Peter Main graduated from the University of Birmingham before carrying out research into very low temperature physics at the University of Manchester, where he obtained his PhD, and at Helsinki University of Technology. He then moved to the University of Nottingham as a lecturer, becoming a Reader and finally Professor and Head of Department. During this time, his research interests included the superfluid properties of liquid helium and experimental quantum mechanical effects in nanoscale semiconductors. Just before leaving Nottingham, he helped establish a facility for diamagnetic levitation. While at Nottingham, he was heavily involved in a number of educational initiatives, including the development of a radical MPhys course which attracted a great deal of attention.

Since leaving Nottingham, Professor Main has worked at the Institute of Physics. He has three main areas of interest. The first is to promote physics as a science, which involves both working with scientists and also interacting with funding agencies, such as research councils, funding councils and government. The second is to encourage diversity in physics; the Institute is now seen as a world leader among professional bodies in this area. Finally, he is responsible for all the Institute’s work in education, from primary schools to PhDs. Part of this work offers support to teachers and pupils but part of it is also to act as the voice of physics in dealing with government and its agencies.

Nico Macdonald’s has worked in innovation, technology and media from the ‘desktop publishing’ revolution of the mid 80s to the Internet upheavals that began in the 90s, for clients across the media sector, including the BBC and the Guardian Media Group. He is author of What is Web Design? (RotoVision), and writes for publications including BBC News Online, Guardian Technology, the RSA Journal, spiked, The Register and the publications of NESTA and the Design Council. He also contributes to broadcast discussions on the BBC and elsewhere. He is chair of the Media Futures Conference and programmes the Innovation Reading Circle.

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 has worked as a lifestyle journalist for more than 20 years, in New York, Paris and London. She specialises in women-focussed editorial, often with a feminist slant, as well as travel and leisure topics that range from the demise of French food to the rise of the mummy blogger. In addition to writing and editing at the Times, she has contributed to the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, CNN.com, The New York Observer, Travel+Leisure and Conde Nast’s Self magazine, among others. In 2006, she was awarded the “Maggie” by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for “Vagina 101”, a health article for Seventeen magazine. Her writing has been collected in several books, most recently in Standing Up To Supernanny. For the past nine years she has worked online in strategic and editorial roles, and as an editorial web consultant.

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 is a writer, performer, and academic based in London. He grew up in Mumbai and Kolkata, followed by a seven year stint in the USA . He trained as an actor, made short films, and is currently completing his first book of poetry. His work has appeared and is forthcoming internationally in various literary journals including The Wolf, Fulcrum, Tears in the Fence, Eclectica, Alhamra Literary Review, Soundings, and Litro.

His poetry has also been selected for the major anthologies, City State: New London Poetry (Penned in the Margins, UK , 2009) and Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century ( Bloodaxe , UK , 2009). A selection of his work has appeared in a special issue of The Literary Review (USA), edited by Sudeep Sen, which focuses on contemporary Indian poets from around the world. Siddhartha is a regular reader on the London literary scene, having performed his work at venues including the Whitechapel Art Gallery , the Troubador, the Museum of London , and the Royal College of Art. His poetry has been aired on Resonance FM, the UK Poetry Podcast, and on The Times Online website.

He has been a featured reader at numerous festivals including the Poet in the City/City of London festival, the Battle of Ideas Festival, the Coventry International Literature Festival, the West London Literature Festival, and the Spitalfields Music Festival. He was recently commissioned to write a performance piece for the ‘Shakespeare in Shoreditch’ event at the London Word Festival. With Stephen Watts, he co-hosts Beeswax, a new live poetry venture in East London . He also teaches poetry and Shakespeare, while finishing a PhD on the grotesque at Queen Mary, University of London. He was recently dubbed one of the ‘ten rising stars of British poetry’ by The Times ( UK )

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 works as an assistant for the Institute of Ideas and Pfizer Debating Matters Competition.  She took part in the competition in its very first year in 2003/04 and, after an internship, joined the team full time in September 2008.  She has been recruiting judges, finding prizes and running and organising rounds across the country ever since. She lives in London and has a cat called Olive.

