People

feature writer, The Times

Andrew Billen has been a journalist since 1980. He started his career on the Sheffield Star. He has been a feature writer and interviewer on The Observer, London Evening Standard and, for the last 15 years, The Times, where he also spent ten years as TV critic. He is married with two children and lives in Oxford.

programme leader, Medical Research Council, Harwell Institute

Andy has been a programme leader at the Medical Research Council’s Harwell Institute since 1996. His scientific research focuses on the topic of how genes (and genomes) regulate embryonic and fetal development and how errors in developmental processes can result in disease. 

From 2009 to 2018, Andy was a member of the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority, the UK regulator of IVF clinics and human embryo research. During this time, he chaired two expert panel assessments of the safety and efficacy of mitochondrial donation techniques (aka ‘three-person IVF’), paving the way to their legalization in the UK. He is a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and chaired its 2016 working group that examined ethical issues associated with genome editing applications in a variety of contexts. Andy has degrees from the universities of Cambridge and London and, when a postdoc in Australia, learned to play the didgeridoo (quite badly).

former head of department and chair of International Relations, Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies, University of Bath

Bill is chair of Risk and Security in international relations, as well as a former head of the department of politics, languages and international studies at the University of Bath.

In 2014 he was officially invested as a visiting professor to the China Executive Leadership Academy Pudong – one of China’s top-level Party schools – and his term there was renewed earlier this year.

He previously held posts in British Columbia, Canada and in Singapore, as well as at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom and in the War Studies Group of King’s College, London.

Bill was educated at Imperial College London, the London School of Economics and New College Oxford. He obtained his PhD through the Centre for Decision Analysis and Risk Management of Middlesex University.

His main research interest is to examine the causes and consequences of contemporary perceptions of risk, as well as how these are framed and communicated across a range of issues relating to security, science and society.

Bill is a regular speaker at the Battle of Ideas. Last November, following in the steps of former US Secretary for Homeland Security Michael Chertoff and UK Minister of State for Universities and Science David Willetts, he became the 8th person to give the Vincent Briscoe Security Science Lecture at Imperial College London.

broadcaster; journalist

Andrew Wilson has been a journalist and broadcaster for thirty years, focussing on international affairs and front-line news. As a foreign correspondent for Sky News he was based in Moscow, Jerusalem and then Washington. Latterly he spent ten years presenting a two-hour live news programme also on Sky News. He has covered most of the major conflicts and breaking news around the world, reporting and presenting programmes from Afghanistan, Chechnya, the Middle East, Africa, Haiti, the Amazon jungle and many other places. He has covered three US elections, two in Israel, two in Russia and any number in the UK. He is an experienced media skills trainer and works with the John Schofield Trust mentoring young journalists. He has just finished filming a documentary in the Far East on cyber security.

head of strategic relationships and policy engagement, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

Mark’s focus is on increasing the public profile of the OII at the University of Oxford and working with existing and potential partners on mutually beneficial projects.
Mark joined the OII from Birmingham City University where he was Head of Communications and Public Affairs.
Prior to this Mark worked in external relations roles at National Grid, the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Alex is director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media, leading work on digital political extremism, information environments, disinformation and machine-enabled decision-making.

He manages CASM’s visual analytics capability, and provides written and televised comment for the BBC, CNN, the Spectator, the Huffington Post and other outlets.

Before joining CASM, Alex worked at Accenture Digital in visual analytics.

prison reformer and property developer

Andy was a student of St Paul’s School, London, and a graduate of Russian Studies at The University of Essex, including a year, during the Cold War, at Moscow State University. Andy has, to date, spent his professional life in UK residential property – as agent, developer, investor and asset manager, responsible, at its peak, for a portfolio of over 3500 properties with a vacant possession value today of c.£750 million. Today his main preoccupation is prison reform and how to change the prison world so that reoffending rates can come down. His other great loves, apart from his family, are dog-walking, warm weather, most things new, reading, critical thinking and speaking, many sports including, in particular, real tennis, and yes, he has to confess, Manchester United.

John is currently an author, personal construct psychologist and education consultant engaging in research and school development.  Also, John is a performing musician, composer and recording artist and co-director of Music4Wellbeing CIC, a not-for-profit company that runs eight choirs in Kent for people with neurological and age-related conditions.  John was formerly director of the Centre for Enabling Learning and emeritus principal lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University.  Prior to that, John was principal of a residential and day school and family centre for students with complex and profound disabilities.  This was following a career in schools spanning 16 years and working with all areas of learning and inclusion of students with disabilities and/or experiencing disadvantages.

Ellie is professor of family and parenting research at the University of Kent. Her research and teaching draws on sociological concepts such as ‘risk consciousness’ and ‘medicalisation’ to analyse the evolution of family policy and health policy. Her work explores why everyday issues – for example how women feel after abortion or how mothers feed their babies – turn into major preoccupations for policy makers and become heated topics of wider public debate. She is the author of Abortion, Motherhood and Mental Health: Medicalizing Reproduction in the United States and Great Britain (Aldine Transaction) and co-author of Parenting Culture Studies (Palgrave). She is the director of the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies based in SSPSSR and regularly discusses her research in the media and other public forums.

Richard is an ex-secondary school teacher who now operates as a freelance writer, lecturer and academic. Recent publications include the Hodder study guide to The Wife of Bath’s Tale, and a fantasy novel, Melody’s Unicorn (signed copies available!). By training and inclination a medievalist, he has organised and participated in a wide range of talks and debates on subjects including extra-terrestrial intelligence, animal cognition, Mervyn Peake, T.S.Eliot and Lana Del Rey. He also runs creative writing sessions in schools.