Peter Taylor-Gooby is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Kent and Director of the ESRC Social Contexts and Responses to Risk Programme.  He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Founding Academician at AcSS, a participant in the Prime Minister’s No 10 ‘progressive consensus’ Round Table and Advisor to Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, 2009 onwards, President of the Sociology and Social Policy section of the BAAS, 2005-6, a Fellow of the RSA, co-director of the Risk Research Centre at Beijing Normal University, 2008 onwards, State-appointed Visiting Foreign Expert to China 2008-11, Distinguished Visitor, Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Central Policy Unit Special Advisor, 2008-9 and Chair of the Social Policy and Social Work Research Assessment Exercise Panel 2001 and 2008, and member of the Research Excellence Framework Expert Advisory Group, 2004-9.

Jenni Russell is a columnist for the Guardian and Sunday Times.  She worked for many years for the BBC and Channel 4, and was the editorof Radio 4’ s The World Tonight.

Jon Keen is Deputy Chair of the Football Supporters’ Federaton (FSF), the national organisation which represents the rights and interests of supporters at all levels of the game, and which comprises of over 142,000 individual fans and members of local supporters’ organisations. 

A supporter of Reading FC for over 30 years, Jon’s first involvement with supporter activism was marching with other supporters in 1983 to protest at Robert Maxwell’s scheme to merge Reading and Oxford United to create “Thames Valley Royals.” Jon is the FSF’s policy holder for matters related to income and wealth distribution within the game.

Elaine McCrimmon joined the Corporate Affairs Department of SABMiller plc, one of the world’s largest brewers, as Alcohol Policy Manager in 2007. She is responsible for managing the global alcohol strategy, policies and increasing internal capability across the business. During her time with SABMiller she has travelled throughout Africa, the EU, and Latin America where she has promoted alcohol responsibility. She supports SABMiller Group companies develop local alcohol strategies to discourage irresponsible drinking. She is responsible for SABMiller’s www.TalkingAlcohol.com website, which encourages people to make informed choices about alcohol consumption.

Elaine has a degree in Applied Chemistry from the University of Strathclyde and has recently studied Corporate Finance at London Business School. She has twelve years experience within the alcohol industry. Her experience includes five years at the UK’s brewing trade association representing members’ interests in Whitehall and Brussels. She also previously worked in a technical capacity for Allied Domecq and Anheuser Busch in research and production.

Educated at Scarborough College and Magdalene, Cambridge, Malcolm graduated in 1979 having read Natural Sciences and specialised in psychology. Malcolm worked as a chemistry teacher before joining the Atomic Energy Authority in 1987. In 1995 he joined Imperial College as a Senior Research Fellow and in 1999 became a Senior Research Fellow at Chatham House, where he is now an Associate Fellow, conducting an investigation into the future of civil nuclear energy. He is a regular media contributor on energy and nuclear matters.

Among his publications are two books co-written with the late Peter Beck: Double or Quits – the global future of civil nuclear energy and Civil nuclear energy – fuel of the future or relic of the past? In late 2005 he published a study looking at the differences between the political and technical mindsets and how this impacts on major industries such as nuclear energy (available from Chatham House), and is currently part of a consortium including Manchester, Southampton and City Universities carrying out a government-funded project on sustainable nuclear energy. He is an elected Member of Wandsworth Council and until 2009 had executive responsibility for environment and leisure.

As a school leader for the last thirteen years and more recently consultant leader, Mark has developed a reputation for leading and supporting organisations through significant and effective periods of change.

Mark’s work as a school leader and champion of young people has helped him to develop a national reputation for promoting and using the ‘Well-being’ agenda to underpin success in young people’s lives.

Mark left the Headship of a community school in Sussex to take on a role with the Anti-Bullying Alliance looking specifically at community bullying issues

David Rayson was born in Wolverhampton in 1966. He received his Bachelor’s Degree at Maidstone College of Art in 1989, before completing his PGCE at Bristol University in 1991, and his MA in 1997 at the Royal College of Art. Rayson has received a travel award to Asilah Studios in Morocco (1995), the Paris Studio Award from the Cité Internationale des Arts (1996), the TIGroup Travel Scholarship Award (1997), and the Oppenheim Award from the John Downes Memorial Trust (1998). He has recently been included in Landscape,a British Council International Touring Exhibition; City Racing: A Partial History, The Institute of Contemporary Art, London; and Out of Place: Memory, Imagination and the City, The Lowry, Manchester. Rayson’s work has been exhibited and collected widely, both here and abroad.

Political Scientist, Free University Berlin, Political Editor of German Broadcasting, Correspondent in Bonn, Washington and London, UK Editor of the German weekly paper Die Zeit.. Publications on Media and Democracy, Global resources, Energy and Climate, the Ideology of Multiculturalism. and transnational Terrorism.

Victoria Walsh is Head of Public Programmes at Tate Britain and the Tate lead investigator on a major three-year AHRC-funded project, ‘Tate Encounters: Britishness and Visual Culture’, examining the impact of social and cultural policy on museum practices and approaches to audience development. Previously, she worked as a research consultant at the London School of Economics on a report into the creative impact of national museums in the UK. As a freelance project manager she co-ordinated the competition to select an architect for Tate Modern and organised its opening in 2000. She has worked for the Mayor’s Cultural Office on the Fourth Plinth Project in Trafalgar Square, The Architecture Foundation on debates on the future of London (1996), the Architecture Centre Network and the BBC. She has published on the post-war British artists Nigel Henderson. Francis Bacon and Gilbert & George.

Bruce Bartlett is author of The New American Economy and an economic historian who has spent the last 30 years working in politics and public policy. He has served in numerous governmental positions, including as a domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan and a treasury official under President George H.W. Bush. He is a weekly columnist for Forbes.com. and has written for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal,  National Review, Commentary, and Fortune. He has also been a frequent guest on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Lou Dobbs’ Moneyline, NBC Nightly News, Nightline, Crossfire, Wall Street Week, CNN, CNBC, and Fox News Channel, among others.

John studied Physics at the University of Cambridge, followed by a PhD at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London.
Subsequently, he has had over thirty years experience of space research spanning a number of space missions, including sounding rockets, Earth-orbiting missions and interplanetary flights, at British Aerospace, the University of Kent and now the Open University. These have included a range of high profile space missions including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Giotto mission which flew past Halley’s comet and the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn & Titan.
He is a Vice-President of the Royal Astronomical Society and a member of a variety of national and international bodies in the field of Space Research. He is also the holder of awards from NASA and ESA (the European Space Agency) and inaugural winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Individual Achievement in UK Space Research in 2005.

He is currently involved in developing several instruments for possible future space missions to Mars, the Moon, Titan and Europa.

Stefan Dietrich was born in 1946 in Bad Homburg as son of the local newspaper editor. After school he started his career as a journalist. He studied and developed strong interest in Eastern Europe and History. In 1981 he started working for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, from 1986 as correspondent in Warschau. Later he was based in Hannover. In 2000 he became head of the domestic politics board in Frankfurt.

Michael Green is a freelance writer and consultant. He has worked in international development for nearly 20 years, until recently as a senior official at the Department for International Development (DFID). He taught economics at Warsaw University in the early 1990s, when he was also the business correspondent for Polish Radio Warsaw.

Michael is the co-author, with Matthew Bishop of the Economist, of Philanthrocapitalism: how the rich can save the world. In the foreword to the forthcoming paperback edition, President Bill Clinton writes: “Our interdependent world is too unequal, too unstable, and, because of climate change, unsustainable. We have to transform it into one of shared responsibilities, shared opportunities, and a shared sense of community. Bishop and Green show us how to do it.”

Their new book on the financial crisis, The Road from Ruin, will be published early in the new year.

Dr Bryan has developed a research agenda exploring rituals, symbols and memory as they influence identity and social space in Ireland. Much of his early research focused upon Orange parades in Northern Ireland (see Orange Parades: Ritual tradition and Control Pluto Press 2000) but the research now covers a much broader range of rituals and activities including St Patrick’s Day, The Lord Mayor’s Show and Carnival in Belfast. In addition, Dr Bryan has a major four year project looking at the popular flying of flags in Northern Ireland. In all this research Dr Bryan examines the policy implications of the way public space is utilised and how it influences people identity. As such, the outcomes of the research have implications for conflict resolution and understanding why violent conflict has been such a part of Northern Ireland’s recent history and why violence has diminished.

Set up and run my own voluntary youth organisation in 2001 in one of the most deprived areas in Leeds. The youth club continues to thrive and grow and is ready to move forward to become a social enterprise for our young people and the community, to train, gain, and work for the benefit of our youth and the community as a whole by opening a community cafe and a salon. We have recently launched the first teen-led campaign against guns & knives, TAG’s. All of my work has been on a voluntary basis as I am passionate and dedicated about my work for and with our young people.

I do not particularly believe ASBO’s are the answer, especially not when given to the wrong people like the elderly and children who are suffering at home. They may well work with some 20+. I strongly believe the government is doing the citizens of Great Britain a bad disservice by still allowing the sales of alcohol from 8am -11pm and later and from any local store and also the fact that they have not yet banned the drinking of alcohol on the streets of Britain. The revenue they get from the sales of alcohol could be got through spending less on the taking home of drunks on the streets by our Police, saving billions on long term mental health issues and health problems suffered by many alcoholics, saving billions on A&E services, support for families suffering with parents or children who drink all day, millions saved on DLA, Incapacity Benefit, bus passes, detox, and more. There would be less crime and violence on our streets and people in communities and on estates would feel safer and have better quality of life!

