Josef Mifsud

According to a biography on the London Centre of International Law Practice’s website, which was deleted in October 2017 Mifsud “served prominently” in Malta’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and worked as an adviser for Malta’s Ministry of Education. Scotland’s University of Stirling said in an emailed statement that Mifsud joined its politics department in May 2017r as a “full-time professorial teaching fellow.” Nabil Ayad, who hired Mifsud as an honorary director at the London Academy of Diplomacy — where Ayad was founder and director — said Mifsud’s focus was broadly in the area of diplomacy. But Mifsud had occasionally gone beyond the role of the typical academic. In 2015, he was an observer for elections in Kazakhstan that were sharply criticized by independent groups. Mifsud's contacts in Moscow go back to at least 2012, when a delegation from Moscow State University's Faculty of Global Processes established a partnership with the London Diplomatic Academy, according to publications by the university faculty and a newsletter founded by order of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Between 2013 and 2017, Mifsud visited Moscow State University about once each year, giving lectures and posing for photographs with the department head, Ilya Ilyin. The nature of the partnership was not immediately clear.