Merijn Chamon is Doctor in Law and academic assistant at the Ghent European Law Institute. He also holds a Master’s degree in EU-studies and a Master’s degree in European Law.
Merijn’s research interests encompass EU constitutional and institutional law (both internal and regarding external relations). As regards substantive law, he also has a keen interest in several areas of EU internal market law.
Merijn’s PhD research focused on the European (decentralized) agencies and his thesis was entitled ‘Transforming the EU Administration: Legal and Political Limits to Agencification’

Giles was appointed as development manager of the Weidenfeld-Hoffmann Trust in January 2016, working across the Scholarships Programme & Humanitas. Giles started his professional career with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, working across their Mergers & Acquisitions teams. He joins WHT from China, where he was head of university admissions for one of the leading schools in the country, in Jinan.

Giles graduated from Trinity Hall, Cambridge, with an MA in History, and subsequently from King’s College London, where his thesis on Caribbean migration in the twentieth century was awarded the Master of Research in History Prize. While completing this thesis, he was invited to contribute to the Cambridge University Migrants and Migration paper, delivering a guest lecture on the cultural impact of migration in the twentieth century.

Nicole is project manager at Fastighetsägarna Stockholm, the Stockholm Free World Forum. She was previously staff assistant for a Republican congressman, Ken Calvert, and a reporter for California News Service. Her academic areas of interest are American public policy and legislative politics, local politics in Stockholm and security of East Asia and the Pacific.

Kashif Virk is an imam at the Bait-ul-Aafiyyat mosque in Stockholm, and runs Imambloggen.

Joanna Rose is a science writer currently at Modern Filosofi. She is co-author, with Aleksander Perski, of Duktighetsfällan: en överlevnadshandbok för prestationsprinsessor (Cleverness Trap: a survival guide for performance princesses). She was previously an editor at Forskning&Framsteg.

Pekka Hämäläinen specialises in early and nineteenth-century American history and has particular interest in Native American, environmental, and borderlands history. His 2008 book, The Comanche Empire, received awards including the Bancroft Prize, the Merle Curti Award, the Caughey Prize, the Norris and Carol Hundley Award, the John C. Ewers Award, the William P. Clements Prize, the Kate Broocks Bates Award, the Great Plains Distinguished Book Award, the Philosophical Society of Texas Award of Merit, and Recognition of Excellence Award in the Cundill International Prize in History.

He is currently working on a book that traces the history of power relations and social worlds in North America from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century, integrating indigenous and European perspectives, borderlands and imperial histories, and transatlantic and continental approaches. For 2014–19, he has gained a European Research Council Consolidator Grant (€1,988,584) for the major research project ‘Nomadic Empires: A World Historical Perspective’.

Anne Hege Simonsen is Associate Professor at the Department for Journalism and Media Studies at Oslo and Akershus University College for Applied Sciences (HiOA). She is a former journalist and editor. Her academic background is social anthropology and she holds a PhD in aesthetics from the University of Bergen. Her research areas are photography and photojournalism, media and minorities, migration, foreign affairs coverage (with a special focus on Africa) and the representation of borders, barriers, frontiers and boundaries.

Fabrice Muamba is an English retired professional footballer who played for Arsenal, Birmingham City and Bolton Wanderers as a central midfielder. Born in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Fabrice moved to England at the age of 11 and subsequently played for England up to under-21 level. In March 2012, he suffered a cardiac arrest during a televised FA Cup match between Bolton and Tottenham Hotspur, from which he recovered despite his heart having stopped for 78 minutes. Following medical advice, he announced his retirement from professional football in August 2012. Fabrice now works as regional education officer for the PFA and completed a degree in journalism in 2015 at Staffordshire University. In 2014 he was part of a charity choir whose single reached number 1 for Children in Need.

Leonidas Bouritsas was born in Athens and studied in Thessaloniki. He followed postgraduate studies and research, in the theory of linguistics and the history of ideas and philosophy, in the UK, USA and Canada. He taught at Hunter College/C.U.N.Y., Stevens Institute of Technology, and Deree College, Greece. His PhD, ‘A paradox of freedom and an old rivalry between politics and philosphy’, was written and defended at the Graduate School of the City University of New York in 2005.

Leonidas’s articles have been published in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and other Greek and international media. Since January 2015, he has been special adviser to the prime minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras.

Dominic Glynn is Lecturer in French at the Institute of Modern
Languages Research (IMLR), London. Prior to his appointment in
2015, he worked in professional theatre and academia in France.
Over the course of his career, he has collaborated with a number
of writers and directors, including Olivier Cadiot, Ludovic Lagarde
and Jo.l Pommerat, and has taught on both sides of the channel. Glynn’s research interests include experimental literature under constraint, and translations of intermedial performance. . He is the author of (Re)telling Old Stories: PeterBrook’s Mahabharata and Ariane Mnouchkine’s Les Atrides (Peter Lang) and Lignes de fuite (Paris: L’Harmattan).

Lesley Curwen is an award-winning journalist who presents business, economics and personal finance on BBC Radio and TV, including Money Box on Radio 4.  Between 2010 and 2013, she presented business news on Today. She is a public speaker, and a moderator of debates and conference panels. 

Lesley has a long track record in investigative journalism, working for File on 4, The Report and independent production houses. Recent topics include the Forex rate-rigging scandal, how developers wriggle out of affordable housing commitments, the true cost of public pensions and the safety record of Virgin Galactic.

For seven years she hosted the flagship Business Daily programme on BBC World Service, providing day-by-day coverage of the global economic crisis. She has presented many other live programmes such as Business Edition on BBC World TV and daily business news on the News Channel.

She has worked in many countries, including spells as a BBC correspondent in Washington DC.

Liam is a reporter at Breitbart London. His work overs free speech issues, student politics, culture wars, the migrant crisis and other tabloid staples.

Tufayel Ahmed is culture reporter for Newsweek Europe and has previously written for major publications including the Daily Mirror, Yahoo U.K. and The Sun. He has also appeared as a commentator on Sky News, BBC Radio Wales and talkRADIO.

A pop culture expert, Tufayel writes about the latest film releases, television phenomenons like Game of Thrones, music and has a vested interest in the rapid growth of streaming platforms.

Gemma has been the driving force behind the North Wales Women’s Centre and it’s development. From the early start in 2001 as an IT training project for 140 women she went on to secure funding to develop a one stop shop for women in West Rhyl, the most deprived ward in Wales. The Centre has evolved to provide support, training and interventions for women from all backgrounds and situations.
Gemma has overseen the development of services from 3 staff in 2001 to presently 15 staff supported by 40 volunteers and has brought more than £5m of resources to North Wales to empower more than 3000 women to improve their lives.

Yannis Koutsomitis is an independent Eurozone analyst and a television producer.

He holds a degree from Athens University on German studies and he is a four-time Greek TV Awards recipient for primetime drama production. His articles on the Eurozone and Greek politics have appeared on Germany’s Die Zeit and Portugal’s Expresso newspapers. He is also a contributing commentator for Dutch National TV’s Nieuwsuur programme.

Since June 2016, Matt has been editor of the New European, the UK national pop-up paper for the 48%. Since November 2015, he has been chief content officer at Archant, a privately owned media company serving geographical and specialist interest communities across a wide range of media. Matt previously held a variety of journalist and senior executive roles at Mirror Group and Trinity Mirror.

Gemma has been the driving force behind the North Wales Women’s Centre and its development. Starting in 2001 as an IT training project for 140 women, Gemma went on to secure funding to develop a one-stop shop for women in West Rhyl, the most deprived ward in Wales. The Centre has evolved to provide support, training and interventions for women from all backgrounds and situations.