Sam Robinson has been in post as eaga’s Social Responsibility Manager since the Autumn of 2007. He has had various roles with eaga since 2002, working predominantly on domestic energy efficiency and social inclusion schemes.

By developing a diverse range of Social Responsibility initiatives, engaging and investing in their Partners (staff), customers, communities and the environment, eaga demonstrate how core business success can fit alongside social and environmental responsibility.

Sam has three children and lives with his family in Bristol, where he loves to go on family bike rides and play football for the world famous Easton Cowboys.

Leo Johnson is a Co-Founder of Sustainable Finance Ltd, advisors since 2004 to over 50 international financial institutions around the risks and opportunities of sustainability.

Leo Johnson’s specialization is making sense of sustainability, pinpointing the mega-trends that will impact business performance — from climate change, to price shocks in water, oil and food, to shifts in consumer preferences — then laying out the risks and opportunities for the financial sector and its core clients—from insurance, and commercial banking to private banking, asset management, private equity and the real sector.

On behalf of Sustainable Finance, Leo Johnson has worked since 2003 on the rollout of the Equator Principles, an industry standard for environmental and social due diligence, that has grown from an initial four to sixty banks, representing over 90% of cross-border project finance. In 2004, Leo Johnson was awarded the IFC Corporate Award for his work in this area.

In 2006, Leo Johnson worked with the Financial Times and IFC to establish the Financial Times Sustainable Banking Awards, an industry award now receiving over 180 entries from international banks, asset managers and private equity groups. Leo Johnson served as a Judge for the inaugural awards and has acted on behalf of Sustainable Finance as Technical Advisor to the FT for the Awards since their inception.  Leo Johnson is Sustainability Adviser and Judge for the Prix Pictet—a Prize for Photography around sustainability issues for which Kofi Annan is the Honorary President. He is on the Advisory Board of Triple Bottom Line Investing (TBLI).

Leo is the author of IFC’s best practice publication: “Beyond Risk: Sustainability and the Emerging Markets Financial Sector”. He comments on sustainability for CNBC and has contributed guest columns to the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal. A Contributor to UNEP’s Working Capital Report on the financial sector and sustainability, he is the author of The Future of Finance: Sustainable Banking and the Banco Real Model, published in the 2008 INSEAD collection of essays on best practice in sustainable banking.

Leo has an MBA from INSEAD. He holds an M.Sc. in Resource and Environmental Economics from University College London, where he was Dow Scholar, and a B.A. from New College, Oxford, where he was Stephens Scholar.

After seven years as a part-time lecturer in special needs education, he formed Coyote Films in 1998. His films prioritise the participation of children, and for 10 years he has worked on video projects in schools, in collaboration with various London arts organisations. These include Safe (winner of LWTs Whose London? competition and broadcast in 2002), Moving Here (awarded beacon status in 2006 by the Home Office) and Only Human (an anti-racism resource made in 2006 for Essex primary schools and now available to view on Teachers TV).  It was observation in schools and the making of Only Human that led directly to an urgent concern to examine anti-racist policy and the regulation of school life.  This resulted in a report titled The Myth of Racist Kids, due to be published by The Manifesto Club in late October 2009.

Hart has lived and worked in Bethnal Green and Stratford since 1984, and was an activist in the late 1980s/early 1990s in East End anti-racism campaigns. Now living in Brighton, Hart will soon begin production on a television documentary about twenty-first century children and the end of ‘race’. Currently he is working on a film project with African Caribbean boys at Forest Hill School in south London.

Marcus Roberts is Director of Policy and Membership at DrugScope, the UK’s leading independent centre of information and advice on drugs and the national membership organisation for the drugs field – and has previously been Head of Policy at DrugScope. He spent nearly three years as Head of the Policy and Parliamentary Unit at Mind, the charity that campaigns for better mental health. Other jobs in the third sector include Policy Manager at Nacro, the Crime Reduction Charity. He was editor of the legal journal ChildRight from 1998 to 2000, and of Safer Society, the journal of crime reduction and community safety, from 2000 to 2002.

Before joining the voluntary sector, Marcus taught politics and philosophy at the Universities of Brighton and Essex, and was an associate lecturer for the Open University, having previously studies politics and philosophy at Lancaster and York. He has a strong interest in human rights issues, and was Baring Foundation Fellow in Philosophy and Human Rights at the University of Essex in 1994. He is the author of numerous publications on social policy issues – as well as on social theory and philosophy – recently including DrugScope’s Drug Treatment at the Crossroads report and a series of reports for the Beckley Foundation Drug Policy Programme. He has recently taken a leading role in campaigning on the Welfare Reform Bill, currently before parliament, raising concerns about proposals to require people identified as having drug or alcohol problems to engage in treatment or risk loss of benefit.

Tim Montgomerie edits ConservativeHome with Jonathan Isaby.  He launched the website on Easter Monday, 2005, with the aims of championing grassroots party members and advocating a balanced, authentic conservatism.

Born in 1970 he grew up in Hampshire and Germany - living within an army family.

He studied Economics and Geography at Exeter University before joining the Bank of England in 1992 where his responsibilities included the Russian economy and the study of systemic risk in financial systems.

With David Burrowes, Tim established the Conservative Christian Fellowship in December 1990.  He was its Director for thirteen years - first in his spare time and then full-time.

From 1998 to 2003 he ran the Conservative Party’s outreach to faith communities and the voluntary sector.  His responsibilities including writing speeches for two Conservative Party leaders, William Hague and then Iain Duncan Smith.

Tim was Iain Duncan Smith’s chief of staff for his last two months as Conservative leader and throughout 2004 helped him to establish the Centre for Social Justice.

Tim’s political hero is William Wilberforce.  Tim writes: “This devout Christian stood for a great moral cause - the abolition of slavery -  and brought the greatest of qualities - perseverance - to ensure he succeeded.”

Tim is a regular media pundit.  His broadcast experience includes Radio 4’s Today, The Week in Westminster, The World at One, PM, The World Tonight, Any Questions?, BBC1’s Daily Politics and Ten’o'clock News, BBC2’s Newsnight, Channel 4 News, Sky News, Fox News and Bill Bennett’s Morning in America radio programme.  Tim has written for The Spectator and a number of national newspapers including The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent and the Financial Times.

In November 2008 he launched the London Centre for the Study of Anti-Americanism.  The early work of the Centre is captured at AmericaInTheWorld.com.

In June 2009 he launched ConservativeIntelligence.com.

Jenny Bird is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr), where she specialises in climate change policy.  She has published reports on a range of climate-related topics including long-term targets for carbon emission reductions, energy security and personal carbon trading.  Most recently Jenny has worked on two reports investigating the prospects for so-called ‘green’ jobs in the UK. 

Jenny has also worked for the Environment Agency and for a charity based in Kathmandu focusing on environmental health issues in rural areas of Nepal.  She has a Masters degree in Sustainable Development from Forum for the Future.

James Crabtree is managing editor of Prospect magazine and an associate editor of openDemocracy. He has spent the last decade working in politics and journalism on both sides of the Atlantic. In Britain, he was a policy advisor in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and has served in senior roles at the Institute for Public Policy Research and other UK think tanks. In the United States, Crabtree attended Harvard’s Kennedy School as a Fulbright Scholar, was a senior policy analyst at NDN, a think tank in Washington DC, and also worked for Barack Obama’s campaign during the New Hampshire Presidential Primary. He has written for a range of newspapers and journals, including the Economist, The New Statesman, The Guardian and the Independent.

Jonathan Jones writes on art for the Guardian and is on the jury for the 2009 Turner prize

Richard Reeves is the Director of Demos. His latest book is John Stuart Mill – Victorian Firebrand, an intellectual biography of the British liberal philosopher and politician, which was shortlisted for the Channel Four Political Book of the Year, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Richard is a political columnist for Prospect magazine and a regular contributor to The Guardian, Observer and New Statesman as well as a range of national radio and television programmes. In 2005, he was a presenter of the four-part BBC2 series, Making Slough Happy.

In 2006, Richard was selected by The Guardian as a ‘Thinker to Watch’ and was featured in the paper’s regular ‘Ideas Interview’. He is also a former Columnist of the Year and Young Financial Journalist of the Year. Richard is the author of The 80 Minute MBA (2009) and Happy Mondays – putting the pleasure back into work (2001) nominated as a Sunday Times business book of the week and described by Theodore Zeldin as a ‘wonderful book - optimistic, wise and thoughtful.’ Other publications include CoCo Companies - Work, Happiness and Employee Ownership (2007), Papering over the Cracks, Rules, Regulation and Real Trust (2006, with Edward Smith), ‘Good work and professional work’ in Production Values (2006, with John Knell), and The Politics of Happiness (2003).

Richard is a former Director of Futures at The Work Foundation, Society Editor of The Observer, principal policy adviser to the Minister for Welfare Reform, Economics Correspondent and Washington Correspondent of The Guardian, research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, and a postgraduate researcher at the University of London.

Andrea has been Director of Visual Arts at the British Council since l994. She sits on the board of several leading UK arts institutions, as well as being the UK representative for the UNESCO Cultural Commission. In 1998 she was awarded an OBE for services to British art, and in 2008 was included among the 20 individuals in Tatler‘s Power List.

