As Leader of the Alliance Party, Lord John Alderdice was one of the negotiators of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, then first Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly, and subsequently one of four Commissioners appointed to oversee security normalization in Ireland.
A Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords since 1996 and Chairman of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords during the Conservative/Liberal Coalition, he was President of Liberal International (now Presidente D’Honneur) and is currently an Honorary Fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford, a Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford, a Visiting Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, Professor of Practice at both the Queen’s Institute for Peace, Security, and Justice at Queen’s University Belfast and the Global Humanity for Peace Institute, at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, and the Founding Chairman of The Concord Foundation and ARTIS (Europe) Ltd.
In January 2025, Lord John Alderdice was appointed as UK Trade Envoy to Azerbaijan and Central Asia.
