Reuters reporter Apps to run think tank

Reuters global defense correspondent Peter Apps has become executive director for the Project for the Study of the 21st Century while on paid sabbatical from Thomson Reuters.

He will lead the project through its initial launch, events and products in 2015 including with a major conference in Washington at the end of the year.

Having joined Reuters in 2003, Apps was posted overseas in southern Africa and Sri Lanka. In September 2006, a minibus collided with a tractor while on Apps was on a reporting trip covering the conflict in the latter, leaving him largely paralyzed from the shoulders down.

Returning to work in a wheelchair, he covered the emerging markets during the 2008 crash before becoming political risk correspondent for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Since 2013, he has been global defense correspondent. Of the 20 or so countries he has covered for Reuters, more than half have been since the injury.

“I’m very excited to be taking on a full-time role at PS21,” Apps said in a statement. “It’s going to be an interesting year. The list of global fellows who will be joining us is pretty jawdropping and I’m hugely honored 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.”