Gemma has overseen the development of services from three staff in 2001 to 15 staff today, supported by 40 volunteers, and has brought more than £5million of resources to North Wales to empower more than 3,000 women to improve their lives.

Andy Lewis is an assistant headteacher and director of religious studies at St Bonaventure’s School in the London Borough of Newham. He has worked at a number of Catholic comprehensive schools in the Diocese of Brentwood holding both pastoral and subject leadership positions. He has contributed to religious education nationally through his work with Culham St Gabriel’s, Teach First and the Catholic Education Service. He has been involved in TeachMeet London and ran the London RE Hub in 2015 and 2016. Andy has spoken at a number of events including Westminster Briefings, various TeachMeets and regional RE training days. He has published a textbook for the new GCSE specification and involved in a new series of Key Stage 3 textbooks to be published in 2017. He was nominated for TES Teacher Blogger of the Year in 2016 and frequently tweets and blogs about RE and wider education.

Rogerio Simoes is a Brazilian journalist and analyst based in London. He is a former executive editor at Brazilian news magazine Epoca and former head of BBC Brasil. With Masters degrees in International Security-Global Governance and Social Media, Simoes has written for news organisations such as Folha de S.Paulo, Veja and CNN and for intelligence company IHS Markit.

Vicky Richardson is a writer and curator. From 2010-2016 she was commissioner for the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, part of her role as director of architecture design fashion at the British Council. Over the past six years, she has led design projects all around the world, including touring exhibitions, installations and residencies in China, Korea, Nigeria, India, Brazil, Indonesia and Finland.

Vicky is honorary treasurer of the Architectural Association and a member of the advisory board of V&A Dundee. She recently completed an MA in Early Modern History at King’s College London, where she specialized in 18th-century political publishing. From 2004 to 2010, she was editor of Blueprint magazine and before that deputy editor of RIBA Journal.

Inês Moreira is an architect and exhibition curator, conveying her cultural activity and practice to academic research (IHA-FCSH-UNL) and to university teaching (FBAUP). She is developing a post-doctoral research on the revitalization of post-industrial spaces in Europe, an extension of her doctorate in curatorial knowledge (Goldsmiths College).

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Silio studied economics and journalism at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and received an MA in broadcast journalism from the University of Southern California.

He started his journalism career with the newspaper Jornal do Brasil, first in Rio, then as correspondent in Los Angeles and Washington. During this period, he covered US events and the insurgencies in Central America, including the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua.

He later transferred to London in the 1980s, where he started to work as international correspondent for Globo TV of Brazil, covering important events in the region, including the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Gulf War in 1991.

Silio left Globo TV in the mid-90s and started working as a freelancer, first in France, then eventually contributing more regularly to the all-news channel GloboNews, where he co-presents two current-affairs type programmes: Milenio (along the lines of BBC’s ‘Hard Talk’) and Sem Fronteiras (similar to BBC’s ‘Panorama’).

David passionately believes that heritage has an important place in young people’s learning. He has worked in a number of heritage organisations including the National Football Museum, Manchester Museum and John Rylands Library. David has seen first-hand how the world-class collections of these institutions have inspired both wonder and debate, and believes that learners of all ages may benefit from museum education programmes. A lover of Roman history, David read classical studies at the University of Manchester where he graduated with honours.

Rita Neves Costa is currently studying for a master’s degree student in journalism at Nova University of Lisbon. Her thesis focuses on cultural journalism, specifically how the agenda of events determines the type of work done by the media.

She holds a bachelor in communication sciences: journalism, public relations and multimedia from the University of Porto. Her writing can be found in academic and college newspapers, as well as in Portuguese newspapers like Publico, Observador, and in alternative media like Shifter.

Penelope Petsini studied photography at University of London, Goldsmiths College (MA in image and communication) and University of Derby (PhD). Her research interests, both in terms of theory and practice, focus on photography and its relation to personal and collective memory, history and politics. She has exhibited and published extensively both in Greece and internationally. She curated a series of exhibitions, the most recent being Another Life (Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, May-December 2016) and Sites of Memory (Benaki Museum, Athens, June-July 2016). Part of her 10-year research on the Cold War, a collaborative project with Nikos Panayotopoulos, has been presented in the solo exhibitions Aufarbeitung: The Wall in the State Museum of Contemporary Art Biennial, and Restricted Areas.

She has had affiliated appointments as lecturer of photography theory since 2004 (Department of Photography & Audiovisual Arts, TEI of Athens; School of Architecture, University of Patras). She has been the course leader of the photography course of Life-Long Education Program, Department of Visual and Applied Arts, University of Western Macedonia (2012-16) and of the seminars “Photography: Contemporary Theory and Practice” at the Hellenic Center of Photography (2013-16). She is currently lecturing at the photography courses of the Athens School of Fine Art.

Ken De Cooman’s activities were sprawling into philosophy, music, live visuals, dance and performance before becoming focused on architecture. In 2009, BC studies was started, engaging in projects on the border between arts and architecture. In 2011, a workshop with Anna Heringer and Martin Rauch introduced De Cooman to earth construction. In 2012, he co-founded BC architects with Laurens Bekemans, Nicolas Coeckelberghs and Wes Degreef.

Today, BC architects & studies is a young office just about running its course with storied projects, in which building materials are often produced on site and in context. With projects in Belgium, France, Nigeria, Morocco, Burundi and Ethiopia, BC architects and studies has a fresh look at ways of constructing, and doing so, are pushing the boundaries of contemporary building processes.

Bally is a member of the senior leadership team at Pera Training Ltd, a provider of apprenticeship programmes to clients including Jaguar Land Rover, Pepsico and Denby Pottery. She has worked with many employers and aspiring apprentices first hand to know what employers are looking for in candidates and is increasingly advising parents about apprenticeship career route options, as the landscape of higher education continues to change.

She has developed many partnerships and campaigns to raise the awareness and take up of apprenticeships, including the most recent and ‘hot-off-the-press’ development of degree apprenticeships.  With one eye on government policy and the other on economic growth, Bally has a very keen interest in the future of apprenticeships and how the forthcoming levy will impact the government’s target of three million apprenticeships, improve the quality of apprenticeships and increase social mobility.

Luis, holds an MA in International Relations from the University of East Anglia and an MBA from Fundação Getúlio Vargas-RJ. He has worked for several news organisations in Brazil covering a variety of subjects, including the process of pacification of favelas in Rio de Janeiro, the United Nations Rio+20 conference and the street protests in 2013. Currently, Luis is based in London, and contributes with articles and news stories to magazines, newspapers and blogs. He is a member of the organising committee of the Brazil Forum UK.

His interests include the role of the BRICS group in the international society and the advancement of democracy in Brazil.

An American immigrant to Portugal, Hecker has previously lived and worked in Toronto, New York, São Paulo, Rome and London. She earned her PhD in the history of art and archaeology at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, with a specialization in sixteenth-century Italian and Iberian art and architectural theory, drawings and prints. She has taught undergraduate courses in art history at New York University, the University of Toronto, and Purchase College (SUNY); her research took place primarily in the archives at San Lorenzo de El Escorial (outside of Madrid, Spain), the Warburg Institute and the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum (London, UK), as well as the Vatican Apostolic Library and Secret Archives in Vatican City (Rome, Italy).

She is presently responsible for international partnerships and fundraising at the Trienal de Arquitectura de Lisboa, and is associate creative director at the Lisbon art, architecture and design firm Studio Astolfi. She is also a freelance writer, researcher, editor, and translator. Hecker’s interests in issues of patronage, funding for the arts, architecture, and art and architecture as ‘investments’ (cultural and otherwise), reach from the Renaissance into the present day and inform her professional work, research and writing.

