Patrick Holdich OBE is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of the Americas, University College London. Until 2022, he was a senior UK civil servant in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and retired as Head of the Research Analysts, the research department and internal think-tank of the FCDO. He studied at Bangor University and the LSE and had a brief early academic career in the 1980’s at Queen Mary College, London, as a Lecturer in History. He joined the FCO in 1985 and worked for over 35 years a career specialist on North American politics and history. This included two diplomatic postings to Canada (Ottawa, Montreal). Aside from conducting in-house research within the FCO to help shape UK government policy, he was a member of the UK government’s Professional Heads of Intelligence Analysts and maintained an active relationship with a range of UK and international research centres and think-tanks. His primary focus as a Fellow at the UCL Institute is on Canadian politics and contemporary history.