Ruth Tanner is Campaigns and Policy Director at War on Want. War on Want fights poverty in developing countries in partnership and solidarity with people affected by globalisation and campaigns against the root causes of global poverty, inequality and injustice.

Studied economic and employment issues at National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) before moving into business journalism via International Management magazine and emerging markets analysis at Business Monitor International and Economist Intelligence Unit. Following a move into freelance financial journalism, lectured on development and tutored in sociology at Cambridge and was editor of Finance Week and before joining Economics Department of Open University, where initial work has been on assessing the financial crisis and helping design new finance courses.

Tim Stanley has been Senior Curator for the Middle Eastern collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London since 2002. He was previously Deputy Curator of the Khalili Collection in London. He first visited the Middle East in 1972 while at school and he subsequently studied Turkish and Persian at Manchester and Istanbul Universities and researched Ottoman customary law at Oxford. An interest in illuminated Ottoman documents led him to study calligraphy and other aspects of Islamic art.

Since joining the Museum, he has curated the touring exhibition Palace and Mosque (2004–6), and led the redevelopment of the principal gallery on the Islamic Middle East, now the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art (2006). He is also the lead curator for Asian ceramics in the new Ceramics Galleries (phase I, September 2009; phase II, summer 2010).

Tim’s publications have been principally on Islamic manuscripts, calligraphy and decorative arts, including Iranian lacquer, and Ottoman history and culture.

Laura Riley is Press and Public Policy Manager of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), the UK’s leading not-for-profit sexual and reproductive healthcare provider. Prior to this she was Director of the charity Progress Educational Trust, which provides information and debate on issues in assisted reproduction, embryology and human genetics. Laura has a Masters in Medical law and Ethics from King’s College London and is a member of the International Federation of Professional Abortion and Contraception Associates (FIAPAC) and of the Progress Educational Trust Advisory Committee. Before working in health policy, she was a researcher for TV documentaries for the BBC’s Science department and Religion and Ethics department.

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.

I enjoy thinking and wrestling with various issues.  The conflicting values of economics and politics interest me and I try to find a way of mediating between them. The work of Anthony Giddens on the Third Way has given me some ideas.  I hope to pursue a career in politics.

I am writing an extended project on China’s capitalist revolution, provisionally entitled ‘The Emergence of a Super Power: What has shaped China’s ‘economic miracle’?

I like to think of myself as a fun-loving person who is able to maintain a good balance between work and play (although my mum and dad might say it leans slightly too much in one direction). Debating has always been something that I’ve been pretty keen on and doing Politics and Philosophy (as well as the slightly less animated English Language) has allowed me to participate in it more and more, both in and outside lessons.

I hope to progress to University where I intend to study politics for which I will undoubtedly require good debating skills in order to wangle myself out of the trouble politicians inevitably seem to find themselves in.  I like to think I have a humorous style of debating, liked by some judges and hated by others, but I’ll leave the audience to be the judge of that.

Christine Thompson joined the Corporate Affairs Department of SABMiller plc, one of the world’s largest breweries, as Policy Issues Manager in January 2005.  She is responsible for managing the company’s relationships with international institutions including the World Health Organisation, NGOs, the international development community, academic institutions and international business organisations.
Christine has developed an expertise in communicating the importance of the private sector’s contribution to development – particularly with regard to Africa, public-private sector partnerships, enterprise development and HIV/Aids.  During her time with SABMiller she has travelled throughout Africa, the EU, India and the US where she has represented the company on senior public platforms linked to corporate social responsibility and business’s role in poverty alleviation.
 
Christine has a Masters Degree in International Relations from Rhodes University, South Africa.  Her experience includes a secondment to the Independent Electoral Commission in Johannesburg during South Africa’s historic 1994 elections, three years as Press and Information Advisor to the Head of the European Commission’s Delegation in Pretoria, and nine years as a public affairs consultant based in Johannesburg and London advising clients requiring specialist knowledge and advice on African issues.

Born in Zimbabwe, Christine has been based in London since 2000.  She became a British citizen in 2006.  Her personal interests include tennis and photography.

Moving from Yorkshire to Birmingham in 2008, Anna is currently doing her A-Levels at Kings Norton Girls’ School - studying History, Psychology, Music and English Language & Literature.

Anna has a keen interest in music, and plays the piano, the trombone and the saxophone. She is a member of the Midlands Youth Jazz Orchestra, and studies saxophone on the Jazz Course at Birmingham Junior Conservatoire. On completion of her A-Levels, Anna hopes to go on to study Law and subsequently train as a barrister.

Anna joined the schools’ debating society at the start of year 12, taking part in various workshops and Oxbridge competitions along the way.  She then joined the “Debating Matters” team in 2009 for the Regional Final stage of the competition.  Kings Norton finished as Runners Up in last year’s Central Regional Final, and Anna hopes for greater success in this year’s competition.

Isobel has been a student at Kings Norton Girls’ School since 2002, and finished her A levels in English Literature, Drama, Critical Thinking and Philosophy and Ethics this year.

Aside from Debating, Isobel has a keen interest in all things theatrical, and has appeared recently in productions of “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Crucible”. Her other main interest is horse riding and up until last year she was regularly competing in an array of show-jumping classes. She enjoys schooling horses and has also recently tried her hand at cross-country jumping. In her spare time, Isobel likes to listen to local bands, and can be seen on many-a Friday night dancing away at local Ska gigs.

First taking an interest in debating in lower sixth, Isobel got involved in Oxbridge debating. However, after taking part in Debating Matters, she has not looked back, and much prefers the “informed argument” approach this competition promotes.

She spoke in two debates in the Central Regional Final, arguing firstly that the use of performance-enhancing drugs should not be allowed in sport, and secondly, that the EU is undemocratic and out of touch with the people of Europe.  Isobel will continue giving to the Kings Norton Cause by coaching young debaters during her gap year, after which she hopes to study Law or Drama.

Humphrey Hawksley joined the BBC in 1983 and took up his first BBC foreign posting in 1986 to cover the Tamil civil war in Sri Lanka. He didn’t stay long. He was expelled after six months for revealing atrocities against civilians. From there, he specialized in the rapid and often painful growth of Asia: India as it fought religious wars and threw off the shackles of its closed economic system; The Philippines as it was rocked by rebellions; Hong Kong as it prepared to move from British colonialism to Chinese rule; and Beijing where he opened the BBC’s first ever television bureau.

It was in China, with Financial Times correspondent Simon Holberton, that Hawksley wrote Dragon Strike, the first in the internationally acclaimed ‘Future History’ series, that explored how a hostile China might plan to weaken the United States in the Asia-Pacific. Over the next five years, Hawksley published Dragon Fire that told of a conflict between India and an alliance of China and Pakistan, and he finished the trilogy with The Third World War.

In 1997, Hawksley moved back to London from where he has reported economic and political trends throughout the world.

His latest book Democracy Kills: What’s So Good About Having The Vote? is an unsettling examination of how Western-style democracy – when implemented carelessly in the developing world – can lead to conflict and poverty. And it asks what is the best way for people to go from dictatorship to democracy without bloodshed.

Gerry has passionately worked in the multi-cultural environment in the London Borough of Newham for ten years teaching humanities, sociology and business studies at secondary and post-sixteen levels before gradually moving into teaching within Higher Education within both the political sciences and education (The Open University, University of Northampton, London Metropolitan University and London University’s Institute of Education). As Senior Lecturer in Secondary Social Science and Humanities Education he is involved in contributing to the development and teaching of courses related to these disciplines. His research interests include Student Voice, the identities of teacher educators and global citizenship in schools. Gerry still teaches part-time in a comprehensive school in Hertfordshire and his latest book is Successful Teaching 14-19: Theory, Practice and Reflection (Sage). 

Alexandra graduated with a degree in Zoology from Durham University in 1999. Having spent three years in pharmaceutical marketing in London and Barcelona, she completed her PGCE at Oxford University in 2004. After two years teaching science in London she moved to Bristol where she jointly heads the science faculty at Castle School, a large successful comprehensive school in Thornbury, South Gloucestershire and teaches Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Applied Science at GCSE and Biology at A level.

Craig was the winner of Best Individual award at the Debating Matters National Final 2006, the experience there inspiring him to return to the competition the next year as a judge and chairperson. Since then he’s been involved in a number of debates across Scotland and met many interesting judges, teachers and debaters. He recently graduated with a BSc in Physics from the University of St Andrews. In his spare time he plays water polo, listens to music and reads a wide range of fiction and non-fiction.

Lorraine Gamman is Professor of Design Studies, School of Graphic and Industrial Design at Central Saint Martins (CSM) College of Art and Design, which is part of the University of the Arts London.  She wrote her PhD on shoplifting at Middlesex University in 1999, taught product, graphic and industrial design at CSM for ten years before setting up the practice-led Design Against Crime Research Centre (DACRC - see www.designagainstcrime.com) which she has directed since 1999. Her work with Adam Thorpe and DACRC has won several awards for design innovation and together they have co-curated over 15 design exhibitions and catalysed a number of DAC product ranges including Stop Thief chairs, Karrysafe bags and Bikeoff anti-theft bike stands.  She is a member of the Home Office’s Design Technology Alliance that advises Britain’s Home Secretary and is also Vice Chair of the Designing Out Crime Association.

Lorraine Gamman’s crime-focussed publications include the design resource www.inthebag.org.uk, Gone Shopping, the Story of Shirley Pitts, Queen of Thieves (1996 film rights sold to Channel 4 in 2000, see www.goneshopping.org.uk) and numerous journal articles on socially responsive design and most recently on the “dark side of creativity” (Cambridge University Press, 2010).  She also writes on visual culture and has published widely on this subject.