Vania works mainly as a cultural manager and artistic programmer at Mala Voadora theatre company and Mala Vadora.porto, an independent arts venue in Porto (www.malavoadora.pt), she is also the strategy advisor for the oldest and biggest theatre network in Portugal, which gathers 14 cities, including the capital Lisbon.

Vania has worked as a cultural manager and as an arts consultant for more than 12 years, a great amount of which encompassed international collaborations of some kind. These include co-­productions and touring (at mala voadora), European cooperation projects, international networking, and serving as a member of groups such as the European House for Culture or the A Soul for Europe Initiative.

She also has a number of international experiences with the Gulbenkian Foundation, and has participated in meetings regarding artists’ mobility via the Roberto Cimmeta Fund, and has collaborated with the British Council on a number of occasions as a facilitator and reporter for the Creative Hubs International Forum. She is regularly invited as a trainer and a speaker in cultural management and cultural policy (especially performing arts).

Carolina Matos is a lecturer at the Department of Sociology, City University London. She was previously a part-time lecturer at the Government Department at Essex University. A former fellow in political communications at the LSE, Matos obtained her PhD in media and communications at Goldsmiths College, and has taught and researched in the UK in political communications, media and politics at the University of East London (UEL), St. Mary’s College and Goldsmiths.

Matos is the author of Journalism and political democracy in Brazil (Lexington Books, 2008) and Media and Politics in Latin America: globalization, democracy and identity (IB Tauris, 2012), which won the Premio Jabuti 2014 prize, first category in communications. She is also director of the Jeremy Tunstall Global Media Research Centre at the Department of Sociology, City University London, and also teaches on gender and development at the International Centre for Parliamentary Studies (ICPS), a think thank in London.

Dr Nick Emmel is a senior lecturer in sociology & social policy at the University of Leeds. He is a realist methodologist and critical sociologist who always questions preconceived and common sense notions and names causes. Nick’s research-led teaching addresses health inequalities and inequities in an international context. He is the author of Sampling and Choosing Cases in Qualitative Research (London: Sage, 2013).

Laird is a town planner, whose CV includes roles in government, academia and the third sector. As chief advisor to Stoke’s elected mayor, he led a ‘Green Papers’ initiative, enabling the wider community to engage with public policy at an earlier stage and higher level. He then brought together key organisations in the West Midlands and North West to deliver accords on social and economic wellbeing.

Nowadays, Laird designs distance-learning modules for UCEM, Reading, is a qualified ESOL teacher, and is vice-chair of a Liverpool-based environmental charity. He edits OpenDemocracy’s LocalismWatch site, aimed at making sense of the government’s localism agenda.

Pooky directs the children, young people and schools programme at the Charlie Waller Memorial Trust, a charity that provides fully-funded mental health training to schools. She is a passionate ambassador for mental health who loves to research, write, speak, teach and share all manner of ideas about mental health, wellbeing and PSHE.  Her enthusiasm is backed up both by a PhD in child and adolescent mental health from the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London, and her own lived experience of anorexia, self-harm, anxiety and depression. Pooky’s latest publications are Using Poetry to Promote Talking and Healing, and The Healthy Coping Colouring Book and Journal.

René Cuperus is director for international relations and senior research fellow at the Wiardi Beckman Foundation, a think tank of the Dutch Labour Party PvdA. Before that, he was policy advisor to two successive party leaders. He is co-founder of the Forum Scholars for European Social Democracy, a European network of centre-left think tanks. He is a member of the British think tank Policy Network and advisor to the Karl Renner Institute in Vienna. He is also a member of the Research Group of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS).

René is known for being very critical of the European Union, more specifically of its democratic deficit. He resists the idea of an ‘ever closer union’ and advocates a ‘reset’ of the European project. Cuperus has published a number of books, including in 2009 De wereldburger bestaat niet (‘The myth of world citizenship’), an analysis of the causes and backgrounds of the pan-European revolt of populism; De Politiek van de Euro: biografie van een kwetsbare munt (‘The Politics of the Euro: biography of a vulnerable currency’, 2012) and Het humeur van Nederland (‘The Dutch mood’, 2013).

Cuperus writes a blog for the LSE-linked Social Europe Journal (www.social-europe.eu) and a political column for the Dutch daily de Volkskrant (comparable to The Guardian). He is also a correspondent for the Netherlands for the digital magazine The State of the Left, published by The International Policy Network. He teaches European and international politics at the Universities of Leiden, Tilburg and Nijmegen.

Sophie Brown is the artist film and thriller programmer for the Aesthetica Short Film Festival, and she views submissions for the BFI London Film Festival and Sheffield Doc/Fest. She writes the Doc/Fest short film catalogue, and her film journalism has been published in magazines including Little White Lies, Dazed and Confused and Sight and Sound. She is one of the coordinators of Scalarama, a nationwide celebration of cinema, and she curates film events under the moniker Bijou Electric Empire Forever.

Dr Ashour gained his Bsc and MA at the American University in Cairo (Egypt) and his PhD from McGill University (Canada). His research interests are: asymmetric warfare, insurgency and counterinsurgency, Islamist movements and ideologies, democratization (with focus on security sector reform and civil-military relations), security, terrorism, and strategic military studies.

His published works cover the Middle East, North Africa, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Arab and Muslim communities in the West. His publications appeared in Foreign Affairs, Terrorism and Political Violence, International Affairs, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Middle East Journal, Canadian Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Studies, and others.

Dr Ashour previously served as a senior consultant for the United Nations on security sector reform, counter-terrorism, and de-radicalization issues. He co-authored the United Nations’ Economic and Social Commission for West Asia’s (UN-ESCWA) document on security sector reform during the transitional periods of the Arab Spring. It was the first UN document on that subject-matter in the Arab-majority world.

Dr Ashour served as a research fellow at the Brookings Institution for five years. He is currently an associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London. Dr Ashour is a regular contributor to media outlets including the BBC, CBC, CNN, Sky News, al-Jazeera English, al-Jazeera Arabic, al-Arabiya, and others. He recently authored tens of op-eds in Foreign Policy, the Guardian, Globe and Mail, al-Jazeera.net, CNN.com, Project Syndicate, the Independent and other outlets on the Arab-majority uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Syria, and Iraq, as well as political developments in Algeria and Turkey.

Clive Davis has been writing on music and literature for The Times since 1987, and for The Sunday Times since 1994. He has been a media fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and has made Radio 4 documentaries about the novelist Richard Wright and the journalist and historian William L Shirer. He started his career as a reporter and editor at West Indian World newspaper in Haringey, before joining the BBC as a news trainee. He has also written for the Independent, New Statesman and Songlines magazine, and has blogged for The Spectator. He currently spends too much time on Twitter.

Colin is an experienced executive-level publisher of traditional and digital education resources. He joined HarperCollins in 2012 and, as managing director of Collins Learning, has overseen the integration of the company’s Education, Language and Geo divisions. In 2013, he launched Collins India. He is chair of the Education Publishers Council in the UK and of the Board of the Governors of Middlesex University.

Colin worked at the Press Association and The Times before joining the Independent in 1986 as political correspondent. He went on to become policy editor, education editor, and US correspondent, and spent his final five years at the Independent as managing editor, and deputy editor of the paper. He joined the Guardian in 1998, and founded Learnthings Ltd, the Guardian’s digital learning business, in 2000. After establishing learn.co.uk, he created Guardian Business and Professional as managing director, and served on the Guardian News and Media board for six years as director of business and professional.

