Dr Neville Bolt is the Founder and Director of the Sympodium Institute for Strategic Communications, following two decades as Director of the King’s Centre for Strategic Communications (KCSC) and Reader in Strategic Communications at King’s College London. He is Editor-in-Chief of Defence Strategic Communications, NATO’s peerreviewed academic journal, and holds a Visiting Professorship at the University of Tokyo and Visiting Fellowship at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge.

Formerly a BBC and CBC journalist, Dr Bolt produced award-winning documentaries from global conflict zones and led landmark media events such as Amnesty International’s Secret Policeman’s Ball, the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute, and The World’s Greatest Artists Sing Lennon – A Tribute.

He later advised international institutions including the United Nations, UEFA, and the Spanish Government, and played a key role in rebranding the UK Labour Party in the early days of New Labour. 

He is a graduate of the University of Oxford and holds a PhD from King’s College London where his research focused on insurgent communications and a new theory of the Propaganda of the Deed. His books include the award-winning The Violent Image (Columbia University Press/Oxford University Press), Unmapping the 21st Century (Bristol University Press, with a forthcoming title What is Strategic Communications: Truth, Lies & The Human Condition. 

Selected Publications

  • The Violent Image: Insurgent Propaganda and the New Revolutionaries, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). CHOICE ‘outstanding academic status award’.
  • Unmapping the 21st century: Between Networks and the State, co-authored with Nicholas Michelsen (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2022)
  • ‘Propaganda of the Deed and its Anarchist Origins’, in Nancy Snow, Paul Baines, and Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, (editors), The SAGE Handbook of Propaganda, (London: SAGE, 2019)
  • ‘Strategic Communications in Crisis’, The RUSI Journal, Vol. 15, Issue 4, 2011.
  • ‘The Leak before the Storm: What Wikileaks Tells Us about Modern Communication’, The RUSI Journal, Vol. 155, Issue 4, 2010.
  • ‘Propaganda of the Deed and the Irish Republican Brotherhood: From the politics of ‘Shock and Awe’ to the ‘Imagined Political Community’’, The RUSI Journal , Vol. 153, Issue 1, 2008.
  • ‘Propaganda of the Deed 2008: Understanding the Phenomenon’, co-authored with David Betz & Jaz Azari, RUSI Whitehall Report, No. 3-08, 2008.
  • Strategic Communications and Disinformation in the Early 21st Century, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Florence, Italy, 2021.
  • Clarifying Digital Terms, edited and co-authored with Elīna Lange-Ionatamišvili, Leonie Haiden, and Julian Hajduk, Riga: NATO StratCom CoE, 2020.
  • Improving NATO Strategic Communications Terminology, edited and co-authored with Leonie Haiden, Riga: NATO StratCom CoE, 2019.
  • How Did The Nordic-Baltic Countries Handle The First Wave of COVID-19?, edited and co-authored with Elīna Lange-Ionatamišvili, Iselin Engebretsen, Miranda Karin, Michélsen Forsgren, and Rakin Sayed, Riga: NATO StratCom CoE, 2021.