Reuters' global defence correspondent Peter Apps takes a year out to head new think tank

Reuters’ Washington-based global defence correspondent Peter Apps (photo) is taking a year's break to become executive director of a new global think tank.

On paid sabbatical leave, he will lead the Project for Study of the 21st Century through its initial launch, events and products in 2015 including a major conference in Washington at the end of the year.

Apps joined Reuters as a graduate trainee journalist in 2003 and was posted to southern Africa. In September 2006, a minibus in which he was riding collided with a tractor while on a reporting trip covering the conflict in Sri Lanka, leaving him largely paralysed from the shoulders down. Returning to work in a wheelchair, he covered emerging markets during the 2008 crash before becoming political risk correspondent for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Since 2013, he has been global defence correspondent. Of the 20 or so countries he has covered for Reuters, more than half have been since the injury.

PS21 describes itself as “sometimes iconoclastic, often irreverent, ever so slightly feral”.

“I’m very excited to be taking on a full-time role at PS21,” he said. “It’s going to be an interesting year. The list of global fellows who will be joining us is pretty jaw-dropping and I’m hugely honoured to be working with them. There are a lot of interesting issues and trends out there and I’m looking forward to getting stuck into them.”

Initial seed funding of £10,000 for the project will be provided by the Peter Michael Apps Personal Injury Trust. ■