Julian joined City A.M., the Square Mile’s most-read newspaper, in 2010, having previously worked for a think tank. Starting as an economics reporter, he covered the post-financial crisis landscape, including protracted woes in Greece and across the Eurozone, and the arrival of a new coalition government in the UK. As a journalist working at the heart of the UK’s financial centre he interviewed top business leaders, bankers, regulators, and senior Bank of England officials. In recent years Julian has worked as City A.M.’s night editor, news editor, and is now deputy editor, leading the newspaper alongside the editor, former Institute of Directors communications boss Christian May.

Vinay Gupta is a technologist and policy analyst with a particular interest in how specific technologies can create or close off avenues for decision makers. This interest has taken him through cryptography, energy policy, defence, security, resilience and disaster management arenas.  Vinay was the Release Coordinator for the Ethereum launch, a strategic architect for Consensus Systems, and is currently starting up a venture capital firm based on intersections between new technologies and better founder care. Find out more about his work at hexayurt.com and re.silience.com.

Manon Mollard is an architectural designer and writer. Born in France, raised between Europe and Latin America, she studied at the Architectural Association, worked in Colombia and is currently based in London, where she is features editor at the Architectural Review.

Tendayi Bloom is a lecturer in Politics and International Studies at the Open University in the UK. She is a political and legal theorist and her work focuses on the relationship between noncitizens and States. She has written on this in a number of capacities. She is currently working on projects relating to statelessness, noncitizenship, and the politics of noncitizenship.

Her recent published work has focused on the role of the private sector in constructing non-citizenship in the context of migration, decision-making in the Mediterranean region, and of a more theoretical framing of the State-noncitizen relationship.

After a career in the building industry, Chris entered the social work profession during the recession of the late eighties / early nineties. He worked for the probation service then as an approved social worker in Central Manchester, before turning to lecturing on social work programmes, in which he heads and delivers modules on addictions. As a keen cyclist and runner Chris’s research interests include the impact of sport on society. When not watching his beloved Manchester City, Chris can be spotted singing in an eighties covers band, DJing or riding around Manchester on his Lambretta scooter.

Having recently competed in BBC’s Bargain Hunt programme, Chris will be giving out autographs once the show is aired.

Andrea Huber is the initiator of the campaign “Schutzfaktor M“, an organisation committed to protecting human rights in Switzerland. She read legal and media studies at the University of Bern’s Political Science college. She was previously co-director of Amnesty International Switzerland. Andrea Huber has had several mandates for humanrights.ch. She is also a member of the expert commission of “éducation 21”, the Swiss web portal for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD).

David is a Digital Consultant based in the East Midlands. He works with people to help them develop and strengthen their brand online. He runs his own Award Winning Digital Agency and has helped build many successful brands.

From delivering e-Commerce sites for clients, to managing their online marketing, Dijitul provides a true one stop solution for all their clients needs. The “group” is now expanding and are building their portfolio of true online shopping portals and platforms. Dedicated to expanding their reach locally, they are also combining their skills and developing education partnerships and recruitment drives to encourage a local digital economy.

Jhanelle is a first year Chemistry Undergraduate at Kings College London. She is a former member of Dudley Youth Council, and founder and chair of political organisation Political Sweep. She is also a political activist and member of the Labour Party. She was the former leader of Equality and Diversity, Debating Enrichment, a leading member of the Student Equality and Diversity Action Group, as well as Student Union Officer for Equality and Diversity, at King Edward VI college Stourbridge.

Matthias Mahlmann is the chair of Philosophy and Theory of Law, Legal Sociology and International Public Law at the University of Zurich. He has been visiting professor at the Central European University, Budapest; the Hebrew University, Jerusalem and Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, DC. He also serves as the BOK Visiting International professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School 2016/2017. He has been a legal consultant to different public bodies, including the Swiss Federal Government and the European Commission.

Richard Mason is “one of the outstanding writers of his generation” (Editor, Mail on Sunday). He’s the South African author of five novels: The Drowning People, Us, The Lighted Rooms, History of a Pleasure Seeker and Who Killed Piet Barol?

Mason’s novels have sold over a million copies in 28 languages. The Drowning People won Italy’s Grinzane Cavour prize for Best First Novel. The Lighted Rooms was longlisted for the Sunday Times award and the IMPAC prize, while History of a Pleasure Seeker also made the Sunday Times longlist, was shortlisted for a LAMMY and chosen as an Oprah pick. The Washington Post called it “the best new work of fiction … in many moons.”

Mason is adapting History of a Pleasure Seeker for television, with Bafta-winning director Philippa Lowthorpe.  He is also writing his first original show, Nexus, for Hat Trick Productions. In the coming year he will be working on several film and television projects, including a project with Bob Wood, former president of HBO.

Mason has written for European editions of Vanity Fair; American, British and Italian Vogue; the London Times, Guardian, Evening Standard, Tatler, Timeout and the New York Times. He’s appeared on Newsnight and been the subject of a CNN documentary.

With Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mason founded the Kay Mason Foundation (www.kmf.org.za) in 1999. In memory of his sister, the foundation helps disadvantaged young people in South Africa get superb educations.

In 2009, Mason founded Project Lulutho, a center for adult learning and green farming in South Africa’s rural Eastern Cape, and spent a year living under canvas – learning the language and culture of the Xhosa people. It was this experience that resulted in Who Killed Piet Barol?

You can watch the Youtube Series about the novel’s creation here

Joakim Medin is a writer and freelance journalist who has worked in the Middle East for several years, to monitor the ongoing military conflicts and the consequences of them. In February 2015 Medin was arrested by Syrian intelligence and put in prison alongside IS-warriors. Earlier this year, after his release, he published the book Ayn al-Arab where he tells his story.

Peter Studer is a lawyer and publicist. From 1978 to 1987 he was the chief editor of the Zurich newspaper Tages-Anzeiger. From 1990 to 1999 he was the chief editor of Swiss Television. He then spent the next seven years at the Swiss Press Council. Peter taught media law at the University of St. Gallen.

John Crowley took up the position as editor-in-chief of International Business Times UK in March 2016. He was previously digital editor at The Wall Street Journal for Europe, Middle East and Africa. He has worked as a reporter and an editor for the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and The Irish Post.

Hannes Sjöblad is the founder of Bionyfiken, the Swedish association of Biohackers and is a Singularty University Advisor. He is a positive technophile and thinks that it’s going to be great when the robots take over all the boring work. As chairman of the association ”Människa+” (Translated ”Human plus”) Sjöblad often gives lectures on transhuman development. 

TED-talk link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoW1Asy5utU

Katie Tonkiss is a lecturer in sociology and policy at Aston University. Her research interests are centred on migration rights, immigration policy, and post-national approaches to questions of membership and belonging. She is currently leading a British Academy-funded research project on migration rights activism in the UK and Australia.

Katie is the author of Migration and Identity in a Post-National World (Palgrave Macmillan 2013), which explores the negotiation of identity and belonging in contexts of high EU immigration. She has published widely in scholarly journals including the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and Citizenship Studies, and is currently working on two volumes, Theorising Noncitizenship (with Tendayi Bloom) and Understanding Statelessness (with Tendayi Bloom and Phillip Cole) which will be published with Routledge in the coming year. Katie also regularly writes on topical issues for wider audiences, including for Compass and in publications such as The Conversation, the Independent and Migration Pulse.

Trevor Jackson has been working at the forefront of audio and visual culture for nearly 30 years. From creating record sleeves for seminal early hip hop, house and techno releases to recent award winning design campaigns, highly acclaimed installations and exhibitions, 100’s of remixes for artists like Massive Attack, Dinos Chapman, Metronomy, Tiga & the The Cure, through to his much loved Output Recordings label (1996-2006) - discovering both Four Tet and LCD Soundsystem amongst many others. With its emphasis on visual as much as musical artistry and innovation, Jackson’s Output set a new aesthetic standard that prompted critics to declare it the decade’s equivalent to Factory Recordings.

