roots editor, Time Out London

Lorraine has recently been appointed the new Director of London-based think-tank Open Europe, which campaigns for radical reform of the EU. Lorraine has been with Open Europe since its creation in October 2005, working most recently as Head of Research.

Before working at Open Europe she worked on the ‘No’ campaign against the EU Constitution, and previously in Brussels with the NGO ISIS Europe, looking at EU security and defence issues. 

Sarah’s first journalistic role was as a trainee reporter on the Kent and Sussex Courier. She then moved to London, where she began shift work on the London Evening Standard. She shortly thereafter secured a staff position on the paper’s “Londoner’s Diary” section, which she then went on to edit. Sarah remained at the Evening Standard for 10 years, during which time she rose to the position of Features Editor.

In 1995, Sarah joined the Daily Telegraph as Deputy Editor and, following the departure of Charles Moore as Editor in 2004, she also took on the role of Saturday Editor. Sarah took over the Editorship of the Sunday Telegraph in June 2005. Her re-launch of the title in November of that year saw the paper’s sales increase by around 50,000.

Sarah moved to the Daily Mail in April 2006, where she became Consultant Editor. In May 2008, she became Editor-in-Chief of Reader’s Digest.

Sarah is the author of three novels: “Playing The Game”; “Hothouse”; and “The Villa”. She lives in London with her husband Kim, and her three children.

Tania trained as a journalist in New Zealand and worked in communications and PR for several not-for-profit organisations before moving to the UK. Since joining DACS in 2004 she has worked to build the profile of the organisation amongst artists and raise awareness of copyright issues. She was instrumental in the successful implementation of the Artist’s Resale Right in the UK. 

Originally trained in zoology, Natasha soon realised that her skills lay in talking about other people’s research, rather than carrying out her own. So she did a Masters in Science Communication and has since worked as a science writer and publicity manager for organisations including the Research Councils, the Royal Society and the Environment Agency before taking up her current post as Head of Research Communications at Imperial College London earlier this year.

Simon Clark is director of the smokers’ lobby group Forest and founder of The Free Society. Born in London, he was educated at Madras College, St Andrews, and Aberdeen University. He returned to London for his first job - in public relations.

In 1983 he launched a national student magazine called Campus; in 1984 he worked, briefly, for a Frankfurt-based human rights group; and from 1985-1990 he was director of the Media Monitoring Unit, a London-based research group founded by a former Labour minister, Lord Chalfont, and Dr Julian Lewis, who is now Conservative MP for New Forest West.

As a freelance journalist, Simon edited a string of in-house magazines, the most recent of which was The Politico for Politico’s Bookshop in Westminster.

A non-smoker, Simon has been director of Forest since January 1999. He is Forest’s principal spokesman and appears regularly on radio and television defending the poor beleaguered smoker. Last year he founded The Free Society which he launched to give a voice to those who want less not more government interference in their daily lives.

At the impressionable age of thirteen I saw the film 2001 a Space Odyssey.  This film left me with a lasting impression of a future where space travel would be commonplace and people would be living on the Moon before I was fifty.  Alas, this was not to be.  And I, and many in my generation, were left with unfulfilled expectations of the future.  From this seed I did develop a lasting interest in engineering and astronomy. 

When I left school I worked in engineering, in the machine tools industry, for about twelve years before deciding to study physics at the University of York.  After seven years, I left York with a B.Sc. in physics and D.Phil in electron spectroscopy and went to work as an academic in the Open University’s Technology Faculty.  Coming from physics, I found the approach of the Faculty to technology and engineering somewhat surprising, in that it paid attention not only at the facts but also to society’s values and beliefs.  At last it became clear to me that the future that never came about, was often less about the technical challenges and more about the values and beliefs of the time.  After working as an Open University Staff Tutor – appointing teaching staff for the University’s East-Anglian Region – I became a senior lecturer in the University’s Systems Department in 2002.  Along the way I taught on courses ranging from astronomy and planetary science to engineering mechanics, electronics and logic design.  I eventually became head of the Systems department in 2006 and, since finishing as Head of Systems, I have returned to doing research in electron spectroscopy.

I was the Academic Consultant on the BBC2 series: James May’s 20th Century and James May’s Big Ideas.  These programmes examined the impact of technologies on the 20th century and looked beyond to comparing the futures that we anticipated with the future we find our selves contemplating today.  I have a particular interest in future transport and my interest in consulting on these programmes emerged from a curiosity over the value and currency of ideas from science fiction.

Michael Burton works on the edge of speculative design. He creates objects, images and films as insights into richly imagined scenarios of our future health and climate challenges, exploring the choices we face in our evolution as a species. Michael is fascinated by the scientific complexity presented by living in a highly convoluted ecology and environment. His concepts delve into social, cultural and political enquiries, often considering people living at the extremes of a socio-economic scale. Previous work questions how is healthcare transformed when considering humans as an ecosystem? Who has access to scientific and technological medical advances and how is the body reconsidered as a financial asset in the body farm industry?

Michael has worked with organisations such as Foresight at the Government Office for Science on their 50-year horizon scan on tackling a future obesities epidemic. He is currently working with a Kenyan based charity that provides access to education and security to children experiencing severe deprivation.

In 2007, Michael graduated from the Royal College of Art from the MA Design Interactions programme. Previous to this, he worked in Contemporary Dance at Laban, conservatoire and studied BA Fine Art Sculpture at Bretton Hall, Leeds University.

Michael exhibits and presents Internationally, most notably including work shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He leads a collaborative practice, working with organisations and individuals including with scientists, performers, choreographers, designers and architects.

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is in the second year of her MA in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art. Daisy graduated first in her year with a BA (First Class) in Architecture from Cambridge University in 2004, and worked for several design and architecture firms. After graduating, she worked in urban regeneration at the Mayor of London’s Architecture & Urbanism Unit under Richard Rogers and then as a project coordinator at General Public Agency, working on social, cultural and spatial planning of the public realm.

After a year at Harvard University as a Herchel Smith Scholar, she is now at the RCA, exploring the unexpected social, cultural and ethical impacts of emerging technologies and investigating how design research can be part of this process. Her research is focused on how we value life, genetic futures and currently, biotechnology and microbiology, their future impact on our everyday and the role of design in this engineered future. Daisy is looking forward to collaborating with scientists and others as part of the design process for her MA this year.