Tom Ziessen manages the Wellcome Trust’s People Awards and Broadcast Development Awards, grant schemes which provide funding to support projects that aim to inform and inspire the public about biomedical science and its social contexts. The People Awards provide funding for a wide range of activities and are proud to be supporting this year’s Battle for Reproductive Choice strand of the Battle of Ideas.

Before joining the Trust he managed projects aiming to involve the public in science-related policy making at the Science Museum, including the UK arm of Meeting of Minds: European Citizens’ Deliberation on Brain Science. He has a PhD in Biochemistry from University College London.

From 2002-2004, served as President of the Royal Society of Ulster Architects (RIBA Northern Ireland) and in 2005 as Ulster representative to the RIAI.

Important works include the Bunscoil Phobal Feirste and Bunscoil an Sleibhe Dhuibh both in Belfast. Works by his office have been awarded various prizes from the RIBA, RIAI and AAI.

-Member of the Architecture and Built Environment Ministerial Advisory group
-Corporate Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute
-Founder of the Belfast Metro/20 and Belfast City of Villages initiatives

Kieron Brady is a former professional footballer who played for Sunderland AFC, Doncaster Rovers FC and the Republic of Ireland at international level.

Although born in Coatbridge, just outside Glasgow in Scotland, Kieron played for the Republic of Ireland as a result of his family background and through having a very strong Irish identity. Through an awareness of the racism that affected the Irish community and the historic anti-Catholic hostility and sustained sectarian attitudes in Scotland, he has always vehemently opposed intolerance in all its guises.

He worked for over four years with the Show Racism the Red Card organisation and in that period he helped devise and deliver hundreds of anti-racist and Equality workshops across the North East of England. These engagements met with universal approval from both teachers and children. As a result of such positive feedback he was invited by the Holocaust Education Trust to visit Auschwitz in Poland to visit the concentration and extermination camp where many Jews were murdered and died.

He has also spoken to audiences on these issues at football clubs, city chambers, town halls and theatres and he engaged with the media on numerous occasions on behalf of the Show Racism the Red Card organisation and has delivered teacher training on these issues.

During this time, his efforts as an anti-racist educationalist led him to being recognised in a ceremony at 10 Downing Street, home of the British Prime Minister in May 2008. He has also completed and passed courses in Equality and Diversity, Prejudice and Discrimination, and Rights and Responsibilities at Sunderland University. In more recent times he has given interviews to media outlets from the internet, newspapers and radio in Britain and in Europe on the issues of racism and Equality.

Raanan Gillon is a hybrid of GP and philosopher. He is Emeritus Professor of Medical Ethics at Imperial College London, where he still does some teaching, mainly tutoring on the medical school’s medical ethics and law course and also on the Imperial College one week intensive course in medical ethics which he has directed since he started it in 1983 and which is still going strong each September. He is Chairman of the Institute of Medical Ethics and a member of the British Medical Association’s Medical Ethics Committee and also (at least at the time of writing) of its International Committee. He was editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics for 20 years until 2001, and he retired from part-time NHS general practice, which he always combined with his academic work in medical ethics, at the end of 2002.

He has published extensively on medical ethics and his elderly book Philosophical Medical Ethics is in its 13th print while a second edition continues ‘its very prolonged gestation’. He was senior editor of and contributor to a massive and prize winning textbook, Principles of Health Care Ethics. In 1999 he was a co-recipient of the American Hastings Center Henry Knowles Beecher award for contributions to ethics and the life sciences .

He is an enthusiastic proponent of ‘the four principles approach’ to medical ethics- indeed for ethics as a whole- but acknowledges that there is much disagreement about the proper content of one of those principles, the principle of justice, and how it should influence the distribution of scarce resources in the National Health Service. Although he will reject ageism as an acceptable criterion for such distribution, he will also argue that the role of age in such distribution is more complex than the term ‘ageist’ implies.

Joshua Rozenberg is Britain’s best-known commentator on the law. He was the BBC’s legal correspondent for 15 years before moving in 2000 to The Daily Telegraph, where he edited the paper’s legal coverage until the end of 2008. He is a columnist for Standpoint magazine — where he writes a blog — and the Law Society’s Gazette.

He was the first presenter of the long-running BBC series Law in Action and recently presented a Radio 4 documentary on the UK’s new Supreme Court.

After taking a law degree at Oxford, Joshua Rozenberg trained as a solicitor, qualifying in 1976. He holds an honorary doctorate in law from the University of Hertfordshire and is an Honorary Bencher of Gray’s Inn.

Wendy Kaminer, a lawyer and social critic, writes about law, liberty, feminism, religion, and popular culture. Her latest book is Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity and the ACLU, (Beacon Press.) A former Guggenheim fellow and recipient of the Smith College Medal, she is the author of seven previous books, including Free for All: Defending Liberty in America Today; Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety; True Love Waits: Essays and Criticism; It’s All the Rage: Crime and Culture; I’m Dysfunctional, You’re Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement & Other Self-Help Fashions; and A Fearful Freedom: Women’s Flight from Equality.

Her articles and reviews, dating back to the 1980s, have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, The American Prospect, Dissent, The Nation, The Wilson Quarterly, Free Inquiry, Slate.com, thefreeforall.net and spiked. Her commentaries have aired on National Public Radio.

Before embarking on her writing career, Ms. Kaminer briefly practiced law, as a criminal defense attorney for the New York Legal Aid Society and a staff attorney in the New York City Mayor’s Office. Law has remained one of her primary subjects, and her writings on such apparently disparate topics as feminism, criminal justice, free speech, religion, spirituality, and popular culture are shaped by common concerns for liberty, individualism, ethics, and rationality. A former board member of the American Civil Liberties Union, Kaminer is an ardent civil libertarian and currently serves on the advisory boards of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the Secular Coalition for America. She does not twitter.

(Photo: Kathy Chapman)

PETER K SMITH is Professor of Psychology and Head of the Unit for School and Family Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, U.K.  He received his B.Sc at the University of Oxford and his PhD from the University of Sheffield.  He is co-author of Understanding Children’s Development (Blackwell, 1988, 1991, 1998, 2002), co-editor of School Bullying: Insights and Perspectives (Routledge, 1994), Tackling Bullying in Your School: A Practical Handbook for Teachers (Routledge, 1994), The Nature of School Bullying (Routledge, 1999), The Family System Test (Routledge, 2001), Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development (Blackwell, 2002), editor of Violence in Schools: The Response in Europe (Routledge, 2002), and co-editor of Bullying in Schools: How Successful can Interventions be? (Cambridge UP, 2004). 

He directed the Sheffield Anti-Bullying project (1991-94), advised on the government pack Don’t Suffer in Silence (1994, 2nd edition 2000), and coordinated European Commission funded projects ‘The Nature and Prevention of Bullying’ (1997-2001) (www.gold.ac.uk/tmr) and ‘Violence in Schools’ (1999-2002) (www.gold.ac.uk/connect).  He chaired the Research and Advisory Group of the Anti-Bullying Alliance (2006-08), and was (2007-2009) a partner in a DAPHNE project ‘An investigation into forms of peer-peer bullying at school in pre-adolescent and adolescent groups: new instruments and preventing strategies’.  He is currently Chair of COST Action IS0801 on Cyberbullying: coping with negative and enhancing positive uses of new technologies, in relationships in educational settings (www.gold.ac.uk/is0801/), and is carrying out research on the effectiveness of anti-bullying strategies in schools, for the DCSF.

Jan Palmowski obtained his DPhil in Modern History from Oxford University, and moved to King’s College London in 1999. In 2008 he became Head of the School of Arts and Humanities at King’s College London, one of the most distinguished faculties of its kind in the UK.

Jan Palmowski has taught and published extensively on German and history and politics. In particular, his work has focused on the nature of German identity, citizenship, and popular culture. In his latest work he offers a new approach to understanding the GDR: why it lasted so long, and why it collapsed so suddenly. Jan Palmowski shows that over decades GDR citizens learned to mask their growing alienation from the state through superficial acts of allegiance. Citizens learned to live by the rules of the regime, but they never accepted the socialist identity which the GDR leaders had crafted. In this way they maintained popular customs that remained remarkably close to those of their West German cousins; and this explains why, after forty years of separation, East Germans desired unification.

Prof. Palmowski has appeared as an expert on German and European affairs on CNN, the BBC World Service, and German public television.

Justin Fox is the economics and business columnist for Time magazine. He also writes the Curious Capitalist blog on Time.com. Before joining Time in 2007, Fox spent more than a decade at Fortune magazine, where he covered a wide variety of topics related to economics, finance, and international business. In 2000 and 2001, he was the magazine’s Europe editor, based in London.

Prior to joining Fortune, Fox worked at several newspapers, including American Banker and The Birmingham (Alabama) News. He has a degree in international affairs from Princeton University, studied political science at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, and speaks Dutch and German. Fox is married and has a son. He lives in Manhattan.

His first book, The Myth of the Rational Market, is a history of the rise and fall of the efficient market hypothesis—the influential academic theory that financial markets are nearly perfectly rational and correct.