Last year he presented Format a unique album of 12 tracks each released on a separate limited edition physical format via The Vinyl Factory. A consecutive multiscreen installation created by Jackson at the Brewer Street Car Park gallery in London offered people the first chance to encounter the album as a unique audio visual experience. In 2014 he presented a show at the 12mail gallery in Paris titled Yesterday Today Tomorrow Forever featuring magnified microscopic images of vinyl grooves, abstract and explicit, the large scale monochrome photographs pay tribute to the medium of vinyl and the transformation of its form through continued usage and accidental abuse. The same year he was commissioned by NTS radio to produce an installation at the ICA, Palindrome consisted of a huge multi sensory performance space featuring extreme sound & lighting within an entirely mirrored custom built environment designed by Jackson.

His Metal Dance compilations (Strut 2012/13) showcasing industrial, new wave & post punk classic & rarities from the 70’s & 80’s, have been embraced by all generations, winning Resident Advisors Compilation of 2012 as well as numerous other end of year polls. last years Science Fiction Dancehall Classics compilation a retrospective of Adrian Sherwood’s seminal label On-U Sound (On U sound/Warp 2015) reinforced his reputation as an respected sound historian specialising in the foundations of experimental dance music.

With a forward-thinking approach driven by an enduring commitment to promote innovation and new talent, as well as extensive knowledge and respect for music history and its cultural roots, Jackson’s ability to communicate with the dancefloor, whether it be in large clubs like Fabric (London) Panorama Bar (Berlin), Festivals (Sonar, Glastonbury, Primavera) High profile music, fashion & Art events (Kraftwerk at the Tate Modern, Serpentine Summer party, V&A, Art Basel, LACMA) or smaller underground parties across the globe, as well as his regular fortnightly NTS radio shows and numerous Boiler room appearances keep him one of London’s most notable and well respected DJ’s.

Hans-Ueli Vogt is a member of both the Swiss National Assembly and the Legal Commission of the National Council. He is also a full professor of law at the University of Zurich. Hans-Ueli recently drafted the “self-determination initiative”. This initiative, which will be subject to a referendum, seeks to ensure that the Federal Constitution becomes the ultimate source of law for the Swiss Confederation - putting its constitution above non-obligatory laws such as bilateral agreements with the EU.

Frederika Roberts is a happiness and resilience specialist, co-founder of the ‘RWS | Resilience Wellbeing Success’ programme for schools, and a certified Laughter Yoga Leader. 

Born in Italy, of dual Italian and German nationality, Frederika grew up in Luxembourg, then moved to the UK in 1990 to study at the University of Bradford. After graduating in Business and Management, Frederika undertook post-graduate studies in education and became a qualified teacher. She has worked in recruitment, education, marketing and food, and has set up and run small businesses.

As an expert in her field, she is frequently interviewed in the media (BBC Breakfast, ITV Calendar News, numerous radio stations across the UK). She is also a Huffington Post UK blogger and author of the book Recipe for Happiness: 9 Essential Ingredients for a Happy Life.

Matt McAllester has worked as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, the Balkans and other regions, and as an editor at TIME and Newsweek. At Newsday he was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997. He is the author of three books and the editor of a collection of writing on war and food. He is currently editor of Newsweek Europe, which is headquartered in London.

Kennedy is one of the core members of Take Back the City, and has a background in grass roots campaign organising, youth mobilisation and political education. Having acquired a BA in Sociology from Middlesex University, he then went on to achieve an MA in Human Rights, Culture and Social Justice from Goldsmiths University.

Lynsey is City A.M.‘s technology editor, covering everything from happenings at Apple and Google to the latest London startup. In particular fintech, blockchain, artifical intelligence, driverless cars, virtual reality and the sharing economy get her out of bed in the morning. She was previously digital editor of PRWeek and worked across other Haymarket titles Campaign, MediaWeek and Marketing. She has appeared on BBC and London radio talking about tech and fintech as well as the Fintech Insider podcast.

James is techUK’s programme manager for Financial Services & Payments. He previously supported techUK’s Cyber, Justice & Emergency Services and National Security programmes.

Prior to joining techUK, James worked within CEB’s Information Technology practice, and held internships at Worldwide Cancer Research and JD Spicer Zeb Solicitors. He also spent a summer marketing a smartphone tourist app to visitor attractions across the UK.

James has degree in International Relations from the University of St. Andrews.

Nicky is the founder of audio agency Rosina Sound, currently working with the British Library on their audio archive helping them define the future of radio. Nicky was part of the senior management team at Somethin’ Else, where she held the roles of head of Products and head of Radio Development and executive producer of the binaural audio games, Papa Sangre II and Audio Defence.

With a background in music radio and features, Nicky has produced award winning radio for all BBC radio stations including David Rodigan and Mary Anne Hobbs. She taught podcasting and music radio at Westminster University and presented and produced her own arts podcast. 

Lieven De Cauter is a Belgian philosopher, art historian, writer and activist. He teaches philosophy of culture in the Department and Faculty of Architecture of KULeuven and RITCS, school of arts. He has published some dozen books, on contemporary art, experience and modernity, on Walter Benjamin, and more recently on architecture, the city and politics. Besides this he has published poems, philosophical columns, statements, pamphlets and opinion pieces in newspapers and on online.

His latest books in English include: The Capsular Civilization. On the City in the Age of Fear (2004); Heterotopia and the City. Public space in a Postcivil Society (2008), co-edited with Michiel Dehaene, Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization, co-edited with Karel Vanhaesebrouck and Ruben De Roo (2011), and Entropic Empire. On the City of Man in the Age of Disaster (2012).

He lives and works in Brussels.

Maarten Boudry is a postdoctoral fellow of the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (FWO) at Ghent University. He is the author of Illusions for the Advanced. Why Truth is Always Better (“Illusies voor gevorderden”, 2015, in Dutch) and co-author of The Doubting Thomas Might Be Right (with Johan Braeckman, 2011). In 2011, he defended his doctoral dissertation on pseudoscience, Here Be Dragons. Exploring the Hinterland of Science, consisting of a collection of papers that have been published in journals such as Philosophy of Science, Philosophia, Quarterly Review of Biology, Science & Education and Philosophical Psychology.

He is co-editor of Philosophy of Pseudoscience. Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem (2013), together with Massimo Pigliucci. His current research deals with evolutionary epistemology, in particular the problem of human irrationality. Other research interests include naturalism, skepticism, and the conflict between science and religion.

Zubeda has worked for over 15 years in the public sector as a senior member in a wide variety of local, national and pan-European policy-orientated projects on topics such as extremism, equalities and leadership innovation. She developed an operational accredited mentoring programme on behalf of statutory agencies and partners vulnerable to violent extremism during a two-year assignment with West Midlands Police Counter Terrorism Unit, and worked for Birmingham City Council on delivering the Prevent strategy since 2007.

She is the author of A tale of 3 cities: Public officials and senior representation in the NHS, University, Police and Local Authority (2016) and Formers and Families of violent extremists (2015). She graduated from the University of Manchester with a BA in Politics and Modern History and an MA in Middle Eastern Studies.

Zubeda is a Clore Social fellow 2014/15, an alumni of the IVLP programme (Dept of State, USA), and was invited to the White House Countering Violent Extremism summit in February 2015.