Julian Gough was born in London, and raised in Ireland. While studying philosophy at university in Galway, he began singing with the underground, and very literary, rock band Toasted Heretic. They played London, Paris and New York, released four albums, and had a top ten hit in Ireland in 1991 with “Galway and Los Angeles”, a song about not kissing Sinead O’Connor.

His first novel, Juno & Juliet, was published in the UK and US in 2001. His short story The Orphan and the Mob won the BBC National Short Story Award (the biggest prize in the world for a single story), in 2007. His second novel, Jude: Level 1, was shortlisted for the 2008 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award, alongside work by Alan Bennett, Garrison Keillor and Will Self.

He is probably best known for stealing Will Self’s pig.

His novels have been translated into German, Hebrew, Japanese, Dutch, Swedish, and Greek.

He now lives in Berlin.

Jeremy has devoted his working life to catering, having taken his first job in a pub local to his Leeds home at the age of 18. He moved to London two years later and embarked proper on a career that has taken in My Kinda Town Ltd, Smollensky’s Restaurants, Belgo and the BBC Club.

Jeremy’s first London job was with My Kinda Town Ltd, where he worked up from trainee cocktail bartender to bar manager at the original Chicago Rib Shack inside 6 months, before becoming a duty manager at The Chicago Pizza Pie Factory. After 2 years in a fine dining French brasserie in Esher, Surrey, he spent 9 years with Smollensky’s in the West End, moving up from trainee duty manager to operations manager and at one point working with the award-winning Cyrus Todiwala at Café Spice Namaste. During nearly 4 years with Belgo, he opened the original Bierodrome in Islington before moving to Belgo Zuid in W9. He has been operations manager for the BBC Club in London since 2004, running their 6 London sites and introducing a range of organic, free-range and nutritious meals to the 14,500 members.

Jeremy is passionate about good food, good wine and good people. And music. But he doesn’t like olives very much.

Professor of Industry and Innovation studies at University College London School of Slavonic and East European studies with expertise in these issues for many countries of central and eastern Europe including former Soviet union countries. My research interests are in the area of science, technology, industrial change and foreign direct investments in countries of central and eastern Europe and I continue to be involved in international projects in this area.

I am acting as an expert for the various DGs of the European Commission, as consultant to UN Economic Commision for Europe, UNESCO, OECD, UNIDO, World Bank and Asian Development Bank. I am advisor to the National Council for Competitiveness of Croatia and senior policy analyst within the EU DG Enterprise funded PRO_INNO TRENDCHART programme. I am member of the Management Committee of EU funded ERAWatch network.

I have published extensively in international journals on issues of innovation policy and innovation in CEE. I am the editor and co-author of several volumes which address the issue of growth, technology and industrial change in countries of central and eastern Europe.

James Wilkes took a BA in Psychology, Philosophy and Physiology, followed by an MA in Creative Writing. His poetry can be found online and in print, including in Tears in the Fence, Intercapillary Space, The Archive of the Now and Great Works. He has published two chapbooks and contributed to several poetry anthologies including Generation Txt, and has written on contemporary art for Studio International and The London Magazine. He is interested in the material forms of poems and has collaborated on handmade books, sculptures and poem-postcards. He is also working on a Wellcome Trust funded radio drama about brain imaging technologies and the changing ways we legislate and construct the interior lives of others.

Bob started life as a freelance photographer recording the London glitterazzi in the 1970s. He moved into picture editing and was deputy to Horst Faas, the double Pulitzer prize winning Associated Press photographer. Bob was poached by The Daily Mail to become Night Picture Editor and then Associate Picture Editor. In 1985, he was asked to set up epa, Europe’s first European news photo agency based in Frankfurt. In 1989, Bob joined The Times as Deputy Picture Editor. He became Picture Editor in 2000 and moved into senior management four years later.

Phillip Blond is a senior lecturer in philosophy and theology at the University of Cumbria. He is an internationally recognised political thinker, social commentator, and philosophical theologian. Phillip writes regularly for the Guardian, Independent, First Post and the International Herald Tribune. He is currently writing Red Tory, a book on radical progressive conservatism. He is interested in updating Catholic critiques of the state and the market. He is also working on a new conservative political economy, fundamental to which is the revival of local and regional economies.

Adriano Shaplin is a playwright and co-founder of The Riot Group and has written and acted in all of their original productions, including Pugilist Specialist which received The Scotsman‘s “First of the Firsts” award at the Edinburgh Fringe 2003.

He was the first Warwick/RSC International Playwright in Residence 2006-8. At the RSC he worked closely in rehearsals with Artistic Director Michael Boyd, developing his own play ideas for the RSC’s ensemble of actors as part of the RSC’s aim to restore the severed link between writer and ensemble. This work will culminate in London in Winter 2008 with the opening of Adriano’s new play, The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes, staged by the RSC at Wilton’s Music Hall.

At Warwick, Adriano contributed to both graduate and undergraduate courses in writing for performance, working alongside the Warwick Writing Programme. In 2007-08 he co-directed The Apprentice for Artists, a series of intensive masterclasses introducing aspiring writers to various forms of writing.

Simon is an evolutionary biologist who thus far has had a very unusual career path. Though he has spent the vast majority of his working life as an educator in one form or another he has somehow bypassed becoming a teacher. Instead, he has favoured jobs which allow him to dress up funny and flit through the centuries with reckless abandon. To date he has professionally pretended to be; a plague victim, a World War One soldier, a Viking slave trader, a medieval monk, a Tudor rake and a Victorian scamp. 

He is currently touring ‘Sperm Warfare’, an entertaining lecture on the evolutionary biology of sperm competition.

Amanda Ursell is a qualified nutritionist and has a diploma in dietetics. She is also an award winning journalist, television presenter and author.

With weekly columns in The Times and the Sun, regular contributions to Harpers Bazaar, a monthly column in Sainsbury’s and Healthy magazine, editor of WellBeing magazine as well as nutrition editor for Sainsbury Magazine, Amanda is the most widely read nutritionist in the UK, with a combined readership of over 20 million a month.