Jim Watson is Director of the Sussex Energy Group at Sussex University in the UK and Deputy Leader of the Tyndall Centre Climate Change and Energy Programme. Jim trained as an engineer at Imperial College London and has a PhD in science and technology policy from Sussex University. Over the past 15 years, he has managed and conducted research on a wide range of energy and climate policy issues. He has particular expertise in energy innovation policy, decentralized energy systems, carbon capture and storage, nuclear power and energy security. He frequently works with UK government departments, and was a lead expert with the UK Foresight programme on its recent project on energy systems and the built environment, published as Powering Our Lives in November 2008.

Jim has extensive international experience, including over ten years working on energy scenarios and low carbon innovation in China – and more recent work with colleagues on low carbon technology transfer to India. The most recent output from this research is a Tyndall Centre report: China’s Energy Transition (co-authored by Tao Wang) and launched in Beijing in April 2009. Between 2006 and 2008, Jim was a steering group member of the UK-Japan project on low carbon societies. In summer 2008, he spent three months as a Visiting Scholar at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Jim is a Council Member of the British Institute for Energy Economics and a Trustee of the Koru Foundation. He was a Specialist Adviser with the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee from 2006-2009.

Andrew Mueller is a journalist and author based in London. He writes more or less regularly for The Guardian, The Financial Times, Monocle, Esquire, Uncut, The Times and New Humanist, among others. He is the author of Rock & Hard Places and I Wouldn’t Start From Here and is presently working on another book. He also plays guitar and sings, after a fashion, with incipient alternative country phenomenon The Blazing Zoos.

My most recent films are: The Joy of Motoring with Tristram Hunt, Losing It: Griff Rhys Jones on Anger, two one hour films for BBC2; J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life, an exclusive for ITV; Powerhouses, a ninety minute special for Channel 4 about the relationship between architecture and power; Ten Days that Made the Queen, another big ninety minute film for Channel 4, and Betjeman and Me, a film for BBC 2 with Griff Rhys Jones.

My best known films are probably My Father, which is pretty self-explanatory: a last interview with Lord Runcie, the former Archbishop of Canterbury; Miss Pym’s Day Out a drama documentary with Patricia Routledge which won the Royal Television Society Award for Best Arts Programme and was nominated for a BAFTA; and Heaven, which I also presented.

Television work also includes drama documentaries on Darwin’s Daughter, The Great Fire of London, and The British Weekend; other films have featured the writers and presenters Robert Hughes, Andrew Motion, Simon Schama, David Starkey, Alain de Botton and Griff Rhys-Jones.

The aim is to make intelligent, high quality and moving television about big ideas – art, literature, history, religion, music, and love.

I prefer not to make, mainly because I’d be rubbish, any of the following: reality programmes, make-over shows, ‘sneery’ tv, ‘car crash tv’, or anything that features property, gardening, or holiday homes.

I realise this limits employment opportunities but I really feel television should be about something. Otherwise what’s the point?

My latest novel is East Fortune which Bloomsbury are publishing in April 2009. It’s set in Scotland in 2005 and is the story of three brothers returning to their family home in East Fortune. It’s about secrets and rivalries, birth and death, hope and desire.

Former Environment Correspondent of the Guardian, Fellow Wolfson College Cambridge, author of paper, Voodoo Economics and the Doomed Nuclear Renaissance, and nine books.

Jacquie Burgess has two main research interests.  First, she specialises in designing and implementing participatory environmental decision-making processes that are both analytically robust and able to support deliberation between specialists, stakeholders and citizens. She and Andy Stirling (SPRU) developed Deliberative Mapping, a participatory multi-criteria risk assessment process which has been used in radioactive waste management for DEFRA and CoRWM. 

Jacquie is Co-Investigator in a Leverhulme Trust funded 4 year project led by Nick Pigeon (Psychology, Cardiff) and Dick Eisner (Psychology, Sheffield) on perceptions of risk in understanding energy futures and climate change.  She is also a CO-I in an 8 university, multidisciplinary consortium led by Peter Pearson (Imperial College) and Geoff |Hammond (Bath University), funded by EPSRC and E.ON, exploring Transition Pathways to a Low Carbon Electricity System by 2050.  Second, Jacquie researches sustainable consumption, partly through action research with the charity Global Action Plan.  GAP works with households, communities, public and private-sector organisations, and schools to facilitate behaviour change. 

She and a post-doc worked on a two year, DEFRA-funded project to evaluate the effectiveness of GAP’s Ecoteam approach which provided empirical evidence to show how durable reductions in energy demand can be achieved with some segments of the population, at least.  Currently, Jacquie is deputy chair of the ESRC’s Strategic Research Board with responsibility for cross-council research on environment, energy and climate change; she sits on the Advisory Group for NESTA’s Big Green Challenge which is offering a prize of £1M to the most innovative and most effective community-based initiative to reduce carbon emissions; and is a member of DEFRA’s National Ecosystem Assessment Expert Group, with responsibility for articulating why contact with nature and living landscapes is important for human well-being.

Born and raised in Somerset, I attended comprehensive school and Sixth-Form College before getting a place at St. John’s College, Oxford to read PPE.

I have been President of the Oxford University European Affairs Society, and the St John’s philosophy society. I worked as a mentor for disadvantaged students in a school in Banbury last year and I am currently the Comment Editor of the Cherwell newspaper in Oxford.

I will be sitting my Finals exams in June, including modules in Ethics, sociological theory and social policy.

Gillian Evans is author of Educational Failure and Working Class White Children in Britain. The book caused a controversy when it was published in 2006 because it brought the ongoing significance of social class to the foreground of debate at a time when the politics of class had become something of a taboo subject in Britain. Continuing to influence debate about the contemporary position of the white working classes in 21st Century Britain, Gillian is a regular contributor to television and radio debate. A familiar face at public sector events, Gillian gives keynote talks exploring the specific reasons for a lack of white working class attainment in education as well drawing out the more general links to contemporary cultural politics in Britain.

Gillian is a social anthropologist at the University of Manchester in the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) where she is Research Council UK Research Fellow. Her specialism is in the anthropology of child development and the anthropology of education and learning. She continues to expand on her interests in the post-industrial landscape of social class in Britain and is currently undertaking a major research project on the regeneration associated with the lead up to London Olympics 2012 in the East End of London.

Emmy award-winning Series Producer & Director CARLO MASSARELLA has devised and worked on a wide range of innovative and successful science, technology and history series for British, American and Canadian television channels including the BBC, The Discovery Channel, National Geographic, PBS, Channel 4 and Five.

These include THE DAY THE WORLD TOOK OFF, the critically acclaimed six-part series for Channel 4 tracing the technological and geographical roots of Industrialisation back 10,000 years to mark the Millennium, THE SECRETS OF LIFE (C4) with Prof. John Sulston exploring the biology of human development, VOYAGE IN SPACE & TIME (C4) with Dr Monica Grady charting the origins, evolution and future of the Cosmos and several editions of EQUINOX.

He Produced and Directed three films in the multi-award winning, critically acclaimed PBS/Channel 4 series, ‘DNA’ marking the 50th Anniversary of the Double Helix in 2003 winning an ABSW Award and EMMY for ‘DNA : The Human Race’ - a definitive account of the Human Genome Project with contributions from all the leading scientists involved and former President Bill Clinton.

He devised and Series Produced four season’s of the hit engineering show MONSTER MOVES for Five & Discovery Channel exploring the engineering challenges of relocating large structures, vehicles and machines. Most recently he devised and Series Produced two series of the landmark CGI series BIG, BIGGER, BIGGEST for Five & National Geographic charting the engineering innovations that enabled superstructures to evolve in size and scale.

Dan Rees has been with ETI since 1999 and has spearheaded its growth from a small group of visionaries to its position today as an internationally recognised authority on ethical trade, with a membership of over 50 leading brands and retailers, trade unions collectively representing nearly 160 million workers around the world, and leading campaigning and development organisations.

Dan has led many of ETI’s collective projects designed to develop good corporate practice and improve conditions for workers, including helping set up the first ever multi-stakeholder initiative aimed at improving workers’ conditions in South Africa. He has brokered negotiations between ETI member retailers and brands, suppliers and trade unions to resolve major abuses of workers’ rights.

Dan regularly advises the UK Government, the ILO and other UN bodies and leading companies on the implementation of corporate codes of labour practice.
Dan set up and chaired the Temporary Labour Working Group, the cross-industry alliance established to help stamp out exploitation of temporary labour providers or ‘gangmasters’ in the UK agricultural sector.

Carl Mortished is World Business Editor of The Times. He writes about industry, international trade, energy and commodities and contributes a weekly column, World Business Briefing which focuses on international business and political issues with a special focus on energy politics, the European Union and trade.

Carl Mortished studied law and spent several years working in corporate finance department of a leading investment bank. After switching to journalism, he joined The Times in 1992 as a City Reporter and then edited the Tempus investment column.

Carl Mortished has written for a wide range of specialist journals and publications including the Globe and Mail, Canada’s leading newspaper.

Susan Neiman is Director of the Einstein Forum. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Neiman studied philosophy at Harvard and the Freie Universität Berlin, and taught philosophy at Yale and Tel Aviv University. She is the author of Slow Fire: Jewish Notes from Berlin, The Unity of Reason: Rereading Kant, Evil in Modern Thought and Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-up Idealists in 2008.

Anne has worked at a number of the major UK children’s TV companies. Starting at Thames TV she moved to BBC Education where she produced the multi-award winning programmes Nice Girls Don’t Swear and Shakespeare Shorts. As Executive Producer she looked after an exceptionally diverse and mind stretching range of programmes which included Teletubbies and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman!