Martin is a Chartered Human Factors consultant with a background in Industrial Design.  He has worked for 12 years in the field of applied Human Factors Engineering applying Human Factors to complex engineering and systems integration projects in the Transport, Military and Automotive Industries (JLR).  Martin’s speciality is in the application of Human Factors principles to complex design, safety and usability focused projects.
Martin leads the Visualisation team within the Modelling and Visualisation Business Unit.  He is building a world leading team/capability to develop a range of tools to Visualise and interact with large volumes of data/transport simulations.  The Visualisation team’s primary objective is to design and build tools that are more usable and inclusive to helping to engage with a greater cross section of end users.  Through the use of Visualisation technologies, we want to empower decision makers to make better informed decisions.
Martin and his team have built a laboratory to investigate and integrate Virtual Reality technologies from the Military and Gaming Industries.  Our objective is to understand how we can apply cutting edge Virtual Reality technology to transport related issues/challenges.  In particular The Visualisation Laboratory has been equipped to assess the behaviour between humans and autonomous vehicles and is able to run user trials in Virtual Reality.

Jason Phipps has executive editorial responsibility for The Guardian’s award winning podcasts.  Previous to this he worked as a producer for BBC London and BBC World Service and before this, lived and worked as a visual artist in Munich, Germany.  He won the Radio Academy Gold award for best podcast in 2012 for his edition of the Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast dedicated to the final Shuttle mission and he has previously worked as a digital consultant for a variety of arts organisations.

John O’ Brennan is the Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration at Maynooth University. He lectures on EU Poitics and international relations. He is the author of a number of books on EU enlargement policy and also works on EU-Ireland relations. His work has appeared in a large number of peer reviewed international academic journals. He is also a frequent contributor to national and international media on EU-related issues, including BBC, RTE, Newstalk, the Guardian and the Irish Times.

Lucy is an Assistant Venue Manager at the Barbican Centre, and runs the Barbican Architecture Tours. She has an MA in Architectural History from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and wrote her dissertation on ‘Truth and Fiction: The Barbican and Postmodernism’. Her interests and writing explore themes of the preservation of memory in Brutalist and Postmodern architecture, and Queer urban spaces. She is currently creating a Queer map of the City of London for the City of London Corporation’s LGBT+ network.

Alexander Nikolaou completed his Ph.D. in English - on a partial scholarship - and his MA in Applied Linguistics at the University of Birmingham, UK and also holds a B.A in English from the American College of Greece – Deree College. In 2006,  Dr. Nikolaou joined Hellenic American University as a faculty member (linguistics)  and for many years he held a number of administrative positions (Coordinator of the M.A. in Applied linguistics, Chair of the Curriculum Committee, member of the IRB committee and Director of General Education). Prior to joining the University, he worked for many years as an EAP/ESP teacher at various private higher education institutions and also taught EFL both in Greece and the UK. His research interests lie in the area of attitudes and motivation in second language learning, linguistic landscapes, and discourse and corpus analysis.

Christoph Grafe is the director of the Flanders Architecture Institute and Professor of Architectural History and Theory at the University of Wuppertal, North Rhine-Westphalia. He is the author of People’s Palaces – Architecture, Culture and Democracy in Post-War Western Europe, which was published in 2014.

Bart Decroos holds a master’s degree in architecture from KU Leuven. His master’s thesis, ‘The Fourth Wall of Architecture’, is a multidisciplinary research project combining the fields of architecture, literature and critical theory. Since 2015, he works at the Flanders Architecture Institute, where he was the editor for BRAVOURE SCARCITY BEAUTY, the official publication on the Belgian contribution to the Architecture Biennale 2016 in Venice. Bart also writes as a freelancer for various architecture magazines.

Jim Orford studied psychology at Cambridge and London Universities and is now Emeritus Professor of Clinical & Community Psychology at the University of Birmingham, UK. He is a longstanding, internationally recognised researcher and writer in the addiction field and in psychology more generally. Amongst his 14 previous books are successful titles on addiction, notably, Excessive Appetites: A Psychological View of Addictions (1st edition, 1985, 2nd edition, 2001); as well as others on community psychology: Community Psychology, Theory and Practice (1992); Community Psychology: Challenges, Controversies and Emerging Consensus (2008). His most recent book is Power, Powerlessness and Addiction (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

Jim is one of the UK’s leading academics on the subject of gambling. He was an academic advisor for the 1999, 2007 and 2010 British Gambling Prevalence Surveys. He is well-known for his critical views on gambling policy. He has made regular radio and TV comments on the subject, notably for BBC Panorama, Channel 4 Dispatches and Russia Today. In 2012 he set up Gambling Watch UK to campaign for a public health approach to gambling.

Art school changed my life.
Punk rock shook my foundations and defined a path to the rest of my life so far.
Challenging ideas, finding my own voice, and being able to value that voice.

As well as being in The Raincoats, I have been lucky enough to work with vibrant creative people in The Gluts, Red Crayola and Big Bottom.  My own personal musical projects are Dorothy and The Hangovers as well as performing solo.

I have shot and directed many music videos, short films and documentaries.
Geoff Travis and Jeanette Lee at Rough Trade have commissioned me to make videos for bands such as The Palma Violets and The Libertines, and a long list of other Rough Trade artists.  I have also made music videos for artists including The Raincoats, New Order, the Pogues and Dee Dee Ramone.

Currently, as well as this great collaboration with Angel Olsen as part of the Rough Trade 40th, I am working with Helen Reddington on a documentary entitled “Stories from the She Punks – music with a different agenda’, which tells the stories of young women who picked up noisey instruments in the late 1970s and began to change the landscape of indie music for women. In the wings is the long awaited Raincoats documentary which I hope to complete within the next 12 months.

I am recording a solo album and have painted large scale paintings which are connected with each song.  I am planning to exhibit the works in London in 2017

Patrick has over 25 years experience in the field of assessment design and educational technology. From the design of educational resources with the National Council for Educational Technology and BECTa to running of post-sales technology support departments for KRCS (Apple Computer reseller), his career has always addressed the fusion of education and new technologies.

For the last 15 years this work has focussed on the specific field of learning and assessment technology research and development for the RSA Examinations Board, OCR Examinations, Cambridge Assessment Group and now he leads on Quality, Policy, Product Research and Design for City & Guilds. This role considers the growing impact of Policy and new technologies on the learning and assessment industry. It also identifies initiatives to enable City & Guilds to develop and extend the range and quality of learning and assessment products and services they offer.

Throughout this period he has remained committed to the notion of ‘fit for purpose’ assessment based on evidence-based research. Patrick currently sits on the Boards of the Joint Council for Qualifications, Federation of Awarding Bodies, the e-Assessment Association and the UK eAssessment Advisory Group and is a member of the planning committee for the European ATP Conference.

Born in 1946 in Piraeus Greece, in a family of politicians and founders of the most popular Greek football team (Olympiakos FC)

He was educated at Athens College, and in the Schools of Political Science in Athens, Kent (UK), Cambridge and Oxford. He studied also Economics and Issues of Peace Research at the University of Oslo. He holds also a Diploma on Leadership from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

He lectured at various Schools in the USA and England (Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Wisconcin at Madison, George Washington, LSE) and he was a Visiting Scholar at St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge. In 1998-99 he was Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington DC. He holds two honorary PH.D. degrees and he was Professor of Public Policy at the American College of Greece.

He has been elected 9 times member of the Greek Parliament and he has served as Minister of Culture, Trade, Industry, Energy, Technology and Mass Communications.

He has also been elected Mayor of the City of Piraeus. He has contributed articles to numerous Greek and international journals and newspapers and has written books on Islam, Economic and Political Liberalization and Energy Security. Since he resigned from Parliament he held his own TV talk show, worked professionally as a newspaper commentator and as a consultant on issues of Caspian energy and political risk analysis for countries of the former Soviet Union and South Asia. He recently lead a team of international consultants in advising the government of the Russian Federation, under the auspices of the EU, on free competition and the advocacy of liberal market reforms. He also returned as a South East European Project Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington working on the topic of Russian Energy Diplomacy.