Mark builds networks of people, knowledge and finance that help exceptional leaders solve big system-level problems of our time. In 2005 he founded The Movement Design Bureau as a think tank to expand and connect the global network of problem-solvers that will reshape how we move during the 21st century. He is also co-founder of Akvo, an internet foundation based in The Hague that brings knowledge and resource to drinking water and sanitation projects in the developing world. In both areas he tests new working methods and communication techniques.

Mark is a visionary on the interplay of technological and cultural factors shaping the future of cities, movement and interaction. Starting his career at Apple Computer in the early nineties, his background combines degrees in both design and business with over 14 years commercial experience in marketing and publicity. He has a Masters degree in Design from Central St Martins College, London (05) and a BSc from Aston University (93). He is a European council member of the Spark Design Awards and edits the Re*Move blog.

Andrew Ritchie has been Director of Goodenough College since July 2006. He took up this appointment on leaving the British Army after 34 years as a career soldier. He was trained at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and later read Law and Politics at Durham University. He served in many parts of the world including Northern Ireland, Belize, Germany, Zimbabwe, Cyprus and Bosnia and successively commanded a regiment, a brigade and a division. His principal staff posts in the Army were as Director of Public Relations and Director of Personnel Policy. He completed his military career in the rank of major general as Commandant of Sandhurst where he was responsible for the selection and training of all officers for the British Army.

He is a governor of Marlborough College and Princess Helena College and has a strong interest in education.  He is also a trustee of several military charities and a Colonel Commandant of his former regiment.  He is married to Camilla, an investment fund manager, and they have three children and three dogs.  His pastimes include opera, tennis, hunting and golf.  He is also a Chelsea supporter.

Andrew Wroe is Lecturer in United States Politics at the University of Kent, Canterbury, where he teaches courses on Government, US Politics, and the Politics of Trust. His main research interests include: the politics of immigration reform, especially illegal immigration, and wider issues of American identity; Americans’ increasingly negative relationship with government specifically and authority generally, with specific reference to the roles of the modern labour market and workplace structures; and the rise of moral conservatism.

He has written several books. The most recent on the Republican Party and Immigration Politics tells the story of the party’s flirtation with immigration politics over the last two decades. In the 1990s, the party was closely associated with an anti-immigration discourse, but the selection of George W. Bush as its presidential nominee in 2000 represented a new direction as leading strategists sought to appeal to the increasingly influential Latino electorate by pushing pro-immigration policies, including the legalisation of over ten million illegal immigrants. That Bush’s liberal reform agenda was ultimately dashed by conservative Republican hardliners demonstrates the party has not yet resolved the ideological and political tensions wrought by this most contentious of issues.

A forthcoming book (edited with Jon Herbert) assesses the legacy of Bush’s presidency. It argues that Bush achieved many political and policy successes during his first term, but that his second term largely failed. Strategic errors over Iraq and perceived incompetence in response to Hurricane Katrina seriously dented his professional reputation and public prestige and engendered further failure on other policy initiatives (including the amnesty for illegal immigrants).

Graham Ixer started his career as a school teacher before joining social work. He has taken many roles including a child protection social worker and manager before moving into teaching social workers.  After many years teaching and managing a social work department he moved in to policy joining the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW) and now the social work regulator the General Social Care Council.  He initiated a number of interprofessional initiatives bring together health, social care and education colleagues for the first time and working with a number of different central government departments on cross profession projects.  He led the work in England on developing the first ever Codes of Practice for social care.  In his current role as head of social work education he takes the strategic lead for ensuring standards in the training of social workers across the continuum. He is also an active teacher and researcher in social work and lectures in universities in the UK, Sweden, USA and Japan, in particular, contributed to a major teaching initiative bring nurses and social workers together for the first time.  He has published widely including his latest book on international examples of practice learning.  Graham is a member of the Partner’s Council at the Social Care Institute for Excellence.

Robin Maynard has worked for over 20 years in the environment movement, starting as a volunteer at Friends of the Earth in 1985. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1986 hugely increased environmental awareness and indirectly led to a full-time job tracking fall-out from Chernobyl with a mobile radiation monitoring unit. After various projects, Robin became FOE’s Countryside & Agriculture campaigner from 1990-3.

From 1993 -4, he worked as producer/presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today, as well as assignments for BBC World Service and Costing the Earth to Malaysia and India; reporting from Bhopal on the 10th anniversary of the disastrous pesticides plant explosion and travelling into Sarawak to investigate impacts of logging and palm-oil plantations.  From 1994- 5, he worked as Campaigns Director at the Soil Association, before returning to FOE as Director of Local Campaigns from 1995-9. After a brief spell developing environmental content for Carlton TV’s millennium programming and supporting Anita Roddick’s campaigning interests, in 2001 he joined with a group of independent-minded farmers to launch FARM, where he worked until 2004. In 2005, he returned to the Soil Association in 2005 as Director of Communications, becoming Campaigns Director in May 2008.

Before becoming involved in environmental campaigning, he studied English at University spending vacations working at an agricultural merchants and farm in the Derbyshire Peak District.  After University, he worked briefly in advertising, before escaping to a saner life, working as a tree-surgeon; later spending a year teaching in Egypt.  On return to England, he went into volunteer at Friends of the Earth and his environmental career began.

Jennifer Howze is the Lifestyle editor for Times Online, where she oversees the Life & Style page and Women section. She also runs Alpha Mummy, the Times’s blog that addresses the parenting condition with humour and intelligence. Earlier this year, the Sunday Times featured the results of an Alpha Mummy sex and parenting survey that used new technology to engage with its online community. The survey drew responses from 1,500 men and women who revealed how parenthood has affected their sex life.

A frequent guest on BBC Breakfast, Jennifer was awarded the Maggie from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 2006 for “Vagina 101”, a health article for Seventeen magazine about understanding your body. The article caused such a furore that a major supermarket banned the magazine from its 2,500 outlets, an action that was covered in the American press nationwide.
Jennifer has written for and edited print and online publications for more than 15 years, contributing to publications in the US, UK and Europe, including The Guardian, The Independent, The Wall Street Journal Europe, CNN.com, Self and Allure, among others. She was an editor at iVillage.co.uk, the UK’s largest women’s website, and at iVillage.com in the US. Before working online, she edited and wrote for magazines and newspapers in New York and Texas.