After a short period at Disney International, she moved to Granada Kids as Head of Drama and then became Controller in 2004 leading a thriving production department with a broad slate of programming, spanning pre-school, animation, entertainment and drama. The drama portfolio includes over 100 episodes of the multi award winning My Parents Are Aliens which frequently voted favourite kids’ show in the UK; Girls in Love one of Granada International’s best selling teen series, and the phenomenally successful single drama, The Illustrated Mum starring Michelle Collins, which won two BAFTAs as well as an International Emmy.

In pre-school Anne was Executive Producer on Pocoyo a show that has received both critical and commercial success including a BAFTA an EMIL award and Pulchinella award for best pre-school and European programme, amongst others. Anne founded Kindle Entertainment together with Melanie Stokes, in 2007. Kindle’s first live-action comedy, My Spy Family for Cartoon Network, launched on Boomerang UK in September 2007; a second series followed in 2008. Big & Small, a pre-school show celebrating difference, in which Lenny Henry voices both Big and Small, launched on Cbeebies in October 2008. Kindle are currently in production on Jinx, a new series for CBBC, and Anywhere But Here, for BBC Learning/BBC3. Kindle’s first feature film Journey through Midnight goes into production later this year, and the company has a very exciting development slate for a number of broadcasters including, the BBC, Sky and UKFC.

Reporter Washington Post, 1969-1973; freelance writer,1973-1976; economics correspondent and columnist for the National Journal magazine, 1976-1984; NJ columns reprinted in Washington Post beginning in 1977; columnist for Newsweek, 1983-present (biweekly Newsweek columns reprinted in Post; columns for Post in the off weeks). Married to Judith Herr, with three children.

Ilya Movchan was born in Russia, and studied at the State Music School in Petrozavodsk, and the Moscow State Conservatory. He is currently undertaking a postgraduate diploma at the Royal College of Music. Ilya has participated in many international masterclasses, in Holland, Germany, Norway, and his native Russia.

Ilya has won many prizes, including Second and Special Prize at the National Violin Competition for young performers in Archangelsk, Russia, prizes at the International Festival Bach: Music of the Universe, and at the International Festival Music, Youth, Hope, First Prize and Special Prize at the National Violin Competition for young performers in Petrozavodsk, Russia, and First Prize and Special Prize at the International Violin Competition of Gavrilin for young performers in Volgoda, also in Russia. His other awards include First and Special Prize at the International Violin Competition for young performers in Bulgaria, and First Prize at the International Chamber Music competition of Judina in St Petersburg. Carl Flesh International Violin Competition in Hungary 2008 and
First Prize on the Bromsgrove Festival 2009.

Alice Taylor commissions cross-platform educational content for 14-19 year olds, aiming to get useful, life-helpful information to teens via their most favoured platforms and formats.

She specializes in gaming and playful experiences, and Channel 4 Education’s 2009 slate includes Routes, a cross-platform game tackling DNA and genetic testing, Smokescreen, a cross-platform game on the subject of privacy, online security and surveillance, and 1066 The Game, a web game depicting the events of the battles of 1066. Bow Street Runner, C4 Education’s first game commission, won a Children’s BAFTA in 2008.

Alice was a judge for the 2006 & 2007 Independent Games Festival, the D&AD awards 2008, and IndieCade 2009. Alice writes the gamecentric blog Wonderland (www.wonderlandblog.com) and occasionally contributes to sites and magazines such as The Guardian, New Statesman, and Kotaku.

Alice joined Channel 4 from BBC Worldwide, where she was Vice President, Digital Media for the USA’s west coast operations.

Dan Pinchbeck researches, teaches and builds games, specifically first-person games. He holds a Doctorate in first-person gaming, story and gameplay, and is particularly interested in experimental gameplay devices, content and player behaviour. He leads the development team thechineseroom who have released four mods over the last two years. The most famous of these is the cult Half Life 2 mod Dear Esther. This has been downloaded over 30,000 times, was exhibited at Ars Electronica 2008 and selected as a finalist for the 2009 IndieCade Independent Games Festival. It has been described by PCZone as a “wildly innovative piece of storytelling”.

As a researcher, Pinchbeck has published internationally and in January 2010 will take up a place on the Executive Board of DiGRA, the pre-eminent international games research body. Recent publications include chapters in Perron’s Horror Video Games (MacFarland 2009) and the forthcoming Machinima Reader (MIT Press 2010).

As an artist, he regularly collaborates with the sound artist Jessica Curry. Their most recent work, The Second Death of Caspar Helendale, will be performed as part of the Royal Opera House’s Firsts09 season in November 2009.

Pinchbeck also works in game preservation, as part of the International Game Developers Association game preservation SIG, and a member of the KEEP consortium, an EU-funded project creating a new emulation architecture to ensure the effective archiving of games into the future.

He is an avid gamer and passionately believes that games represent the most vital and important medium to emerge in the late 20th Century. Currently getting heavy rotation on his playlist are Mass Effect, Dark Athena, Mirror’s Edge and Silent Hill: Origins.

Martin led the development of Shell’s World Energy Model, which underpinned much of the analysis behind the recent Shell Energy Scenarios to 2050. Martin has worked in Shell’s scenarios team for the last five years, including working on Shell’s behalf with MIT’s climate science team. His background is mathematics, and before working in Shell’s scenarios team, he worked in mathematical and economic modelling both elsewhere in Shell, and prior to that in the railways and telecoms industries.

Professor David Delpy is the Chief Executive of EPSRC. He took up the appointment on 1 September 2007.

Professor Delpy has joined EPSRC from University College London, where he has been Vice-Provost for Research since 1999. He was Head of the Medical Physics and Bioengineering Department at UCL from 1992 to 1999.
He became Hamamatsu Professor of Medical Photonics in 1991, a Senior Lecturer at UCL in 1986, and a Principal Physicist in 1982. In 1976 he was appointed as a Senior Physicist at University College Hospital with a major responsibility for the physiological monitoring equipment in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Professor Delpy’s research interests have continued to lie in the field of physiological monitoring, and especially in the development of techniques for the non-invasive monitoring of tissue oxygenation and metabolism.

Ed Vaizey MP was elected as the Member of Parliament for Wantage and Didcot in May 2005.

Born in 1968, Ed attended Merton College, Oxford. When he left university, he spent two years working for the Conservative Party’s Research Department, before training and practising as a barrister.

In 1996, he became the director of a highly successful public relations company based in London. In 2004, he left to become the chief speech writer for the then Leader of the Opposition, Michael Howard.

Ed also built up a career as a freelance political commentator, writing regularly for the Guardian, and appearing on programmes such as Despatch Box and The Wright Stuff, as well as broadcasting frequently on Five Live.

Ed is the Conservatives’ Shadow Culture and Creative Industries Minister. In April 2009 he launched the current Creative Industries Taskforce to consider the current issues in the sector, with a particular focus on digital, ahead of the next election.

Ed married Alex in September 2005, they live in Sparsholt and London with their son Joseph, and daughter Martha.

Dr Michael Bull from the University of Sussex was described by the New York Times as the world’s leading expert on the use of mobile sound technologies. Most recently he has published Sound Moves: iPod Culture and Urban Experience. He is a founder editor of the journal Senses and Society and is a core member of the European Think Tank ‘Future Trends Forum’  based in Madrid. He is also on the advisory board of the London based consultancy Sound Strategies and was until recently an advisor to the Californian based company Portalplayer. Most recently he has delivered keynote addresses in Minneapolis, Berlin, Copenhagen and Barcelona during the summer of 2009.

The formation of the Pirate Party in the UK followed quite quickly after the European Elections saw Swedish Pirate Politician Amelia Andersdotter elected as an MEP.

As party leader, Andrew Robinson is working to replicate the success of the Pirate movement in other countries, with a similar platform based around 3 core policies: the reform of copyright and patent law to legalise non-commercial file sharing and reduce the currently ever extending duration of copyright, as well as creating a patent system that doesn’t stifle innovation or price life saving drugs out of the reach of patients; ending the excessive surveillance, profiling, tracking and monitoring of innocent people by Government and big businesses; and ensuring that everyone has real freedom of speech to participate in our shared culture.

Stuart Corbridge has worked on the political economy of India for over thirty years.  He has particular interests in citizenship and the (contested) deepening of democracy, particularly at the village, Block and District levels.  He is the co-author (with Glyn Williams, Manoj Srivastava and Rene Veron) of Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India (CUP 2005) and (with John Harriss) of Reinventing India: Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and Popular Democracy (Polity and OUP, 2000 and 2003).  Corbridge has mainly worked in eastern India, in Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal.

Keith is an Architect Director at BDP where he has a leading role in education sector projects, with a specific focus on schools.
He has been responsible for some of the most innovative school designs including the RIBA/Sorrell Foundation prize winning Marlowe Academy, the Times Educational Supplement Outstanding Secondary School of 2009 – The Leigh Technology Academy, and The Bridge Academy, Hackney. This latest completion inventively reuses the miniscule site of a derelict primary school to provide a new academy school in the heart of the community it serves, where many thought the challenge impossible.

Keith is passionate about raising the aspirations of clients, end-users and other stakeholders, to demand more of places designed for learning. He strongly believes that architecture and urbanism provide the framework that supports social interaction. As it becomes possible to live, learn, travel and communicate more and more in physical isolation from others, the role of architecture will be to create places to bring people together.

Chris Bannister has worked at Hopkins Architects for 17 years and was made a Director of the practice in 2002. He is responsible for the coordination of environmental issues within the office and is a registered BREEAM Assessor.