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 a fellow in economics at Oxford University and a visiting professor at the London Business School. Currently, she is ITV News’ Economics Commentator. Previously, she worked as an international corporate lawyer. She is an associate of the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts (FRSA) in the UK, and a member of the Bar of New York State in the United States. Her work examines major economies such as the UK, China, United States, European Union, as well as developing countries, and her research focuses on the macroeconomic context of the global financial crisis, the rise of emerging economies, the effects of globalisation and international economic law, and the drivers of economic growth and development.

Dr. Yueh has published widely in academic and specialist journals, as well as several books. She is Series Editor of the Economic Development and Growth book series for World Scientific Publishing. Her books include: Macroeconomics (co-authored with Graeme Chamberlin), Globalisation and Economic Growth in China (co-edited with Yang Yao) and The Law and Economics of Globalisation: New Challenges for a World in Flux (editor). The Future of Asian Trade and Growth: Economic Development with the Emergence of China (editor) is forthcoming in late 2009/early 2010.

She has served as an advisor to the British government, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Executive Briefing Advisory Board, among others. She is a member of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Agenda Council on Energy Security and a special advisor to the WEF in Davos, Switzerland. A prolific contributor to press coverage of economic and business issues, she also frequently appears on international broadcasters such as CNBC and CNN.

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 Onibudo is a choreographer/director and professional host who began teaching dance in 1995, forming the company Impact Dance. His work has enabled him to work with children, young people, amateurs, semi-professionals and professionals in projects varying from school workshops, TV performances and theatre productions. These include work with BBC TV, Nickelodeon, CH4 (Endemol), ITV, Cosmopolitan Show, Duke of Edinburgh Awards, Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet School, Dance Umbrella, Dance UK, East London Dance and Peacock Theatre. He is the creator of the unique street-style dance class XPRESS YO’SELF, which has been running at Danceworks for 13 years. Hakeem choreographed the Pet Shop Boy’s “Fundamental” World tour for 2006/07. He also worked alongside the Asian Dub Foundation, director Dave Freeman and designer Es Devlin on the English National Opera’s Channel 4 commissioned Gaddafi The Living Myth which ran at The Coliseum, St Martin’s Lane in September 2006. Hakeem is currently developing Hip Hop duets including Circular Disorientation which premiered at Breakin’ Convention 2007 at Sadler’s Wells, and is also helping and supporting companies to produce high quality Hip-Hop Theatre work, with a new professional platform called TWO’S A COMPANY.

Louis founded and runs the London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film, or SCI-FI-LONDON as it is better known. Louis started the festival in 2002 and is responsible for programming, fund-raising, promoting and developing the brand. The festival is now in its 9th year. Louis also produces film and manages filmmaking events, with the aim of getting science fiction created that does not rely entirely on special effects. He lives in London with his partner and 2 daughters.

A graduate of Cambridge University, Andrew began his journalistic career in 1980 as a graduate trainee with Reuters before working as a correspondent in Brussels and Zurich. Andrew joined the Financial Times in London in 1983 and held a number of positions including agriculture correspondent, commodities editor, Middle East editor, features editor and foreign editor before he was named Deputy Editor in 1994. Andrew was acting Editor for 15 months from July 1997 while the Editor, Richard Lambert was in New York to launch the U.S. edition of the Financial Times. In January 1999 Andrew was appointed founding editor of Financial Times Deutschland ahead of its launch in February 2000. Andrew was Editor and Director of the Financial Times Publishing Group from 2001 to 2005.

Andrew co-authored a biography of Yasser Arafat published in 1990 and republished in an updated version in 2004. In December 2005 he was appointed to lead an independent review for the British government of the UK’s intellectual property regime, which was published by HM Treasury in December 2006.

Andrew was previously Global Co-Head of Corporate Communications, Marketing and Brand Management at Lehman Brothers.

Andrew is married with two children and lives in South-East London.

Philip Hensher is a writer whose novels include Kitchen Venom, which won the Somerset Maugham award, The Mulberry Empire, and most recently The Northern Clemency shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, with the winner to be announced in October. Phillip was was among Granta 20 Best of Young British Novelists in 2003. He is a columnist for the Independent as well as Professor of Creative Writing at Exeter University.