Ivan Waddington is Visiting Professor at the Centre for Research into Sport and Society, University of Chester and at the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences, Oslo.

Professor Waddington is the author of several books and many articles on sport, education, health and drugs in scholarly journals. He has also provided expert testimony to the European Commission’s investigation into doping in sport. His books include Sport, Health and Drugs (2000) and he was commissioned to co-author the 2002 report for the British Medical Association, Drugs in Sport: the Pressure to Perform.  His other books include Fighting Fans: Football Hooliganism as a World Phenomenon (UCD Press, Dublin, 2002); Sport Histories (Routledge, 2004); Pain and Injury in Sport: Social and Ethical Analysis (Routledge, 2006); and Matters of Sport: Essays Presented in Honour of Eric Dunning, (Routledge 2007). His latest book is An Introduction to Drugs in Sport: Addicted to Winning? to be published by Routledge in December

His work on club doctors and physiotherapists in English professional football clubs, carried out for the Professional Footballers Association, revealed a great deal of bad practice and received extensive media coverage. In 2003 he conducted for the BBC the first ever survey of drug use in English professional football, again with the cooperation of the Professional Footballers Association.

Tuur Van Balen (Belgium, 1981) is a designer and researcher eager to push the boundaries and methodologies of design in order to explore the rich interaction between people and technology. He has a special interest in invisible cities, synthetic biology and the ‘Metro weird-feed’.

He holds an MA degree in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art and works as a freelance designer and researcher in service design, interaction design and design strategy. Tuur also initiates his own design research projects, often collaborating with scientists, from synthetic biologists to sociologists.

Keen to experiment with different places for design, Tuur has worked with London based thinktank Demos, participated in a workshop at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Lancaster and collaborates with the department for bio-engineering at Imperial College.

Before moving to London, Tuur graduated a MSc degree in Industrial Design Engineering at the Delft University of Technology and worked at several design agencies in the Netherlands.

Tony Evans was born in Liverpool and came to journalism late, starting his career in newspapers aged 29. He spent his 20s playing in bands and following Liverpool across Britain and Europe. After the Hillsborough disaster, he went to live in California, where he began working on local papers. After returning to Britain in the mid-90s, he became editor of First Down, an American football weekly publication, and later edited Football Monthly.

Evans began his national newspaper career as a casual sub-editor on The Sunday Times, before joining The Times in 2003. Two years later he was appointed Deputy Football Editor and became Football Editor this year. He has no formal training in journalism.

His book, Far Foreign Land, details his five-day journey by train to Istanbul for the European Cup final in 2005, placing the experience in context by recalling similar trips in the 1980s and revisiting some dark places such as Heysel and Hillsborough.

Jonathan Man is one of the foremost British Chinese freelance theatre directors, passionate about theatre that uncovers new voices and pushes the boundaries between cultures.

His directing credits include: for Polka Theatre, Monkey! by Colin Teevan, retelling a much loved Chinese legend and performed in promenade. For Contact Theatre, Manchester: Diabolic Kyogen, an anarchic British Japanese comedy double bill; There’s Only One Wayne Matthews, a new Roy Williams play for children commissioned by Polka, following the friendship between two African Caribbean boys mad about football; The EA:ST Project, a play devised with local young British Chinese. 

For the Battersea Arts Centre: Taikonaut, a one woman show by Anna Chen.  For Soho Theatre: After Jane Eyre: Prism, a piece by Alia Bano for the Shared Experience Youth Theatre.  For the Young Vic: Voyage of the Three Star Gods, a community music project that intertwined African and Chinese influences.

He has been Creative Director for the East @ West festival for the West Wing arts centre in Slough for the past two years. He was recently artist-in-residence at the Lakeside Arts Centre in Nottingham, collaborating with international Chinese choreographer Rong Tao on innovative schools and community projects for the regional Chinese New Year festival.

Jonathan is a member of the artist leadership team for Sustained Theatre, a programme working with the Arts Council England to look at the long term infrastructure needs of the sector.

He is currently working with leading UK-Chinese writers to develop plays that tell hidden stories and celebrate the Chinese experience. For the China Now festival, he recently directed a double bill of two new plays, Journeys by Rosaline Ting & Wolf in the House by Simon Wu, for a showing at the Tara Arts Studio. He will also be developing and directing new work for Yellow Earth Theatre, the UK’s leading East Asian touring theatre company.

Jim is Head of Global Economic Research for Goldman Sachs, and has been in this position since September 2001. In this role, Jim oversees all the firm’s economic research and the output of its team all around the world.

Jim received his Ph.D. in 1982 from the University of Surrey after graduating in Economics from Sheffield University in 1978.  After a brief spell with Bank of America and International Treasury Management, a division of Marine Midland Bank, in 1988 Jim joined Swiss Bank Corporation(SBC).  In 1991, he became Head of Research, globally for SBC. Jim joined Goldman Sachs in October 1995 as a Partner, Co-Head of Global Economics and Chief Currency Economist.

Jim is the creator of the acronym BRICs and together with his colleagues he has published much research about BRICs which has become synonymous with the emergence of Brazil, Russia India and China as the growth opportunities of the future.

Jim is a member of the board of the Royal Economic Society in the UK, of the European think tank Bruegel, and Itinera, a Belgium think tank.  He is a member of the UK-India Round Table and the UK India Business Council.

Jim is one of the founding trustees as well as currently Chairman of the London based charity SHINE.  Jim is also Chairman of Goldman Sachs European Charity Committee and a trustee of the Every Child Trust, Piggy Bank Kids, and sits on the Manchester Independent Economic Review Commission. He also served as a non-executive director of Manchester United before it returned to private ownership in 2005. 

comedy and theatre critic; The Times

Dinah McLeod joined BT in 2007 to head BT Global Services’ sustainability practice, where her key responsibility is to work with customers to encourage the adoption of more sustainable modes of business operation. In her previous role as an independent consultant, she worked for clients including the UK’s Department for International Development, the Japanese International Development Agency, the African Development Bank, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Government of Uganda and the Overseas Development Institute. Her analysis of Uganda’s aid financing structure helped reorganise the aid industry in the country.