Hopkins Architects are one of the country’s leading architectural practices and are committed to the production of high quality, environmentally responsive and energy efficient buildings.  They have a proven track record in designing buildings that achieve BREEAM ‘Excellent’ that dates back to the Inland Revenue Centre in 1992. They have also recently designed a number of buildings in the United States that have achieved the highest rating ‘Platinum’ under the equivalent American system, LEED®. One of these, the Northern Arizona University’s Applied Research and Development Building scored 60 out of 62 available points on the LEED® rating, making it one of the highest scoring Platinum projects ever awarded.

Hopkins Architects commitment to environmental design was recognized recently by Building Magazine which awarded them the “Sustainable Architect of the Year award 2008”.

Dr. Rainer Land was born in 1952. He studied philosophy and economic science at Humboldt University in East Berlin. In 1986 he started working on concepts for reforms in the former GDR at Humboldt University. Later he managed the archive for reform discussions inside the SED [Socialist Unity Party of Germany]. After reunification he also researched the transformation process of the East German agriculture and industry and its social implications.

Since 1992 he has worked as editor of the magazine Berliner Debatte Initial, and from 1996 he acted as its chief editor. In 2002 he founded the Thuenen-Institut for Regional Development. In 2005 he supported an initiative to build a new network for research on East Germany and to refocus questions that need to be considered. Dr Land has published various books: both popular and academic.

Born Sydney, NZ citizen, PhD from Sussex U. Research in Pitcairn Is., Italy, India, South Korea, Taiwan, & World Bank. Employed at Sussex U, Princeton, MIT, Brown, World Bank, US Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment. Recent writing on global growth, inequality, & poverty; economic ideologies; financial crises and reforms to global finance.

Ben Quash is the first Professor of Christianity and the Arts at King’s College London. Until 2007 he was Dean and Fellow of Peterhouse in the University of Cambridge.  He is a Canon Theologian of Coventry Cathedral, acts as consultant to the BBC’s ‘Religion and Ethics’ department, and is developing new postgraduate courses at King’s on Faith and the Art in collaboration with the National Gallery, London.

His own research has focused on theological aesthetics and the relation between theology and drama in Western traditions of thought, with a particular focus on the work of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. His recent publications include Theology and the Drama of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), Fields of Faith: Theology and Religions for the 21st Century, edited with David F. Ford and Janet Martin Soskice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), and Heresies and How to Avoid Them: Why It Matters What Christians Believe, edited with Michael Ward (London: SPCK, 2007).

Axel Brüggemann was born in 1971 in Bremen / Germany. He studied History, Art History and Music at University Freiburg. Afterwards he worked for several years as a free lance journalist and published in numerous international quality papers before he became a member of the editorial staff at Welt am Sonntag in Berlin. There he worked as music editor and later he also became text editor. Since 2004 he has worked as a freelance writer and later as chief editor of the music magazine crescendo and of www.myclassicworld.com. Today he runs www.operatext.com consulting and producing high quality media products. For his production of ‘Der Kleine Hörsaal’ [The Small Auditorium] he was awarded with the prestigious ECHO award.

Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock studied at Imperial College where she obtained her degree in Physics and her PhD in Mechanical Engineering. Since then she has spent her career to date making novel, bespoke instrumentation in both the industrial and academic environments. Managing multidisciplinary teams, these instruments have ranged from hand held land mine detectors to an optical subsystems for the James Webb Space Telescope, (The JWST is a joint ESA/NASA venture due to replace the Hubble Space Telescope around 2013).

Maggie works at Astrium Ltd in Portsmouth where she leads the optical instrumentation group. Here she manages a range of project making satellite sub-systems designed to monitor wind speeds and other variables in the Earths atmosphere. These system are made under the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Living Planet programme and are designed to improve our current knowledge of climate change.

Maggie also has a science in society fellowship from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) which enabling her to engage the public with the science work that she loves. The fellowship is held at the University College London (UCL). Through this work Maggie makes regular appearances on television and radio, as a space and education expert and presenting science to a general audience.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/4985076/Lets-inspire-the-next-generation-of-scientists.html

To further share her love of science, Maggie has also set up her own company in Guildford, Science Innovation Ltd (www.science–innovation.com). Through this Maggie conducts “Tours of the Universe” and other public engagement activities, these show school children and adults the wonders of space. To date she has given these talks to 50,000 people across the globe (30,000 of these have been school children in the UK) and has just produced a film through Science Innovation called “Space in the UK”, which features Maggie on a “Big Brother” spaceship on a journey to Mars. This is being distributed for free through schools and science festivals across the country.

Maja Kecman is a Senior Associate at the Helen Hamlyn Centre where for the last three years has been working in their Patient Safety Group, a multi-disciplinary design research team that works closely with the NHS, industry and other research institutions.

Maja holds a Masters degree in Industrial Design Engineering from the Royal College of Art and an undergraduate degree in Manufacturing Engineering from Cambridge University. Her designs have won numerous awards including first prize in the Helen Hamlyn Design for our Future Selves Awards and she was also shortlisted for British Female Inventor of the Year in 2006.

At the Helen Hamlyn Centre, Maja has worked closely with DePuy, Johnson & Johnson, on the complete redesign of their orthopaedic instrument kit and is currently leading a project for the Department of Health on Design for Patient Dignity. In addition to working at the Helen Hamlyn Centre, Maja provides consulting services to several companies, most recently Pharmasol. She is currently developing her personal project, a self-administered smear test kit, to take it to proof-of-principle trials at the Manchester Infirmary in early 2010.

Working in the digital industry since 1997, Theresa has been instrumental in turning cScape into an award-winning, full service digital agency. She has managed the evolution of cScape from launch to market leader, overseeing the expansion of its services and building up an impressive client list which includes Barclays, Sony, Microsoft, Aviva and ArcelorMittal. She has also developed close relationships with agencies and technology partners worldwide. Theresa has written for a variety of publications and presented at many events around the globe.

Craig is a founding Director of White Design, ModCell and BaleHaus with 25 years’ experience in architectural practice in the UK and Europe and has been involved in low energy and sustainable design since the 1980s. Craig founded White Design in 1998 with fellow Director Linda Farrow. White Design’s founding principle is to help create beautiful, affordable places that enable our clients to live, work and learn more sustainably.

Craig is a Design Advice consultant with the Carbon Trust and works with dBERR on the Low Carbon Buildings Programme. Craig is also senior lecturer at the School of Architecture and Planning, at UWE, where he teaches Integrated Environmental Design and Construction. Craig is a board member of the Timber Research and Development Association, Re-thinking, Spike Island, Chair of Wood for Gold and is a Technology Strategy Board steering group member.

Craig has also had roles as visiting lecturer on low-energy and environmental design for the Civil Service College and at the LSE on their MSc programme in City Design & Social Science. Research work includes a MIST project assessing construction uses for waste produced by the stone industry on the island of Working with dBERR (formerly the DTi) the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and Carbon Connections (HEFCE funded) we are two years into a £1m research programme to develop a system of prefabricated straw and hemp cladding panels and building types to deliver zero carbon footprint developments.

CLIVE BLOOM is Emeritus Professor of English and American Studies at Middlesex University, best-selling author and publisher. When Professor Bloom isn’t writing and researching he divides his time between the University of Notre Dame and New York University.

He is also a consultant editor with Middlesex University Press and Palgrave Macmillan.

Books include Terror Within: The Dream of a British Republic, Violent London: 2000 Years of Riots, Rebels and Revolts, Cult Fiction: Popular Reading and Pulp Theory; and Gothic Horror (Second Edition), all of which have enjoyed international recognition. He is also an occasional feature writer for the London Evening Standard, regularly appears on television and radio and is quoted in the Columbia Book of World Quotations.

His latest book, Best Sellers - Second Edition (Palgrave) was published in 2008 and is available now.

He is currently working on a book on Edwardian terrorism and was a consultant for the recent Jack the Ripper exhibition at the Museum in Docklands. His political writing was recently included at an exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery and he was a media commentator on the G20 protests.

Saleha Ali is a researcher and producer for the alternative online news channel WORLDbytes.

An innovative thinker, as well as a practical and strong leader, Pauline has worked for academic institutions, mainstream and alternative business, the voluntary sector, co-operative and community development organizations, North and South,  in advisory, executive and non-executive positions.

Pauline is multi-lingual and able to work in situations of geographic, technical and ethnic diversity.

Her ability to design and form new institutions, foment and nurture cross-cultural economic exchange and to develop new forms of business collaboration has been demonstrated in more than two decades of work in the alternative trading sector in traditional and non-traditional commodities and across three continents.

Pauline was founder of two of the leading fair trade companies: Cafedirect and The Divine Chocolate Company.

Pauline is a widely published and an articulate communicator, especially able in helping define ways to overcome systemic barriers, inertia and prejudice and define and implement practical mechanisms to improve the political and economic position of marginalised or disadvantaged producers.

Gareth Stedman Jones has been Director of the Centre for History and Economics since 1991; Professor of Political Science, History Faculty, Cambridge University since 1997; and a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge University since 1974. He is co-Faculty Director of the Ariane de Rothschild Fellows Program and a Member of the Conseil Scientifique of the CNRS.

