Jonathan Rowson

Jonathan Rowson is a writer, philosopher, and chess Grandmaster who has competed internationally with world-class players and was three-time British Chess Champion from 2004 through 2006. He holds a first class degree from Oxford University in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics; a Masters degree from Harvard University in Mind, Brain, and Education; and a PhD from the University of Bristol, where his thesis examined the process of becoming wiser. In 2016, after serving for six years as...See more

Jonathan Rowson is a writer, philosopher, and chess Grandmaster who has competed internationally with world-class players and was three-time British Chess Champion from 2004 through 2006. He holds a first class degree from Oxford University in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics; a Masters degree from Harvard University in Mind, Brain, and Education; and a PhD from the University of Bristol, where his thesis examined the process of becoming wiser. In 2016, after serving for six years as Director of the Social Brain Centre at the Royal Society of the Arts, he became co-founder and Director of Perspectiva, a research institute that examines the relationship between complex global challenges and the inner lives of human beings. He is also a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity at the University of Surrey, and was a 2018 Open Society Fellow. His writing has appeared in the Guardian , New Statesman , and Prospect , and he is the author of three technical books on chess. Rowson lives in London with his wife, Siva, and their sons, Kailash and Vishnu. See less