Dr Alan Hardacre is the Director of Group Corporate Affairs with Imperial Brands based in Brussels, Belgium. In this role he is responsible for developing and embedding a sustainable global Corporate Affairs strategy that supports the commercial drive of the company.
Prior to this he was a lecturer in the "European Decision-Making" Unit at the European Institute for Public Administration (EIPA) in Maastricht. Alan holds a BA (Hons) in Modern European Studies from Loughborough University (UK) and a DEA de Science Politique from the Institut d'Études Politiques de Lyon. In 2008 he was awarded a distinction for his PhD in International Economic and Political Relations from Loughborough University in the UK.
Previously Alan worked as a lobbyist in Brussels, from 2004 until 2008, as a Senior Policy Adviser for the British Business Bureau at the Confederation of British Industry. Alan has also done extensive work with the International Trade Center (ITC), in Geneva, on how the private sector can play a more active role in regional integration around the world. In this context he consulted for Brazilian, Thai, African and Latin American Business on advocacy strategies to better support their business needs.
In 2015 Alan published the second edition of his successful book ‘How the EU Institutions Work…and How to Work with the EU Institutions’ which provides a hands on guide for practitioners and students of European affairs. Alan currently runs lobbying workshops and sessions at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, the University of Chulalongkorn in Bangkok, Thailand and at the IHECS Academy in Brussels.