Claire Yorke is a British author and academic, based in Australia. Her expertise is in the role of empathy and emotions in international affairs, politics, leadership, and society. She is currently a Senior Lecturer at the Australian War College, Deakin University, Canberra, where her research and teaching focus on these topics.
In an international career she has lived in the UK, France, Denmark, and the United States. Between September 2021-2023, she was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship at the Centre for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, leading a new project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Fund on Empathy and International Security (EIS). Prior to that, between 2018-2020, she was a Henry A. Kissinger Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer at International Security Studies and the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, Yale University.
Her first book was published in October 2025, and examines how empathy and emotions are critical to effective political leadership and transforming politics (Yale University Press). Her second book focuses on the integral role of empathy and emotions in diplomacy, combining theory and practice with extensive interviews. In addition, working with Professor Jack Spence and Dr Alastair Masser, she has co-edited two volumes on diplomacy, which were published in April 2021 (IB Tauris and Bloomsbury).
Her research is interdisciplinary and combines international relations, politics, psychology, sociology, and a wide interest in culture, literature, and making complex ideas accessible to a wide audience.
Claire received her PhD in International Relations from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, receiving an Elsevier Award for outstanding scholarship. She has a Masters in Middle East Politics from the University of Exeter, and a BA in Politics, International Relations and French from Lancaster University, during which she spent a year at Sciences Po, in Lille, France.
Her work combines academic research with applied policy relevance and Claire has a long history in the policy world, ensuring research informs practice, and practice informs research. She began her career in 2006 working in the House of Commons for a frontbench Member of Parliament on the defence portfolio. In 2009, she joined Chatham House, where she managed the International Security Research Department for four years. In this role, she led projects and conducted research on a broad range of topics from national security and defence strategy, cyber security, terrorism, human security, and drugs and organized crime. In 2014, she was a member of the NATO and Atlantic Council Young Leaders Working Group, reporting to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on the future of the transatlantic alliance. Translating her research for policy-makers, she has designed a professional course for mid-level managers on ‘Empathy and Emotions in Policy-Making’, which is taught online via the King’s Institute for Government.
Claire has taught in Australia, the US and the UK. In 2020, she designed and led a Masters’ course on ‘Emotions and Foreign Policy’ at the Jackson Institute, Yale University. She has taught courses on international relations, statecraft, diplomacy and global politics at undergraduate and postgraduate level in the Department of War Studies and Department of Political Economy at King’s College London.
Her work has appeared in publications including Political Psychology, the NATO Journal of Defence Strategic Communications, the RUSI Journal, Newsweek, and the Independent and she has provided commentary on media outlets such as the BBC, Al Jazeera, Channel 4, and Voice of America.
She is on the Advisory Committee for Women in International Security UK (WIIS-UK), and Compassion in Politics Australia
