Hetan is the Chief Executive of The British Academy, the United Kingdom’s national academy for the humanities and the social sciences, which he leads with insight, energy, and a talent for making a difference in the world in which we all live. He is also an alumnus of Birkbeck.

Hetan studied at Birkbeck between 2000 and 2002 for his degree in Contemporary History and Politics, where he studied (amongst other topics), Soviet history, politics and development in post-colonial societies, empire and the state, and population movements, minorities and genocide.

The following year, he followed his MA by doing a Birkbeck postgraduate certificate in economics. It was during this time that he honed some of the skills that were to become so important in his later career.