Until 2004, Dinah was a policy adviser in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit in London. Joining the unit in 2002, she managed its work on energy and international development, and was a liaison with the World Bank’s Business Partners for Development group. She also led an analysis of the effects of state failure on economic prosperity and social development. Previous to this, Dinah spent six years at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. as a social protection specialist. Among other community-based development work, she designed the community microprojects component of a US$17-million social fund project in Tajikistan, and conducted an assessment of the project’s first phase. She also worked on projects in Armenia, Romania, Poland, Albania, the West Bank and Gaza, Belize, Benin, Lithuania and the Kyrgyz Republic.

A Canadian citizen, Dinah gained her Master of Public Administration degree from Princeton University in 1996 and a BA (Hons) in Political Science from Columbia University, New York, in 1994. In 2008, she was elected a fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce – the RSA – joining 27,000 like-minded “achievers and influencers” who come from “an extraordinary range of backgrounds and are committed to civic innovation and social progress”.

Rachel Halliburton has written for more than ten years about theatre, for publications including Time Out, the Independent, the Evening Standard - where she was Nicholas de Jongh’s deputy - and the Financial Times. Her wider journalism includes articles about corrupt lawyers, the spread of crystal meth, and different aspects of the immigration process. Like most journalists she is working on a novel, which is ludicrously titled Six Degrees of Penetration: Short, Sharp Events That Changed The World. No doubt it will never see the light, and if it does, she will probably have to leave the country.

Gerry Feehily is a London born, Ireland raised, writer. After studies in Dublin, he lived in Italy, Spain and Japan before settling in France in the mid nineties. A teacher at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, he has written on literature and politics for a wide number of publications, including Guardian Unlimited, The Independent, New Statesman, Spiked On-line, Irish Examiner, and 3am Magazine. He is the translator of Sniper, by Pavel Hak, and Into the Quick of Life, by Jean Hatzfeld, both published by Serpent’s Tail. Fever, his first novel, was published by Parthian in 2007.

Siddhartha Bose grew up in Bombay and Calcutta, followed by a seven year itch in the USA. He trained as an actor, made short films, and is presently completing his first collection of poetry. His work has appeared and is forthcoming internationally in various journals including The Wolf, Fulcrum, Tears in the Fence, and Alhamra Literary Review. He lives in the East End of London. He’s read and performed his work at literary events in the city like La Langoustine est Morte, Plum, The Shuffle, and New Blood, and gigged at venues including the Whitechapel Gallery, the Poetry Café, and Linklaters. He’s read on Resonance FM, and was recently a featured reader for Poet in the City/ City of London festival. He also teaches poetry and Shakespeare, and is writing a PhD thesis examining the grotesque as an aesthetic category at Queen Mary, University of London.

After a first degree in Physics, Alex Penn changed her field of study to Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems and Complexity Science at the University of Sussex, looking at the evolution of communities, origins of co-operation and the interaction of self-organisation and evolution. She has a long standing interest and involvement in sustainability issues and in what contributions novel scientific approaches can make. As well as basic science she works on applying new evolutionary theory and complexity science to solving practical problems such as the regeneration of soil ecosystems in degraded land. She promotes the integration of sustainability, complexity science and societal concerns through interdisciplinary academic conferences and workshops.

Outside her academic work she has been teaching and practising permaculture for many years. Permaculture is a systems-level approach to design of sustainable communities, organisations and agricultural systems, based on applying principles from evolutionary and ecological dynamics in order to design low-maintenance, robust and resilient organisations. Community participation and the combination of ecological, economic and social sustainability are key to this approach.

She has a PhD in Life Sciences from the University of Sussex, has held a Fellowship at the Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study and is currently a Life Sciences Interface research fellow in the Science and Engineering of Natural Systems group in the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton.

Read economics at Cambridge and post-graduate economics at Oxford.  Started as an economic forecaster, gave it up because it doesn’t work.  Director, Henley Centre for Forecasting 1982-92, sold the company to the advertising/PR conglomerate WPP Group Plc.  Founded Volterra Consulting in 1998 to develop new ways of thinking about how the economy and society actually work.  Publishes in a wide range of academic journals e.g. Physica A, Mind and Society, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Diplomacy and Statecraft, Futures, Economics E-Journal, Economic Affairs.  Writes on a reasonably regular basis for media such as Sunday Times, Prospect, on a variety of topics in political economy.

Charlie is a first year undergraduate student at the University of East Anglia reading Philosophy Politics and Economics (PPE). Before this he was on a gap year during which he worked for TSL (publisher of the TES and THE) and as an intern for the Institute of Ideas.

Before joining the British Council, Sujata Sen was Assistant Editor, The Statesman, responsibilities including editor of the Saturday and Sunday features pages and supplements; leader writer, editor of the annual Festival Number. She wrote a weekly and later fortnightly column until 2002. She has written extensively for various publications.

Prior to her stint with The Statesman she was a publisher’s editor, covering publishing, marketing and promotion for all States in Eastern and North East India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. She published several hundred books, many of them bestsellers. Just out of university she joined the Indian Medical Association as Assistant Editor.

She is working with a team of colleagues, and with Edinburgh City of Literature Trust and stakeholders in West Bengal, to make a bid for Kolkata for the title of UNESCO World City of Literature, hopefully to be announced at the inauguration of the Kolkata Book Fair in January 2009 where Scotland will be theme country.

She is Trustee, Calcutta Tercentenary Trust; Member, Academic Council, School of Cultural Texts and Records, Department of English, Jadavpur University; Trustee, The Telegraph Education Foundation; Member, Education Sub-Committee, Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry; Member, Executive Committee, Kolkata International Film Festival and President of an NGO which works with the blind.

As a true Bengali, her interests include everything under the sun, but more so politics, films, literature, theatre, sports, architecture and animals (including her dogs Alex (Cocker Spaniel) and Coco (Golden Retriever) and her cat Kulfi.

Born in 1954 in Kolkata, Swapan Chakravorty worked on the plays of Thomas Middleton for his doctoral work at Oxford. He is author of Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton (Clarendon press, 1996), and is contributing editor of the Oxford edition of Middleton’s Collected Works (2007). Chakravorty has written two books in Bengali, and has edited volumes on book history in English (Print Areas, 2004) and Bengali. His papers and essays have appeared in journals and newspapers in the USA, England, Scotland, Malaysia, Canada and Bangladesh.

