross-community Alliance Party, and played a significant role in the negotiation of the 1998 Belfast Agreement. He was the first Speaker of the new Northern Ireland Assembly from 1998 until 2004, and was then appointed one of four international monitoring commissioners tasked by the British and Irish Governments with overseeing security normalization in Northern Ireland. In 1996 he was elevated to the House of Lords at Westminster, and since 2005 has been the elected President of Liberal International, the world-wide family of liberal political parties. He runs the Centre for Psychotherapy in Belfast and is a Visiting Professor in Psychiatry, and Joint Chairman of the Critical Incident Analysis Group, at the University of Virginia. He is also Joint Chairman of the Bahceshehir University International Dialogue Initiative based in Istanbul, and President of ARTIS (Europe). He travels widely as a lecturer and consultant in the psychology of terrorism and violent political conflict.