He is now the Director of the Institute of Diplomacy and Global Affairs of the American College of Greece (Deree College) which is situated in the district of Plaka in Athens, Greece. He ia also teaching Effective Communication Campaigns ans Risk Analysis at the University of Kaliningrad (former Koningsberg) in the Russian Federation.

He is also the author of two historical novels on Medieval and Renaissance Europe.

He is married and he has two sons. With his wife Ranna and with their children they live in Hydra and Athens.

Ignacio G. Galán is an architect and scholar, Principal of [igg—office for architecture] and Term Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at Barnard+Columbia Colleges. His work concentrates on architecture’s role in the articulation of society. He is particularly concerned with the architectures of residence; their relation to processes of cultural and material circulation and population transience; and the objects, media, and institutions transforming their occupation.

Designs of his firm have been awarded in competitions including the First Prize for the New Velodrome in Medellín. His work has led to several publications and exhibitions including the installation Cinecittá Occupata for the 2014 Venice Biennale, and is part of the permanent collection of the Pompidou Center. Together with the After Belonging Agency, he is the Chief Curator of the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale. He previously collaborated in the research project Radical Pedagogies, led by Beatriz Colomina, and has co-curated its exhibition at the 2013 Lisbon Architecture Triennale and at the 2014 Venice Biennale. He has taught studios and seminars at Columbia GSAPP and PennDesign.

He was trained at ETSAMadrid, TU Delft, and graduated as a Fulbright Scholar from the MArchII at Harvard GSD. He has been a Fellow at the Spanish Academy in Rome, and is completing a PhD at Princeton University.

Born 1946 and educated at Christ’s College, Finchley and Leeds University, graduating with an honours degree in Commerce in 1968.

Fourth generation fruit marketer with forty seven years experience in the fresh produce industry. Chairman, since 2007 of the Poupart Group of Companies, Chairman of British Summer Fruits, the UK Crop association for soft fruit since 2003. Non-Executive director of G’s Chilled Foods, The Shropshire Farming Group, Grace Foods UK and Reynolds Catering Services . 

Master of the Worshipful Company of Fruiterers in 2000, Justice of the Peace 1982-2007,  Leader in Residence at Leeds University Business School since 2014. Chairman City Food Lecture 2000-14. Outside interests include Real tennis, cricket, golf,  skiing, film, theatre, opera,  gardening, and travel. Member of the MCC since 1972.

Emma Webb is a Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society focusing on European and domestic terrorism, and pan-European Islamist terror networks. She has spoken on national and regional radio on issues relating to the threat level facing the UK, recent terror attacks in Europe and radicalisation, and has written for the Spectator, the Independent and the Times of Israel.

Her recent co-authored publication, An Enduring Threat: Europe’s Islamist Terror Networks Then and Now, assesses the degree to which the threat posed by Islamic State in Europe can be called ‘new’ and is the first major comparison of al-Qaeda’s European terrorist networks in the early 2000s with the Islamic State networks behind the attacks on Brussels and Paris between November 2015 and March 2016.

She holds an MA in Jewish Studies from King’s College London and a BA in Theological and Religious Studies from Trinity College, Cambridge.

Ward Verbakel is co-founder and partner ofplusoffice architects (Brussels), a firm specializing in urban design, design research and public architecture. His team recently won the Middle Cities Passages competition in Toronto and is constructing schools, local administration buildings and cultural infrastructure throughout Belgium. With their research on the productive city plusoffice participated at the IABR Rotterdam Biennale in 2016.

As Adj. Professor of urbanism Ward is teaching graduation design studio at KULeuven, and previously at GSAPP Columbia University. He is president of the A+ Architecture in Belgium editorial board.
Project and curated the exhibitions ‘Breuckland’ (VAI deSingel), BMA man of thoughts (Bozar).  Ward is curator of the ‘EUTOPIA - possibility of an island’ exhibition in Museum M that opened in Fall 2016 as part of the 500 anniversary of Thomas More book.

Baukje Prins holds MA-degrees in Dutch Language & Literature and Philosophy, and acquired her PhD at Utrecht University in 1997. Before her appointment as professor of Citizenship and Diversity at The Hague University of Applied Sciences in 2009, she taught Social and Political Philosophy at the universities of Maastricht and Groningen. She also was a visiting scholar at the History of Consciousness Program, University of California at Santa Cruz, and at the Institute of Women’s Studies, University of Lancaster. Prins published in Dutch and international journals like Science, Technology & Human Values, Journal of International Migration and Integration, Social Theory & Practice, and Ethnicities. In Voorbij de onschuld [Beyond innocence] (2004) she explored the Dutch academic and public discourse on ethnic minorities, immigrant integration and (anti)racism. Since 2009, Prins is conducting and supervising ethnographic studies of metropolitan settings such as vocational schools, mixed neighborhoods and health care, of which the first results were published in 2013 in Superdivers! Alledaagse omgangsvormen in de grootstedelijke samenleving [Superdiverse! Everyday life in urban society]. Her most recent book (Gemengde gevoelens [Mixed feelings] (2014)) is based on the life stories of her former Dutch and Moluccan classmates of a protestant elementary school in the 1960s.

José is assistant principal at Surbiton High School, where he leads on digital strategy and teaches modern foreign languages. His main interests are pedagogy, technology and how they can combine to produce great teaching and learning. José is the recipient of a Pearson Teaching Award, a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a well-regarded speaker in conferences and events focused on education. His work has featured in the Times Educational Supplement and the Guardian.

He is currently writing a book for Bloomsbury Publishing, provisionally titled Using Technology in the Classroom.

Cate was recently appointed as CDP’s Global Director of programs as is now responsible for leading and accelerating improvements across CDP’s core work on water security, climate change and deforestation with investors, cities and supply chains. Cate transitioned to this role following 3 years as Head of CDP’s water program, where she was responsible for ensuring that the program remains the gold standard for disclosure of corporate water-related information globally and moves rapidly to deliver significant changes in the management of water by non-state actors. Evidence and insight is vital to driving real change and during her tenure as Head of Water, Cate drove significant increases in corporate and investor water action as well as transformative improvements in the quality of corporate water data that is now made available to the market.

Cate has over a decade of experience in the environmental and sustainable development fields with a strong technical, scientific and project management background. She is a strategic advisor to the UN CEO Water Mandate, sits on the board of the Alliance for Water Stewardship and holds a BSc in Environmental Science from Lancaster University.

Carol Holland is a psychologist with expertise in the cognitive and health psychology of ageing. Her emphasis is on functional aspects of ageing cognition in terms of maintenance of everyday quality of life even in the context of impairments. She currently works at the University of Aston in the UK, with previous employments at the University of Manchester, Warwick University and the University of Leeds. She is currently Director of Aston Research Centre for Healthy Ageing (ARCHA) and has worked at Aston University since 2001.

She is a co-ordinator within the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing, working with other experts across Europe on the target of reducing the gap between healthy lifespan and actual lifespan. Her current research includes a longitudinal study of cognition, wellbeing and care and cost outcomes of moving into supported living environments, with ExtraCare Charitable Trust, and EU funded collaborative work on optimising management and prevention of frailty amongst older adults across Europe. She has made contributions to the study of autobiographical memory in older age, and is well-known for her work in transport psychology, with an emphasis on maintaining safe road use and mobility. Throughout her work she emphasizes applications of research, positive ageing and prevention of decline.

Lars Trägårdh is a professor of history at Ersta Sköndal Högskola in Stockholm. His research, which was largely conducted in the United States since the 1970s, but in recent years also in Sweden, revolves around various aspects of the welfare state and civil society. Trägårdh took his PhD at Berkeley, University of California, in 1993. Following his doctorate, he spent twelve years as a history professor at Barnard College, Columbia University.