Chakravorty is Professor of English at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and has also taught at Universiti Malaya and Calcutta University, and delivered the Strode Renaissance Lectures at the University of Alabama in 2005. He has been delegate at the Tenth SAARC Writers’ Conference and the Edinburgh Book Festival.

Belfast-born cellist Gabriella Swallow commenced her musical studies at Chethams’ School of Music. In 1999 she was awarded an ABRSM Scholarship to study cello at the Royal College of Music with Jerome Pernoo and composition with Timothy Salter. As an undergraduate, she was Principal Cello of the RCM Sinfonietta and Symphony Orchestras, and performed with the New Perspectives Ensemble under Edwin Roxburgh where she developed her passion for contemporary music.  She graduated in 2003 and was presented the prestigious Tagore Gold Medal by RCM President, HRH The Prince of Wales.

Gabriella continued as a Postgraduate Scholar at the RCM which was supported by awards from the Arts and Humanities Research Board, Edward and Helen Hague and the John Lewis Partnership. In 2005 she graduated as a Master of Music with distinction. She continued her work at the RCM as the Mills Williams Junior Fellow and now has become the Phoebe Benham Fellow from 2006-2007.

The 2007-8 season sees Gabriella make her South Bank debut as soloist with the London Sinfonietta and also the world premiere of the Paul Max Edlin cello concerto with the South Bank Sinfonia at the Sounds New Festival.

Gabriella has been a guest on Music Matters and was one of the permanent guests on BBC 4’s live TV coverage of The BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. She is also the subject of visual artist Idris Khan’s new film ‘After Bach..A Memory’.

In June 2005 Gabriella was appointed Principal Cello of the London Contemporary Music Group. She plays a cello by Charles Harris Snr made in Oxford in 1820.

Elio Caccavale studied Product Design at Glasgow School of Art before going on to the Royal College of Art to complete a master in Design Products. His projects involve collaborations with scientists, social scientists and bioethicists.  The transdisciplinary nature on his projects seeks an understanding of the role of design in creating a dialogue between life sciences and everyday life.

Elio holds visiting research positions in the Interaction Research Studio at Goldsmiths College, the Cybernetics Department at Reading University and the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London. He is also visiting lecturer on the MA Design Interactions course at the Royal College of Art.  In addition, he has held visiting research positions at the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Centre (PEALS – Newcastle University). 

He has lectured internationally and presented his work at the World Forum on Science and Civilization (University of Oxford) and at the 9th World Congress of Bioethics. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, The Design Museum (Triennale) in Milan, The International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Seville, the Design and Applied Arts Museum in Lausanne, The Royal Institution in London and the Centre d’Art Santa Monica in Barcelona, just to name a few. Elio work’s is in the permanent collection of MoMA New York.

Elio’s work has been published internationally by Phaidon, Thames & Hudson, Die Gestalten Verlag dgv, MIT Press, 5 Continents, Postmedia Books and Centre Pompidou. He has worked on collaborative projects funded by the Wellcome Trust, EPSRC – Engineering and Physical Science Research Council and The Arts Council England.

Elio is currently a PhD candidate in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art. His research investigates design and bioethics partnerships, with particular emphasis upon collaborative research methods.

Susana Soares is Senior Lecturer at London South Bank University within the Department of Architecture and Design. She is also researcher fellow on “Material Beliefs” project, based in Goldsmiths University of London. In 2007, Susana graduated at MA Design Interaction in Royal College of Art, London. Previously she graduated in Product Design from ESAD, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal in 2001, being involved in several international design projects, working as a designer within studios, institutions, industries and corporative contexts in subsequent years.

Early projects include an array of glassware designs for international brand MGlass, award-winning ‘Pico’, a collection of indoor ceramic tiles produced by Revigrés and ‘Science Pier 2005’ exhibition in Germany awarded by IF Communication Design Award 2006. Susana’s most recent work aims develop collaborative relations between scientific research and design. Translating to an outcome of systems and objects that people can understand. She employs design, as a tool, to explore future technological implications for public engagement and awareness.

Her projects have been shown in many exhibitions across Europe, USA and Japan and published internationally. Earlier this year, her work was exhibited in “Design and the Elastic Mind” at Museum of Modern Art, New York, curated by Paola Antoneli, becoming part of the permanent collection of the museum.

Revital Cohen is a designer and researcher who develops critical objects and provocative scenarios exploring the juxtaposition of the natural with the artificial. Her work spans across various mediums and includes collaborations with scientists, animal breeders and the NHS.

After completing a BA in Contemporary Furniture Design at Buckinghamshire New University, she attained a Masters degree in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art, London. For her graduation project Life Support she has been awarded the CABE Award for Inclusive Environment and the Factorydesign Award for Inclusive Design Process by the Helen Hamlyn Centre.

Revital’s work has featured in academic publications as well as covered by the international design press. She exhibits within varied contexts and locations - from scientific and academic conferences to art galleries and design fairs.

I am a Physicist by training, with some years of teaching and research experience in Astronomy and Neural Nets. My work at the British Council, where I have been for 19 years, includes development of strategic partnerships between Indian and UK institutions, management of scholarships and other exchange programmes for West India in Science and Technology, Environment, Governance and Social Justice and Education sectors.

I have also formulated and managed several development projects in education and health on behalf of the Overseas Development Administration (which is now the Department of International Development, UK).

My leisure activities include sports and watching movies.

Abigail is an assistant for the Institute of Ideas and Pfizer Debating Matters competition, the acclaimed debating competition for sixth formers across the UK.  As a Debating Matters alumna, Abigail is excited to be able to be part of the continuing development of the competition and to have the opportunity to see how things work from the other side!

Joe Kerr holds a first-class honours degree in the History of Art from University College, London, and an MSc in the History of Modern Architecture from the Bartlett School of Architecture, London. He was a Senior Tutor in the History and Theory of Architecture at Middlesex University and the University of North London before joining the RCA in 1998, where he established the Department of Critical and Historical Studies in 2001. He is responsible for teaching history and theory to students in the Departments of Architecture & Interiors and Vehicle Design.