Anoushka Healy was appointed Assistant Editor, Strategy & Development for The Times in January 2008.  Prior to this appointment she was Editorial Communications Director for The Times from 2002-2008. Her current role is a new position, reporting directly to the Editor, and focuses on the development and implementation of editorial strategy. Her most recent project was to oversee the redesign of the Monday-Friday Times, which took place in June this year as the paper took advantage of its new state-of-the-art full-colour presses.

Prior to joining The Times, Anoushka was Head of Corporate Communications at The Financial Times Group for seven years where, among other projects, she worked on investor relations for the FT’s parent company, Pearson PLC, the relaunch of the Weekend FT, the launch of the FT US edition and the launch of FT.com.

She has a degree in Modern languages.

Arnd Festerling was born in Bremen. He studied History and German language and literature and joined the editorial staff at Frankfurter Rundschau in 1990. There he had various jobs and responsibilities before he became chief sports editor in 2007. In 2001 he received the journalist award ‘Waechterpreis der Tagespresse’. He is a soccer fan – in particular for Eintracht Frankfurt –  and also a fan of the American Football team ‘Washington Redskins’. Arnd Festerling is married and has two children.

Bingqin Li is a lecturer in Social Policy at London School of Economics. She is also a research associate of CASE (The Centre for Analyses of Social Exclusion) at LSE. In the past five years, she has collaborated closely with researchers from China, Korea, Japan, India and the United States to examine the social exclusion faced by rural to urban migrants, long term unemployed people and informally employed people. Her research work has covered coastal and inland cities. She has been lecturing on International Housing and Social Economics. She has been given talks in universities in China and Japan regarding issues related to urban social exclusion.

Mark Easton is the BBC’s Home Editor, a role he describes as “sitting on a cloud and reporting on how Britain is changing”.  An award winning documentary-maker and news correspondent, he appears regularly on BBC television and radio as well as writing for BBC Online and many newspapers and magazines.

His expertise is broad: from health (he won the TV News Mental Health Media Award in 2004); to legal affairs (he was named Bar Council Journalist of the Year in 2003); from home affairs (his Radio 4 series “Crime of Our Lives” was selected as a highlight of 2007 by The Guardian); to social affairs (a Ten O’clock News piece on migration impact was nominated for the Royal Television Society Home News Award 2008).

Mark heads the BBC’s UK Specialists Unit comprising some sixty journalists covering almost all aspects of domestic policy.

Steven Poole is the English author of the books Unspeak (2006), about contemporary political language (shortlisted for the 2006 Index on Censorship T.R. Fyvel Award), and Trigger Happy (2000), about the aesthetics of videogames, as well as a composer of music for documentaries and short films, including the award-winning EVOL.

He has also written very many articles, mainly on books, music and other cultural matters, for the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Times Literary Supplement and so on, of which a few hundred can be read on his website. He has appeared at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, the Bath and Edinburgh Literary Festivals, the Rotterdam Film Festival, and GameHotel, as well as on BBC television, BBC radio, NPR, ABC radio, and other media outlets.

Glyn Maxwell has published nine books of poetry, including The Breakage, The Sugar Mile, and The Nerve, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 2003 His latest collection Hide Now is published in September. He was awarded the E.M.Forster Prize by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1997, and was Poetry Editor of The New Republic from 2001 to 2007. Several of his plays have been staged in London and New York, including Wolfpit, The Forever Waltz, Broken Journey, The Lifeblood (British Theatre Guide’s ‘Best Play’ at Edinburgh Fringe 2004) and Liberty, which premiered at Shakespeare’s Globe this summer and is currently touring the UK. He has also written several libretti, travelogue, and two novels, the latest of which, The Girl Who Was Going To Die, was published this year.

David Oliver grew up in Manchester, qualified in medicine from Oxford and Cambridge in 1989. After junior doctor jobs around the country he became a consultant in 1998 – initially at Queen Mary’s Hospital where he established a range of new services and completed his PhD then moving to Reading in 2004 as a Consultant and Senior Lecturer. Since 2009 he has also been visiting professor of medicine for older people at City University. He has researched and published extensively on the care of older people, worked as an advisor to the Department of Health, Healthcare Commission and National Patient Safety Agency, Australian Safety Council and Taiwanese Veterans Administration. He is the secretary of the British Geriatrics Society and in that role has responded to many national consultations and has frequently appeared in broadcast and print media campaigning for and commenting on the care of older people. He has particular interests in the prevention of falls and fractures and in ethical and legal dilemmas of old age. He also has Masters’ Degrees in Health Management, Health Leadership and Healthcare ethics and law.  David is an enthusiastic and active associate of the Institute of Ideas and would love it if the Battle happened more often!

