Dr Adam Steinhouse obtained his first degree at Harvard University and then his DPhil in Politics from Wadham College, Oxford University. A fluent French speaker, he also studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. In his doctorate, he examined industrial relations between the government and the labour movement in France after World War II and his research was published in a monograph as Workers' Participation in Post-Liberation France by Lexington Books in 2001.
Before joining the National School of Government in 2001, he had taught politics courses for more than a decade (from 1989 to 2001): European and US politics, comparative government, and gender and politics at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Sunderland, UCL and the LSE. For several years (1997-2001), he was a political analyst and commentator for BBC television and radio, CNN, Sky News, France 2, CBC and Radio-Canada.
Steinhouse was Head of School of European Studies at the UK National School of Government from 2001 until its closure in 2012. During that time, he trained several thousand British and international civil servants in the essential skills and understanding needed for successful EU negotiations; he led over forty study tours for UK diplomats and other European officials to Brussels and Luxembourg; and he organised some thirty inward study visits to the UK as the director of the European Reciprocal Training Programme with ten other EU member states.
The National School of Government evolved from the Civil Service College, established in 1970 as part of the Cabinet Office to provide training programmes for UK civil servants; the Civil Service College was then incorporated into the Centre for Management and Policy Studies within the Cabinet Office in 1999. The National School of Government became a separate non-ministerial UK Government department in 2007 and was eventually closed in 2012.
Since leaving the UK civil service in 2012, he has continued to teach EU and international negotiating skills to government officials around the world. He is also Faculty Professor at IÉSEG School of Management, Lille and Paris, France; Visiting Professor at the Haute École ICHEC Brussels Management School; and Associate researcher for the Jean Monnet Chair in European Integration, Université Laval, Canada.
His other publications include a wide range of articles, chapters, reviews and a co-edited book on the New Left in Britain (Out of Apathy: Voices of the New Left Thirty Years On, Verso Press, 1989).