Isabel Hilton is a London based writer and broadcaster, and founder and editor of www.chinadialogue.net, an innovative, fully bilingual Chinese English website devoted to building a shared approach on climate change and environmental issues with China.
Hilton joined Scottish Television in 1976, moving to the Sunday Times in 1977. In 1986 she joined The Independent newspaper, pre-launch, as Latin America Editor. She left The Independent in 1995 and presented Radio 4’s the World Tonight (1995-1998), joining the Guardian as a columnist in 1995 and Radio 3’s Night Waves as a presenter from 1999 to 2009. She was a staff writer with the New Yorker from 2000 to 2004. In 2005 she was appointed editor of www.openDemocracy.net and subsequently becoming editor-in-chief. In 2006, she founded chinadialogue and in January 2007 she left openDemocracy to concentrate on building an independent, broad based dialogue on environment and climate change between China and the English-speaking world.
She graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an honours MA in Chinese. She holds postgraduate diplomas from the then Beijing Yuyan Xueyuan and Fudan University, Shanghai. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a fellow of the Asia Society in New York and a member of the advisory board of the Asia Society’s Arthur Ross Center.