Daniele Archibugi is a Research Director at the Italian National Research Council (CNR-IRPPS) in Rome, and Professor of Innovation, Governance and Public Policy at the University of London, Birkbeck College. He works on innovation and on the political theory of international relations. He has graduated at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and taken his D.Phil. at the University of Sussex. He has worked and taught at the Universities of Sussex, Naples, Madrid, Cambridge and Rome. In the academic year 2003-2004 he has been Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, affiliated at the Department of Government and at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, and in the academic year 2004-2005 Lauro de Bosis Visiting Professor at Harvard University, affiliated at the Department of Government and at the Minda de Gunzeberg Center for European Studies. In June 2006 he was appointed Honorary Professor at the University of Sussex.

He is an adviser to the European Union, the OECD, several UN agencies and various national governments. He has led many research projects for the European Commission and other international organisations. He has chaired the European Expert Group on international cooperation in science and technology, A Wide Opening of the European Research Area to the World (released in April 2008).

He is the author of several books and more than 150 articles in refereed journals. In the field of political theory he has co-edited Cosmopolitan Democracy (Polity Press, 1995), Global Democracy (special issue of “Peace Review, 1997), Re-imagining Political Community (Polity Press, 1998), Filosofi per la pace (Editori Riuniti, 1999), and has edited Debating Cosmopolitics (Verso, 2003). His latest book, A Global Commonwealth of Citizens. Toward Cosmopolitan Democracy, will be published by Princeton University Press in October 2008.

Duncan Hewitt is a former BBC China correspondent who currently writes for Newsweek and other publications from Shanghai, focusing on Chinese society, media and culture.  Born in 1966, he first lived in China from 1986-7, while studying for a degree in Chinese at Edinburgh University.  He later worked as a literary translator and editor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, before joining the BBC World Service.  He was BBC Beijing correspondent from 1997-2000, and, from 2000 – 2002, the BBC’s first Shanghai correspondent. His book Getting Rich First: Life in a changing China was published by Chatto and Windus last year, and is now available in Vintage Paperback. It focuses on how Deng Xiaoping’s decision to allow some people and regions to get wealthier than others, in order to help China develop economically, meant new opportunities for many – but also spelt the end of traditional socialism, and paved the way for the startling changes which have turned much of China’s society – and its values – on its head since the early 1990s.  Serialized as a BBC Radio 4 ‘Book of the Week’, it was described by the Sunday Times as “a brilliant insider’s account of life in the new China… tender and often shocking… full of telling portraits of characters from all walks of life.”

Lyndsey Winship is a writer, editor, web editor and video producer working in the fields of arts and education.

She studied 20th Century Music at Sussex University and went on to work as a freelance journalist contributing to the Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph, The Stage, Metro and numerous magazines and websites including Dance Now, Dance Theatre Journal and londondance.com. She also contributed to the Rough Guide to Choreography.

Lyndsey has edited websites for various Endemol TV programmes and for music education campaign the Music Manifesto. In television, she worked on The Culture Show and The Edinburgh Show for BBC2.

Lyndsey is now Dance Editor at Time Out London.

She is a recipient of the Chris de Marigny Dance Writers Award, a member of the Critics Circle (Dance Section) and in 2008 was invited to be part of the jury for the inaugural Priz Jardin D’Europe, a choreography prize held at Vienna’s ImPulsTanz festival.

Tony Elliott founded Time Out in 1968 with £70 during the summer break whilst at Keele University.  Over thirty seven years later, the Time Out Group has an annual turnover of over £45m per annum. 

Time Out London (75,000 per week) and Time Out New York (152,00 per week), together with an extensive guidebook division and web site (timeout.com – The World’s Living Guide), have established the Time Out brand worldwide. Time Out Chicago (52,000 per week) launched as a weekly in March 2005.

