Brian J. Hilton

Biography

Brian moved to China in 2006 as a key part of a developing global research agenda that requires knowledge and understanding of China, Chinese language and Chinese people in relationship to the inevitable role they have played and are playing in the socio-economic evolutionary development of our planet. He took up his current appointment at Nottingham University, China campus  in 2007. This allows him to continue to develop his Chinese language skills and so establish the skills necessary for primary research in China. His main interest is in global socio-economic evolution as a perspective distinct from national economic development. He has ongoing research on the role the textile and garment industries plays in initiating and spreading socio-economic evolution. This empirical work is based on his theoretical work on the process of social evolution as it is rooted in more general ideas on evolutionary development developed by biologists and now increasingly embraced by others. During his period of employment at Cranfield Brian ran internationally focused executive training with a particularly strong emphasis on the introduction of finance and commercial accounting best practice into government particularly as effected through the use of public private partnerships that spanned national boundaries. In the period from 1998 – 2003 he was engaged in developing and running a UK MoD and DfID organized series of courses on Managing Defence in a Democratic Market Based Society in Sierra Leone, Uganda, Roumania, and Macedonia. In the same period separate from this he was funded to advise the Sierra Leone MoD on its staff development needs. Subsequent appointments were at the Oxford and the Australian National University. While still at Cranfield he became first a Visiting Fellow and then Associate Fellow of Templeton College Oxford. He based much of his research there. At ANU he ran a study tour of Canada and the UK on such reforms for a group of senior Australian public servants. In the early 1990s Brian worked extensively for the EU and other funding bodies, e.g. OECD, INTAS and NATO, researching and assisting with transition first in Central Europe (Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and East Germany) and then in some of the countries in the Western part of the former Soviet Union (Russia, Ukraine and Belarus). This work was focused on the role international joint ventures were playing in transition. He also provided consultancy on the setting up and organisation of public agencies aimed at these ends working for the UK MoD and others on the Costing and Estimating of Defence Procurement Projects and the evolution of defence procurement management. In the 1980s he was in the team that advised the EU Commission on the “Dual Use” Industries in the EU. He later worked on Military Conversion of the Soviet Aerospace industry in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia for NATO, the EU, UK and Russian Governments. In recent years his research and writing has moved away from international security related issues to more general international business topics, particularly globalisation strategies and the great significance to those of cultural differences between East and West.

Research Interest

In recent years his research and writing has moved away from international security related issues to more general international business topics, particularly globalisation strategies and the great significance to those of cultural differences between East and West.