Joe Kerr has published widely on the history and theory of Modern Architecture and Urbanism. He is co-editor of Strangely Familiar: Narratives of Architecture and the City (Routledge: 1995), The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space (MIT: 2000), Autopia: Cars and Culture (Reaktion: 2002) and London from Punk to Blair (2003). He has co-curated various exhibitions, including Strangely Familiar (Royal Institute of British Architects, etc. 1995) and Millennium Products (The British Council/ The Design Council, 1998). He has written for The Architects Journal, Architecture Today, Building Design, Blueprint, Royal Academy Magazine, The Independent and The Guardian amongst others, and has lectured widely in Britain, Europe and the United States. He is a regular presenter of radio documentaries in the fields of art, architecture and design, including ‘Rivals in Stone’ (documentary series, Radio 4 2002) ‘Fallen Heroes’ (documentary series, Radio 4 2003), ‘Routemasters’ (documentary series Radio 4, 2004) and ‘The Architecture of New Mosques’ (Radio 4 2007).

He is also a London bus driver, based at Tottenham bus garage.

Alice Fishburn graduated from Harvard with a degree in American History and Literature and a new identity as a transatlantic boomerang. She worked for Newsweek before taking a Master’s degree at Columbia University. She ran the largest national student magazine in the United States, Current, and is the author of Uni in the USA. She moved back to London from New York in 2007 and currently works for Times Online. Alice writes for the Comment Central blog, where she focuses, somewhat obsessively, on the US elections. She is also Online Comment Editor.

Derek began his teaching career in Dundee in 1994. During his time in class he witnessed two boys, who were in his lower ability maths group, engaging with a complex problem-solving environment on the Super Nintendo console. He was astonished at how they engaged with the problems, how they were challenged by them and how they used their own, independently developed, suite of strategies to solve the problems in order to be successful at the game. Derek noted that this behaviour did not happen in the traditional maths setting and it made him reflect on the context of the game and why it facilitated such impressive abilities in children who had not shown it in the world of learning that they were expected to engage with in class.

This chance observation gave birth to Derek’s interest and passion for games based learning. Two years as an ICT staff tutor in Dundee City Council was followed by a position as a lecturer on the B.Ed(P) and PGDE(P) courses at the University of Dundee. This position allowed him to establish games based learning as a topic of study for his teaching students and then to his successful application to lead games based learning initiatives for Learning and Teaching Scotland via their National Centre for Games and Learning: The Consolarium.

Derek is now partnering local authorities and teachers throughout Scotland to explore the impact of computer games in the classroom. One of his recent projects saw a randomised controlled intervention using Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training for the Nintendo DS into Primary classes across 16 schools in Scotland. Could what is ostensibly seen as an entertainment device impact on children’s mental maths ability? Well it seems so, and this, as well as many others of Derek’s projects is contributing to the growing body of work that is helping to change the discourse about the position of, and practical application of, games based learning in classrooms.

Dr Smith-Laing qualified with honours at The Royal Free Hospital in 1973. He has trained widely in all aspects of general medicine and gastroenterology and was appointed to the Medway NHS Trust in 1984. Dr Smith-Laing has specialist interests in hepatology; interventional endoscopy, ERCP and colonoscopy; and management of upper GI cancers but also like to remain a true ‘General Physician’. He has taken on management roles as clinical director for medicine and as a deputy medical director of the Trust. Dr Smith-Laing has spoken to the media about the dangers of alcohol abuse on many occasions and was instrumental in securing the participation and co-operation of the Medway NHS Foundation Trust with the filming of Paul Watson’s recent hard-hitting BBC documentary about alcoholism, Rain in My Heart.

Marcus Richards is a senior research scientist at the MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing. Marcus graduated in Experimental Psychology from Oxford University in 1981 and obtained a PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry, London University in 1989, in the area of psychophysiology, learning and personality. In 1990 he became a faculty member at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, working on Neurodegenerative disorders of ageing. In 1992 he returned to the Institute of Psychiatry, where he held an Alzheimer’s Disease Society Research Fellowship to investigate cross-cultural aspects of cognitive function in later life. He joined the MRC National Survey of Health and Development in 1996, and also collaborates with the MRC General Practice Research Framework. Marcus is a Reader in Cognitive Epidemiology at University College London. His work is concerned with cognitive function, particularly with a life course approach to cognitive ageing and its consequences for health and function. This includes the influence of early experience, nutrition and growth, as well as that of education, adult socioeconomic status and mobility and health behaviours, and interactions between cognitive function, physiological function and mental health.

After completing his degree in politics and economics at Newcastle, Kit qualified as a Chartered Accountant with an international firm in the City of London. Since then Kit’s life has been split between his family, his business and London politics.
In 1998 he was elected to Westminster City Council. Kit’s first major job on the Council was to head the Social Services department, dealing with the elderly, disabled, children and vulnerable people. During his time in the department he initiated a number of radical policy initiatives, most notably more than halving the number of street homelessness in the City, and steered the Department towards achieving the highest marks in the country from the Social Services Inspectorate.
Kit was then elected as Deputy Leader of the Council and was appointed Cabinet member for Finance by Sir Simon Milton, the Council Leader. During the five years he remained in this job he increased council reserves by more than £50m, delivered one of the lowest council tax levels in the country, and was part of the team that kept Westminster at the top of the league tables throughout.

He was elected to the London Assembly on 1 May 2008, representing the West Central Constituency and was appointed Deputy Mayor - Policing, by Boris Johnson.

Peter Marsh is a Chartered Psychologist and Co-director of The Social Issues Research Centre. He studied at Ruskin College Oxford, where he obtained a Diploma in Social Studies, and subsequently at University College, Oxford where he gained his degree and doctorate in psychology. Peter is still known for his early work on football hooliganism, conducted in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His first book, Rules of Disorder, published in 1978, is still a set text on the subject. His most recent book, co-authoured with Steve Frosdick and published in 2005, is Football Hooliganism.

Other related work has been in the field of problems in pubs and clubs and the connections between drinking and disorder, begun in 1977 when he was Co-Director of the Contemporary Violence Research Centre in Oxford University. Recommendations from a major study Drinking and Public Disorder were included in the government White Paper that led to the new Licensing Act with its emphasis on later opening times. Other work on aspects of aggression and violence has included research with youth gangs in New York and Chicago and with youth groups in France and Italy.