Many licensed editions of Time Out are currently published around the world including Almaty, Beijing + Shanghai, Barcelona, Bucharest, Cyprus, Dubai + Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Kiev, Kuala Lumpur, Lisbon, Moscow + St Petersburgh, Mumbai + Delhi, Singapore, Sydney and Tel Aviv.  Annual Time Out visitors guides are published under license in Buenos Aires, Bahrain, Cape Town, and Doha.  Further launches are scheduled for 2008-9.

He never finished his university course.  Nor ever been employed by anyone.  He is the sole shareholder of the UK company, Time Out Group Ltd.

He was born 7 January 1947.

Sebastian Paul joined Arts & Business in October 2006 from WPP, the strategic communications, events and design agency, where he was Client Group Director managing prestigious client accounts such as Microsoft UK; Royal Bank of Scotland and VW/Bentley Motors.

Formerly, Sebastian held a chair director role at Jack Morton Worldwide and a directorship at Imagination Group, managing key relationships as diverse as Reuters; Sony Ericsson; Ford Motor Company; LEGO / Legoland; and The Natural History Museum.  Paul also led consultancy development of ‘One Microsoft’ Communications strategy, which led to a Future Home event marketing campaign which was opened by Bill Gates in November 2005 and saw over 10,000 attendees participate in activities. 

Kim Knott is Director of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Diasporas, Migration and Identities Programme (www.diasporas.ac.uk) and co-ordinates the work of forty nine research projects on a variety of subjects and issues in diaspora studies.  She works half-time in this capacity and half-time in her post as Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Leeds where she has studied and worked in a variety of roles from Research Fellow early in her career, to lecturer, then professor. 

Since 1989 she has coordinated the work of the Community Religions Project, a research group in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Leeds which has fostered the study of religions in Leeds and the wider region. In this capacity she has overseen the publication of its monographs and research paper series, supervised postgraduate students, run an annual team-project on ‘The Religious Mapping of Leeds’, and directed alone or with others various research projects (on African Caribbean Christianity, the religious lives of young British Asian women, inter-religious social action, British Hindu oral histories, the location of religion in public sector organisations, an arts and humanities literature review of research on terrorism, and portrayals of religion in the British media).  Her research has been funded by government, public and voluntary bodies such as the Home Office, Yorkshire and Humber Regional Assembly and Leeds Faiths Forum, as well as AHRC, ESRC, Leverhulme Trust and Hibbert Trust. 

Her books include The Location of Religion: A Spatial Analysis (Equinox, 2005), Hinduism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 1998/2000) – which won the SHAP Book Prize – and My Sweet Lord: The Hare Krishna Movement (Aquarian Press, 1986).  She has published widely on religion, ethnicity, identity and gender, and her current research is on space and the sacred.
Professor Knott was Head of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Leeds from 1998-2001, and Head of the School of Humanities.  Beyond the university, she has served as President of the British Association for the Study of Religions, and is currently General Secretary of the European Association for the Study of Religions.  She is a Fellow of the RSA. 

Roy was born in Widnes at some point in the 1960’s. Upon leaving school if was envisaged that Roy would, as his father and brother had done, enter the world of engineering. However it soon became apparent that Roy had as much chance of becoming an engineer as Vanessa Feltz had of becoming a successful daytime TV host. It wasn’t looking good for the young Roy Basnett in the Thatchersist Britain of the 1980’s. Unemployment was rife and jobs were scarce. He drifted from job to job. Labourer, industrial drain cleaner, grave digger, gardener and shop assistant where just some of the professions Roy tried his hand at and more often than not he was sacked!

Eventually Roy found his way into DJ-ing working the bars and clubs of his hometown. One day a friend mentioned that a local radio station was looking for a front man the host their summer road shows. Roy attended an audition and was promptly given the job. Through the radio station (Rock FM) Roy was introduced to the world of broadcasting and after 3 years of picking up work where it became available he landed the job of phone in presenter on Magic 999. It was this point Roy realised that “Talk” radio was where he wanted to be.

After a brief stint on the 2BR in Burnley Roy moved back to Rock FM in 2006 to present a phone in show. The format proved to be successful. Roy’s desire to do more in this field of broadcasting has brought him to City Talk. Roy will be on air in the early hours of the morning weekdays between 2-6am.