Göran Rosenberg is a widely respected Swedish author and journalist. Since 2000 he has been an honorary doctor at the University of Gothenburg. In 2012 he was awarded the prestigeous Augustpriset for a novel telling his father’s story of surviving the holocaust. Rosenberg has lately published numerous articles on the national state, EU and Brexit, all available (in Swedish) on his blog.

Riham Mansour is the current community and welfare officer at the London School of Economics Students’ Union. Prior to this, she completed her Master’s at LSE in International Political Economy. Her work aims to facilitate trade among global regions in order to promote successful interactions. She has worked on international trade in the forestry, agriculture, health, and engineering sectors.

Riham has diverse experience through work in embassies, consultancies, NGOs, universities and international networks. The foundation of her approach is to understand and value the outlooks of all these fundamental parties, and promote cooperation and engagement with one another. She also uses international experience from Canada, Denmark, Australia and the UK to inform her methods.

As an individual, she strives to promote representation for people of colour, youth, and women, and focuses on political engagement. She has done this through publications on women in politics, and represents Canada within the Euro-Atlantic Security Group at the Younger Generation Leaders Network.

Max Daly is a freelance journalist and author specialising in drugs and crime. He writes the Narcomania column for VICE UK and in 2012 wrote a book about the UK drug trade, also called Narcomania.

Max works as a development producer on TV documentaries and has written for the Guardian, Times and VICE USA. Previously he was editor of Druglink magazine and deputy news editor of the Big Issue magazine.

Will was born in London and raised in Buckinghamshire. He didn’t finish his English degree, choosing instead to start an ill-fated band with his brother. He has worked in factories, cleaning windows, painting houses and the record shop Rough Trade. He likes sports and ornithology and is Poet-In-Residence at Caught By The River.

He was named as one of the 4 Faber & Faber New Poets for 2014 with his pamphlet in that series published in October 2014.

Dr Carlton Brick joined the University of the West of Scotland in 2003 from the University of Surrey, Roehampton where he was Research Fellow in Social and Cultural Studies in Sport and Leisure. He has taught and written extensively on the issue of sport and culture, and was a co-founder of Libero, the football supporters civil rights campaign. He is a 1st Dan black belt in Taekwon-do.

Hilton spent six years at art college studying Product Design to MA. He briefly practised in the mountain bike industry (US and UK). He has been a specialist automotive journalist since 1993, receiving numerous awards including Environmental & News Hack of the Year (x2) and Motoring Writer of the Year.

Jekaterina is an award-winning young jazz vocalist born in Latvia and currently residing in London. A graduate from the department of jazz at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, she studied voice and improvisation with Brigitte Beraha and Scott Stroman. Jekaterina’s love for crafted arrangements and sensitive interpretations of text successfully earned her an opportunity to do an exchange year at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris in France. This musical experience helped her to become a prize-winner in European vocal jazz competitions such as, Jazz Voices 2011 in Lithuania, and Voicingers 2012 in Poland.

Her appearances include performances at the Pori Jazz Festival in Finland, Rigas Ritmi festival in Latvia, jazz clubs in French Riviera, and various appearances across London: the Spice of Life in Soho, St. Martin-in-the-Field, Barbican free stage, Bridewell theatre and Southside house to name a few.

Currently Jekaterina is working on her debut album which is due in Spring 2017.

She will be performing alongside jazz guitarist Eduardas Armonas on the Free Stage at ten past one on Saturday 22nd.

Ed Armonas is guitarist from Lithuania, now based in the UK. He performs regularly in London and at festivals and venues across Europe. In 2013 he formed contemporary jazz outfit the Ed Arm Trio with bassist Matthew Read and drummer Joe Pearson, both fellow graduates from London’s prestigious Guildhall School of Music. The trio play a mix of standards and originals, exploring new sounds while staying true to jazz tradition and taking inspiration from many of the greats of jazz guitar.

Ed also does extensive work as a sideman, playing in pit bands and with both jazz and pop artists, including Mario Basanov aka Ten Walls, whose 2014 single Walking with Elephants reached number 6 on the UK singles chart, and acclaimed Estonian singer and television star Sofia Rubina-Hunter. His current UK projects include work with Anna Marie Johnson, Stephen O’Gorman, Lily Osborn, Jekaterina Sarigina and Sandeep Raval.

He will be performing alongside jazz guitarist Jekaterina Sarigina on the Free Stage at ten past one on Saturday 22nd.

Tony Prescott is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Sheffield, Director of Sheffield Robotics, a cross-disciplinary research institute with over one hundred researchers, and the co-creator of the animal-like robots Scratchbot, Shrewbot and MiRo.  His background mixes psychology and brain theory with robotics and AI, and his research aims at answering questions about human nature by creating synthetic entities with human-like capacities such as perception, memory, emotion and sense of self.  He co-founded the International Living Machines conference series and recently launched Consequential Robotics a UK start-up developing assistive and companion robots. In 2015 he presented at the Royal College of Art’s ‘Fear of Missing Out’, and at Tencent’s ‘Way to Evolve’ conference on human relationships with robots.  With recent funding from the AHRC and the EU Framework 7 programme he is also exploring the societal and cultural impacts of future robotic, AI, virtual reality and telepresence technologies. His research has been covered by the major news media including the BBC, CNN, Discovery Channel, Science Magazine and New Scientist.

Jodie is the head of UK-based freedom of expression organisation Index on Censorship, which publishes the work of censored writers and artists and campaigns against censorship worldwide. A former foreign correspondent and business journalist, Jodie worked for more than a decade for Reuters news agency and from 2007-2011 was Reuters’ London Bureau Chief, where she led coverage of the financial crisis, UK riots, phone hacking scandal and royal wedding. In 2012, Jodie set up the Reuters ‘press gang’ initiative – a journalism workshop for young people in the communities around Canary Wharf, and in 2013 was shortlisted in the media category of the UK’s First Women Awards. After leaving Reuters, Jodie worked as Head of Communications for Camfed, an education charity that supports girls and young women in Africa through education and as an editor at Chime for Change, a global awareness campaign for women’s empowerment. She has also worked at think tank Demos where she was Deputy Director of Demos Finance - a research unit aimed at opening up debate on financial services.

Rebecca is in the last year of her Undergraduate Degree in English and Comparative Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. She hopes to continue her education at UCL with a Masters Degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology.

Since joining forces with The Labour Campaign to End Homelessness, she has been given the position of Outreach Co-ordinator, organising weekly walks to give out provisions to homeless people and a hot food stand on The Strand which feeds 150+.

She has contributed to the campaign’s manifesto which outlines how The Labour Party are best placed to end homelessness in the UK’s two party system. This is to be unveiled at their party conference event ‘How can Labour End Homelessness?’ where Rebecca is due to speak on the importance of encouraging philanthropy in students and the concept of housing as a human right.

She has been in talks with the Shadow Chancellor on the potentiality of the complete eradication of homelessness and looks forward to working with the Leadership in the near future on this.

Josh covers politics in Westminster, Brussels and across the continent for Newsweek, spending a large chunk of his time right now on the Brexit fallout (and still somewhat recovering from the referendum campaign trail). He’s also particularly interested in immigration, asylum and the far-right.

Before joining Newsweek, Josh was assistant digital editor at Prospect magazine, and he is a stubborn optimist about the future of good journalism on the internet. Even further back, he wrote for newspaper gossip columns and found celebrities a lot tougher than politicians.

Award-winning campaigning journalist and columnist for the Bristol Post, Tristan spent 15 years on the regional Western Daily Press until moving to a city beat this year.

As well as reporting, he writes regular columns on social issues, civil rights, politics and West Country culture.