Peter’s other main research interests have been in the field of non-verbal behaviour, leading to a number of books. Gestures, written with Desmond Morris and others, won a Choice ‘academic book of the year’ award in the United States. Books such as Eye to Eye (Book of the Month Club in the USA) and Tribes were the subject of extensive promotional tours in the UK and USA. A more recent ‘popular’ book, Lifestyles, is concerned with people’s relationship to their homes and their environments. Other works include Aggro: The illusion of violence and Aggression and Violence (with Anne Campbell).

A further, continuing research interest is in the role of the motorcar and driving behaviour. With Peter Collett he is the author of Driving Passion: The psychology of the car.

In 1997 Peter co-founded the Social Issues Research Centre with Kate Fox. This not-for-profit organisation is primarily concerned with positive aspects of lifestyles and social behaviour. With his colleagues, Peter has recently conducted work commissioned by the European Commission on the communication of scientific information and advice through the popular media. He has also recently published a number of articles on topic of obesity and related health issues — a continuing area of research at SIRC.

Liz Lloyd is a Senior Lecturer in Social Gerontology in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol. She is an experienced teacher and researcher as well as maintaining an active role as a Trustee of voluntary organisations. 

Liz is an experienced researcher in health and social care. Her specialist research on the end of life in old age includes a project funded by the Nuffield Foundation (2001-2003) on Significant Life Events in Old Age, which examined how events commonly experienced in old age, such as bereavement or sudden changes in health, impact on older people’s deaths. She is currently working on research funded under the UK Cross Council ‘New Dynamics of Ageing’ Programme, entitled Maintaining Dignity in Later Life: Older People’s Experiences of Supportive Care. This three-year project is examining the views of older people who receive care and support on how their sense of dignity is maintained or undermined at this time. 

Liz is the author of several scholarly articles and papers that reflect her continuing interest in the ethics of care and its application in the daily lives of older people, especially at the end of life. She has recently written on End of Life Issues for the forthcoming Sage International Handbook of Ageing (edited by Dannefer and Phillipson) and is currently writing a book entitled Health and Care in Ageing Societies: A New International Perspective, to be published by the Policy Press.

A fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Secretary of the British Society of Eighteenth Century Studies, Gary Day is the author or editor of over a dozen books. He is the general editor for the forthcoming Blackwells series on eighteenth century literature and culture and was, for a number of years columnist for the Times Higher, for which he still writes. As an educational consultant Gary was recently interviewed on national and local radio about the 2008 Sodexho Survey. He has judged national writing and debating competitions and is a frequent guest speaker at conferences on literary and cultural matters.

Todd Swift was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on Good Friday, 1966, and grew up in St-Lambert.  He was one of Canada’s top-ranked student debaters throughout high school and university.  He graduated with a BA in English and Creative Writing from Concordia University.  In the 1990s he helped develop spoken word in Canada, with his poetry cabarets.  His CD-length experimental text-music collaboration with Tom Walsh, Swifty Lazarus: The Envelope, Please, was released by Wired On Words in 2002. A graduate of the MA in Creative Writing (Distinction) at UEA, he is core tutor with The Poetry School, and a university creative writing lecturer.  His recent critical study of Anglo-Quebec poetry, Language Acts, co-edited with Jason Camlot, was a finalist for the 2007 Gabrielle Roy Prize.  His poems have appeared in the major anthologies The New Canon and Open Field.  He is the editor of many significant international poetry anthologies, including Poetry Nation, Short Fuse, and 100 Poets Against The War; and the poetry editor of Nthposition.  In 2005, he edited a special section on The Young Canadian Poets for New American Writing.  He has had four full collections of poems published by DC Books in Montreal, and his Seaway: New and Selected is out end of October, from Irish press Salmon.  As Oxfam Great Britain’s first Poet-in-residence, 2004-2008, he ran the influential Oxfam Poetry Series, and edited the best-selling CDs, Life Lines and Life Lines 2 - Poets for Oxfam.

In 1997, Swift moved to Budapest, then to Paris in 2001.  He now lives and works in London, England, with his Irish wife, Sara Egan.

Journalist with 25 years experience in the nationals now working on the Times opinion pages and a regular contributor to Times Books.

Dr. Linda Yueh is Fellow in Economics at St. Edmund Hall, University of Oxford.  She also holds a visiting professorship at the Economics Department of London Business School.  Trained as an economist and lawyer, Dr. Yueh had previously practiced international corporate law while resident in New York, Beijing, and Hong Kong.  She is an Associate of the Globalisation Programme of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and is called to the Bar of New York State. 

Dr. Yueh has published widely in academic and non-specialist journals.  Her areas of expertise include macroeconomics, globalisation, international law and economic growth, emerging markets and the Chinese economy. 

Dr. Yueh serves as Series Editor for the Economic Development and Growth book series for World Scientific Publishing. Dr. Yueh has given testimony before the Treasury Select Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons, UK Parliament, on the impact of China on the world and UK economy.  She is an advisor to the UK Government and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and a frequent commentator on the BBC, CNN, CNBC, and the Financial Times, among others. 

Charles W. Freeman III holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS. Previous to CSIS, he served as managing director of the China Alliance, a collaboration of law firms that help clients devise trade, investment, and government relations strategies in the United States and China. Prior to the China Alliance, he was assistant U.S. trade representative (USTR) for China affairs, the United States’ chief China trade negotiator, and played a primary role in shaping overall trade policy with respect to China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and Mongolia.

Sarah Ebner began her career as a graduate trainee on the Daily Express, where she was twice shortlisted for young journalist of the year. She then became a feature writer on the Daily Mail, before moving into television as a producer and occasional reporter on Newsnight. Here she covered a very broad range of stories, including those on arts, sport and US politics. After having children, Sarah freelanced for a variety of newspapers and magazines, and was shortlisted for the British Press Awards’ specialist writer of the year. This was for her features on the family. Sarah continued freelancing (she was shortlisted once again at the Press Awards, for feature writer of the year, in 2008) and also moved online, as editor of Supernanny.co.uk. In July 2008 she joined Times Online as editor of their new education blog, School Gate.

Hakeem Oni