Graeme Tiffany has a background in youth work, community education and community development. Since 2000, he has been a freelance researcher, trainer, lecturer and education consultant with special interests in detached and street-based youth work, youth social policy, democratic education, participation and the use of philosophical tools to support learning (he is Project Director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation sponsored New Earswick Community Philosophy Project and co-ordinates a philosophy-based Community Cohesion project for Sunderland City Council).

Graeme is Vice Chair of the UK-wide Federation for Detached Youth Work and national representative to Dynamo International, a world-wide collaboration of street educators.

His book, Reconnecting Detached Youth Work is on the compulsory reading list for students of street-based youth work at the University College of Oslo and forms the basis of an increasing number of training courses at home.

He has participated in a number of seminars on the theme of Youth and Social Exclusion as part of his work with the European Resource Centre for Social Work Research (ERCSW). Most recently he spoke on Transformational Practices in Youth Work in Amsterdam and presented a paper on “New Trends in Mobile Youth Work: a UK perspective” at the International Symposium on ‘Reaching the Unreachable in a changing global context’ in Stuttgart.

Graeme insists that the things that have been learnt by street educators have great relevance to thinking about mainstream education and social work, a point he has made forcefully as a Core Group member of the Nuffield Review of 14-19 Education and Training, England and Wales, for whom he has recently produced an Issues Paper, Lessons from Detached Youth Work: Democratic Education.

Graeme has, on several occasions, been a judge of the Institute of Ideas’ Debating Matters competition.

Joseph trained as an actor at Drama Centre, London. His career as an actor spanned over 25 years, starring in West End musicals, on television and in developing new writing.

As a sound designer and composer, Joseph won the 1992 Carling London Fringe Award for his work on The Ballad of the Limehouse Rat by Tim Newton. Other composition work includes a Friday Play for BBC Radio 4, Full Blown and a documentary series for ITV, St Dunstans.

In 2003, he was awarded a Personal Development Award from Arts Council England, to develop the theatrical uses of interactive composition software, Radial. This culminated in a 3-day workshop with a group of actors, a theatre director and a VJ exploring and documenting the possibilities for “live” soundtrack creation in theatre.

From this came a practice-based research MA at the University of Brighton, culminating in an installation The Family Album in 2005 - a reflective narrative combining spoken word and binaural location recording. Joseph is about to continue his research into The Art of Noise and the Politics of Silence at SMARTLab UEL, assisted by funding from Nokia.

In 2007, he set up a new project for phonography and environmental performance, field and established Field Radio on Radio Reverb, a monthly sound art show exploring the unheard and ignored sounds of Brighton & Hove. He is currently working as the sound designer for a new film about Charles Darwin for Curious commissioned by Arts Admin.

In 2008, Joseph formed The Neo-Futurist Collective to research and develop ReAwakening of a City - a celebration of Urban Noise. The collective have been invited to create a walking performance in and around Wall St, NYC, for Conflux 2008.

Sally Millard is mother of two children aged 8 and 5; treasurer of the school association at her daughter’s school and works full time as an accountant.

She is a founder member of the IoI Parents Forum, which was set up to provide a meeting place for those who want to make sense of why parents and parenting has become such a focus for policy makers. With concerns ranging from what we feed our children, to how much television they watch, to how we discipline them; it seems that bringing up kids is neither a straight forward task, nor a private matter. The Parents Forum has proved to be a great place to discuss these developments so that we can work out how to challenge them.

MBE Director, London Contemporary Dance School

Shane Greer is a leading political commentator, writer and is the executive editor of the popular political monthly magazine Total Politics. Shane launched Total Politics in 2008 with its publisher, the renowned commentator and blogger, Iain Dale, and has since helped establish it as one of the UK’s top political magazines.

Shane appears regularly on television and radio, including Sky News, BBC News, Daily Politics, BBC Breakfast, BBC World Service, Channel 4 News, More 4 News, Al Jazeera and BBC Radio and is a paper reviewer for both Sky and the BBC.

His first foray into politics was as the Executive Director of the Young Britons’ Foundation and as a lead presenter on the world’s first political internet television channel 18 Doughty Street. Shane is originally from Northern Ireland, but has since set up his home in London after spending time in Glasgow, the North West of England and Washington DC in the USA.

Shane writes for Total Politics, has blogged for the Daily Telegraph and Centre for Political Studies, was an online columnist for Sky News during the 2008 US presidential election and writes for the Yorkshire Post.