He was born in 1942, received a BA from Lincoln College, Oxford University, in 1964, and a DPhil from Nuffield College, Oxford University in 1970. Professor Stedman Jones was a Research Fellow at Nuffield College Oxford from 1967-70 and an Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung Fellow, Department of Philosophy, Goethe University, Frankfurt from 1973-74. He is joint editor of the History Workshop Journal. He has been a Visiting Professor at Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Göttingen, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.

His research interests include Victorian London and more recently Modern European Political Thought and its relationship to the History of Europe from the time of the French Revolution. He is currently working on an intellectual biography of Marx.

Professor Stedman Jones has published numerous books and articles. His best known works include Outcast London (1971), Languages of Class (1983), The Communist Manifesto – Penguin introduction (2003), An End to Poverty? (2005). He has just completed editing a book, together with Professor Ira Katznelson of Columbia University, on Religion and the Political Imagination, a project supported by the Edmond and Benjamin de Rothschild Foundations. 

Peter Braude is Head of the Department of Women’s Health at King’s College London. He directs the Centre for Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis at Guy’s and St Thomas Hospital, which is the most active and successful of the HFEA licensed programmes in the UK. Whilst in Cambridge he lead one of the first groups to be funded by the UK Medical Research Council to carry out research using human embryos fertilised in vitro, towards an understanding of the cellular and molecular mechanisms operating at these early stages of development. His group at King’s is funded by the MRC, established the first human embryonic stem cell lines in the UK, and the first internationally to contain the common ∆F508 deletion for cystic fibrosis now lodged with the UK Stem Cell Bank. He has published widely on the science and ethics of these emerging techniques. He was a former member of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, and chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. He currently sits on the committee for the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs.

David Sweeney has been Director (Research, Innovation and Skills) since 2008.  In this role he is responsible for developing policy on Research (including the Research Assessment Exercise and Research Excellence Framework), Business & Community and Employer Engagement. He is also responsible for the London and East regional teams and for the Strategic Development Fund. A statistician, David worked at two BBSRC research institutes, developing mathematical models of plant growth then moving into senior management in the IT area, becoming Director of Information Services at Royal Holloway, University of London and serving in a national role as Chair of the Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association.  He became Vice-Principal (Communications, Enterprise and Research) in 2004, responsible for research strategy, the 2008 RAE submission and for developing Royal Holloway’s research-led commercial and consultancy activities, knowledge transfer and development programme.  He remains interested in IT and especially applications of IT in learning and research. 

Adam Wishart is a TV producer and director who has worked on Tomorrow’s World and Horizon. The Price of Life, broadcast in June 2009, was described by The Guardian as ‘the best single film of the year so far’. He won the Grierson Award for the Best Science Documentary in 2006 for Monkeys, Rats and Me about animal rights and experimentation. He has previously won a Royal Television Society Award.

He writes occasionally for the broadsheets. He published One in Three: a son’s journey into the history and science of cancer (Profile Books 2006), and Leaving Reality Behind: the battle for the soul of the internet (4th Estate, 2002).

Anthony Horowitz is probably one of the most prolific and successful writers this country has – and is unique for working across so many medias.

Born in North London, Anthony Horowitz was 23 when his first novel, Enter Frederick K Bower, was published in 1979. But it was in 2000, that the Horowitz phenomenon really exploded, with his creation of Alex Rider - the reluctant teenage superspy. Alex Rider’s seven missions to date have sold over ten million copies worldwide. Anthony’s work has been translated into 28 languages. In 2006, Alex’s first mission, Stormbreaker hit movie screens, scripted by Anthony himself. In addition to Alex Rider, Anthony writes two other bestselling series – the supernatural Power of Five novels and the comic detective adventures featuring The Diamond Brothers.

Anthony has an unrivalled reputation for getting boys into books. In 2007, Anthony was singled out by then Education Secretary Alan Johnson as the not-so-secret weapon to get boys reading. In 2008, Anthony was made the National Year of Reading’s first Champion Author due to his regular outreach work to Youth Offenders and Looked After Children throughout the UK.  In November, Alex Rider’s eighth mission, Crocodile Tears, will be published. 2010 marks the 10th anniversary of the Alex Rider phenomenon and ten years of Anthony Horowitz topping bestseller lists.

Anthony enjoys parallel success as an award-winning screenwriter. He is the writer/creator behind Midsomer Murders and the BAFTA award-winning Foyle’s War, for which he has written 19 out of the 22 episodes; returning for its seventh series in 2010.  His current drama is a five part “State of the Nation” piece called Collision, an ITV “event drama” that is set to be one of the most talked about series of 2009.

Anthony is also a regular guest critic on BBC’s Newsnight Review and writes journalism on a wide range of issues for a variety of national newspapers.

Sally’s teaching and research focus has spread from technology and its influence on environment, health, education and disability. She believes in using every means possible to inspire and open doors to education and in developing and sustaining partnerships. The OBU and the broadcasting partnership between the OU and the BBC is a prime example and she commissioned for the OU projects such as Coast, Bang, Story of Maths as well as Saving Britain’s Past, Love of Money and James May’s Big Ideas

The aim of the partnership is to deliver broadcast and learning journeys that
• widen participation in education, and
• help people make the transition from being passive viewers and listeners to becoming active learners.

Every TV and Radio programme is supported by learning materials on BBC/OU Open2.net - Home and a selection also have free printed learning materials.

Professor of Geophysics at UCL, 2001
Royal Society University Research Fellow, 1992-2001
Member, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Editorial Board, from 2003-2009.
Invited speaker, American Geophysical Union, 2001, 2003, 2008, 2009
Member, Royal Society Environmental Advisory Network, 2000-3

Darren was elected to the London Assembly in May 2000 and is currently Chair of the Assembly as well as Deputy Chair of the Environment Committee. He was also the first Green member on Lewisham Council and is now leader of the Council’s six-strong Green Group.

Darren has led Assembly investigations into a range of topics including: flood risk in London, water shortages, Heathrow expansion and the loss of London’s street trees. He has also promoted measures to address low-pay in the Capital through a London Living wage and policies to protect vital local services.

Darren was born in 1966 and lives in Lewisham. He is a graduate of Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Mayer Hillman joined Policy Studies Institute in 1970 as Head of its Environment and Quality of Life Research Programme. In 1992, he was appointed Senior Fellow Emeritus of the Institute. His research has been concerned with transport, urban planning, energy conservation, health promotion and environment policies, notably climate change and its implications.

For close on 40 years, he has called for environmentally-conscious attitudes to inform public policy and for the moral imperative of taking account of the needs of future as well as of present generations. He was one of the first proponents of carbon rationing as the only realistic way for the world’s population to prevent serious damage from climate change.

On his 70th birthday, Policy Studies Institute presented Dr. Hillman with a festschrift –Ahead of Time – in which fifteen prominent UK thinkers and academics contributed to “a celebration of Mayer’s unique combination of qualities: great intellectual productivity and originality, tenacity in argument and … his willingness to speak truth to power”. He has been the subject of personal profiles, eg ‘An Inconvenient Man’ (Matthew Taylor), Fabian Review, in 2007.

He is the author or co-author of over 50 books including Reviving the City (with Tim Elkin and Duncan McLaren), 1991; Wealth Beyond Measure: An atlas of new economics (with Paul Ekins and Robert Hutchison), 1992; ‘In Favour of the Compact City’ in The Compact City (eds. M. Jenks, E. Burton and K. Williams), 1996; and ‘Why climate change must top the agenda’ and ‘Carbon budget watchers’ in Town and Country Planning, October 1998. In 2004, together with Tina Fawcett, he completed How We Can Save the Planet, commissioned by Penguin Books and more recently in the US The Suicidal Planet: our last chance to prevent climate catastrophe.

Dave Brown is the political cartoonist for The Independent.

He studied Fine Art at Leeds University, graduating in 1980, and later taught art.

Before becoming a cartoonist he also worked as a motorcycle courier and was the drummer in a punk band.

In 1989 he won the Sunday Times Political Cartoon Competition and subsequently worked for a number of British newspapers and magazines before taking up a regular post on The Independent in 1996.

In 2006 his cartoon Venus Envy was voted Political Cartoon of the Year, an award he also won in 2003. In 2004 he was named Political Cartoonist of the Year by both the Political Cartoon Society and the Cartoon Art Trust.

In 2009 his book Rogues’ Gallery: More Misused Masterpieces was published, the second collection of his political cartoons pastiching famous paintings.

Charlie did a BA in Architecture at Oxford Brookes University achieving a first class honours degree before going on to do an MA at the Royal College of Art in London.

He worked for a number of architecture and design communication practices and in 2005 he left London to practice on his own focusing on sustainable housing. He has since done projects in London and North Oxfordshire. He is currently working on several sustainable housing projects in the Cotswolds where he now lives.

Charlie started making television programmes while studying for his MA with Modern British Architects for Channel 5 and since then he has written and presented over 50 programmes including Not All Bricks and Mortar and Not All Houses are Square for Channel 4. More recently he has made two series of Dreamspaces and written and presented Guerrilla Homes both for BBC3. Ice Dreams for BBC4 followed an ice sculpting competition in the Arctic Circle and Restored to Glory on BBC2. Vertical City looked at Skyscapers around the world and Artland was a 10,000 mile road trip across the US looking at Art and Architecture for American Television. In the past year and a half he has worked on programmes for Channel 5 including Build a new life in the Country and Behind closed doors.

He has hosted Designer of the Year for BBC4 twice and the ‘Stirling Prize’ award ceremony and regularly lectures on sustainability and architecture to a wide range of institutions and corporate clients.