Laura Blumenthal is a communications professional and a Conservative campaigner. She spent a decade as an elected councillor in Berkshire and stood in the 2024 General Election for Brentford and Isleworth in West London. Following the election, she went on to create the website TorySuccesses to give other candidates a resource for being able to highligh the party’s successes.
Laura is the host of the Berkshire Heroes podcast which shines a spotlight on those making a difference in the local community. Laura believes in freedom, responsibility and enabling everyone to fulfil their potential.
Jake is currently working as a project assistant for the Academy of Ideas, focusing on social media communications. He is a recent graduate from the University of Bath, completing a BSc in Politics and Economics. He is published with the think tank Bright Blue, and supported the think tank at the 2024 Conservative Party Conference.
professor of private law and commercial regulation; visiting fellow, All Souls, Oxford
Dr Elise Bant is Professor of Private Law and Commercial Regulation at the University of Western Australia. She is a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College Oxford for Michaelmas 2025, and excited that this means she has a chance to be involved in Debating Matters Oxford 2025! Her current work focusses on holding corporations to account for fraud and predatory conduct, (think the Post Office Horizon scandal, recently dramatized in ITV’s ‘Mr Bates vs The Post Office’). Her website gives a snapshot of her novel model of corporate responsibility, which has recently been adopted in Australia’s High Court (the equivalent of the UK Supreme Court). When not battling corporate miscreants, Elise likes ocean swimming, rambling, and spending time in and around beautiful Oxford.
director, Civitas Schools; commentator on food issues
Justine Brian is Director of the schools’ programme for the think tank Civitas and, as the former director of the sixth form Debating Matters competition, is a current DM Ambassador. Justine believes in education and grappling with big ideas – and practised what she preaches by completing a degree in Classical Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, as a mature student. She loves good food and hates food snobbery, and learned to cook at Westminster College. She is an occasional writer on food issues, and her greatest media claim to fame was being on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour on the issue of ‘frugal food’, which made her Mum extremely proud.
Carole previously worked for the NHS, specialising in sexual health, trauma, chronic pain, cancer and palliative care. In recent years her work has focused on the politicisation of psychology and the psychotherapy professions. In 2022 she co-authored an independent report with Dr Kirsty Miller, titled The Politicisation of Clinical Psychology Training Courses in the UK. Carole also contributed to the book Cynical Therapies: Perspectives on the Antitherapeutic nature of Critical Social Justice edited by Dr Val Thomas. Carole is a co-director of Critical Therapy Antidote. She is also a member of the Advisory Council forDon’t Divide Us, and co-founder of the UK campaign Save Mental Health. She writes for the Daily Sceptic and is currently collaborating with the Free Speech Union on a survey investigating the effects on mental health of being cancelled.
As a late ‘Baby Boomer’ Howard has witnessed the huge changes in society over the past 50 years. Academically average, he graduated in 1977 with an undistinguished degree in sociology from a polytechnic. Rather than pursue a career in social work like his peers, he became involved in the entertainment business working in the predominantly subsidised arts sector for 10 years as a marketer before becoming a supplier to it. He grew a two-man business into a design group working in marketing and design for theatre, museums/galleries, dance and music before becoming self-employed in 2005, self-teaching himself with the tools and skills required.
Flora Letanka is the CEO of The Economist Educational Foundation. Previously she served on The Executive Team at Teach First. She started her career as a teacher on the Teach First programme in London after graduating from Oxford. She lives in St. Albans with her husband and three children.
project assistant, Academy of Ideas; convener; Battle Book Club
Emma is currently working as a project assistant for the Academy of Ideas, helping to organise the Battle of Ideas festival and convening the Battle Book Club. She is a recent graduate from the University of Birmingham, completing her degree in politics. She has previously written for spiked and the University of Birmingham Redbrick paper. She also co-authored The Corona Generation: coming of age in a crisis with Jennie Bristow in 2020.
Dr Marie Kawthar Daouda teaches French language and literature at Oriel College, Oxford. Marie grew up in Morocco and studied in Paris. Marie’s research focuses on the reception of Roman antiquity in modern times, on the artistic representations of good and evil, and on 19th-21st century political crises in France.