Shane’s first book, Why Vote Conservative, will be available at the beginning of March, followed closely by his second book, So You Want to be a Politician. The former makes the case for voting Conservative at the coming general election and the latter is an essential read for first time candidates, sitting politicians, anyone intending to run an effective campaign and anyone interested in the art and science of political campaigning. Both books are published by Biteback.

Shane’s deep understanding of politics and political campaigning was recognised by leading US magazine, Campaigns and Elections, which has invited him for the last two years to join the judges panel for the Reed Awards; the US’ preeminent awards recognising campaigning excellence across the spectrum of political campaigns.

Jonathan Bate is Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the University of Warwick. His publications include Shakespeare and the English Romantic Imagination (Oxford UP, 1986), Shakespearean Constitutions (Oxford UP, 1989), Shakespeare and Ovid (Oxford UP, 1993), the Arden edition of Titus Andronicus (1995), The Genius of Shakespeare (Picador, 1997), two influential works of ecocriticism, Romantic Ecology (Routledge, 1991) and The Song of the Earth (Picador, 2000) and a novel about William Hazlitt, The Cure for Love (Picador, 1998).  His biography of John Clare (Picador, 2003) won Britain’s two oldest literary awards, the Hawthornden Prize for Literature and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography.  He has also edited Clare’s Selected Poetry (Faber and Faber, 2004) and written a new introduction for the Penguin Classics edition of Andrew Marvell’s Complete Poetry (2005).

He is on the Board of the Royal Shakespeare Company, for whom he edited The RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works. A Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature, as well as an Honorary Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, he is on the Council of the AHRC, broadcasts regularly for the BBC, writes for the Guardian, TLS and Sunday Telegraph, has held visiting posts at Harvard, Yale and UCLA, and was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s 80th Birthday Honours for his services to literary study and higher education.

He is currently working on an AHRC group investigating the public impact of the humanities.

JJ Charlesworth is a freelance art critic and writer based in London, known for his articles and reviews in magazines such as Time Out London, Art Monthly and Art Review magazine, where he is currently the reviews editor. JJ has written for publications including Flash Art, Contemporary, Third Text, Modern Painters and the Daily Telegraph and is a tutor in the painting department at the Royal College of Art. He has written numerous catalogue essays, including texts for the British Council and Artangel.

He recently curated the exhibition FUSION NOW! at Rokeby Gallery in London, which explored the future nuclear fusion in science and the meaning of energy in contemporary art.

Dalia joined ippr in February 2008. She has recently completed her PhD in social policy at the University of Oxford. Prior to working at ippr, Dalia has taught social policy at the University of Oxford, held research posts at the LSE and worked as a consultant and researcher for a specialist practice on the built environment. At ippr, Dalia is leading on a variety of projects in the areas of work, families, housing and communities.

Martin Wright is a journalist, editor, broadcaster and commentator on the environment solutions and sustainable futures. He is Editor in Chief of Green Futures, the UK’s leading magazine on the subject, published by Forum for the Future. As a writer and photographer, he has contributed to an extensive range of publications and programmes, including The Observer, The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, Newsweek and New Scientist, and for a wide range of digital media, including the BBC and Channel 4.  He is a winner of the Environment Council’s Science and Environment Journalist of the Year Award and a Travelex Travel Writer of the Year Award

He has written and produced material on environmental issues for UK television, and broadcast on UK and international television, on BBC and independent radio, and on the BBC World Service. He was Editor in Chief of Greening the Dragon: China’s Search for a Sustainable Future (Green Futures, 2006), and of Monsoons and Miracles: India’s Search for a Sustainable Future (Green Futures, 2007).

He is a Visiting Judge for the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy. As such, he travels widely in Asia and Africa, carrying out assessment visits of shortlisted projects. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufacturing and Science (RSA), and a regular Chair of RSA Debates.

Other current and recent roles include: Board Adviser, Futerra; Associate, Demos; Associate Director, Forum for the Future; Consulting Editor, The Guardian’s Spark magazine; Editor (UK) of Tomorrow, the global business and environment magazine, and Environment Director of Media Natura.

Charles Saumarez Smith is Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Arts.  He was born in 1954 and educated at Marlborough and King’s College, Cambridge.  After graduating, he spent a year at Harvard University as a Henry Fellow studying at the Fogg Art Museum and then returned to the Warburg Institute as a postgraduate student.  In 1979, he was elected Christie’s Research Fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge and, in 1982, he joined the staff of the Victoria and Albert Museum as an Assistant Keeper with special responsibility for V&A/RCA MA in the History of Design.  In 1990, he was appointed Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum.  In 1994, he was appointed Director of the National Portrait Gallery and, in 2002, Director of the National Gallery.  He took up his appointment as Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Arts in September 2007. 

Dr. Saumarez Smith is a Governor of the University of Arts, London, an Honorary Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, and has received honorary degrees from the Universities of London, Westminster, Sussex, East Anglia and Essex. In 2002, he was Slade Professor at Oxford University.

Steve McAdam is a founder and director of Fluid, a multidisciplinary practice specialising in architecture and urban design. He is an architect with extensive experience in urban regeneration, masterplanning and participatory design and has led major urban regeneration projects in both the public and private sectors across the UK. He was appointed to the London Olympic masterplanning team by the London Development Agency in August, 2003, to direct all aspects of stakeholder consultation, public sector engagement and responsive masterplanning. Fluid played a similar role for the Kings Cross Central project for developer Argent plc, for which they received an award for innovation from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE).

Steve coordinates the activities and research of Fluid’s Think Tank and its academic associations. These equate to all scales of regeneration from large masterplans to one-off architectural projects. He designed the ODPM award-winning sports, leisure and community ‘Gateway Centre’ in Derby with co-director Christina Norton, which has drawn critical acclaim from academics, critics and local people. He is a consultant to the Council of Europe, and a visiting lecturer at London Metropolitan University where he was instrumental in setting up the Cities Research Institute and for the launch of a new MA course focusing on multidisciplinary approaches to urban regeneration. His work has been published and exhibited internationally.

Recently Steve has been project director for Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder projects in Newcastle, Sheffield and Oldham, and for Local Development Framework projects in Dalston, Kensington and Chelsea in London and in Chelmsford.

Current work includes a vision and public realm strategy for ‘High Street 2012’: a corridor reaching from the city edge to Stratford and which will host the last 6km of the Olympic marathon in 2012.

Fiona Fox has a degree in journalism and 20 years of experience in working in media relations for high profile national organisations. Her career includes stints working for the Equal Opportunities Committee, National Council for One Parent Families, and CAFOD (a leading aid agency). Despite having no background in science, Fiona managed to persuade a distinguished panel of eminent scientists to take a risk and appoint her to become the founding Director of the Science Media Centre which opened in April 2002. The main remit of the Centre is to help restore public trust in science by persuading more scientists to engage more effectively with the big controversial science stories that hit the headlines.
The Centre has grown from strength to strength - with a database of over 2000 scientists which is used by all sections of the national news media. The Science Media Centre has earned huge praise and respect from those who use its services and was the subject of a glowing Editorial in Nature magazine which paid tribute to the ‘robust leadership’ of its Director.

Bob Bingham is Professor of Physics at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow and a Laboratory Fellow at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. He has written over 500 scientific and technical papers and is active in space and astrophysics plasmas as well as laser plasma interactions and plasma accelerators. He is group leader in the area of fundamental physics, with interests in neutrino physics, accelerator physics, turbulence, etc.  He co-ordinates a theory programme on plasma accelerators and is building up a laboratory astrophysics programme that involves high power lasers.

He is a member of the HiPER team, the European high power laser fusion project.

Chris McCabe was born in Liverpool in 1977. He has published poems in a number of places including Poetry Salzburg Review; Shearsman, Magma and Poetry Review. His first collection The Hutton Inquiry was published by Salt in 2005. This includes a sequence of poems that chronicle the circumstances surrounding the death of government science adviser Dr David Kelly in 2003 and Britain’s involvement in the war in Iraq.

He has read his work at the Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry, The Troubador and at the Poetry Society. He also discussed and read some of his poetry on BBC World Service on Armistice Day 2005 and featured a poem on the Oxfam CD Lifelines. In 2008 a pamphlet called The Borrowed Notebook was published by Landfill, about notes for a novel that his father left behind after he died.

He currently works as a Joint Librarian of the Poetry Library, London.