People

author, academic & senior lecturer

Nikos Sotirakopoulos is a Senior Lecturer of Social Sciences at York St John University. He is the author of the books ‘The Rise of Lifestyle Activism: from New Left to Occupy’ and of the upcoming ‘Identity Politics & Tribalism: the New Culture Wars’. He has been a member of the organizing team of the Battle of Ideas festival for 10 years, and he is an Academic Advisor to the Ayn Rand Centre UK.

law student, University of Oxford

Born and raised in Warsaw, Kaja is currently finishing her law degree at the University of Oxford, after which she will continue to study privacy and data protection law.

musician, writer, and arts producer

Jonny Best has worked in arts and culture for almost thirty years, in arts festivals, classical music, theatre, opera and silent film. He has produced debates, theatre productions, concerts, exhibitions and participatory arts projects. Now, he focuses on working with silent film as a musician and producer and is a resident pianist at BFI Southbank, and the director of Yorkshire Silent Film Festival. He is the former artistic director of the UK’s first LGBT arts festival, Queer Up North, with whom he commissioned the UK’s first nationwide anti-LGBT bullying project for secondary schools. Jonny writes on contemporary issues, including freedom of speech and LGBT politics. 

political advisor, commentator and columnist

Calvin Robinson is a political advisor and commentator. He has been published widely in the UK media, including in the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, the Spectator, and the Daily Express among others. He is a former assistant principal and currently consults for the Department for Education, supporting school leaders across the South East.

futurist and author

Tracey is a professional futurist, and runs Futuremade, the strategic foresight and futures consultancy, helping global companies understand their future consumer and the trends over time. A writer and regular keynote speaker, she has spoken at UN HQ in New York and closed at events such as Think With Google. Listed in Forbes as one of the top 50 female futurists in the world. She is the author of the recently published The Future of You. 

She tweets @traceyfutures

senior lecturer, Department of Nursing, Midwifery and Health, University of Northumbria

Jane is a registered nurse with a long clinical experience in Intensive Care. She works in undergraduate and post graduate nursing, medical education, and carries out research in a number of areas relating to the care of acute illness. She is currently exploring the experiences of carers of people with a learning disability and autism seeking medical review in primary care in the context of the CV-19 pandemic. She has three children, Alice (23), Tom (19) and Daisy (9). She enjoys reading, long walks and daydreaming.

author and educational consultant

Joe is an author and educational consultant whose books on poetry are used by some of the leading schools in the UK. Unusually, his twenty years of classroom experience has ranged from teaching in the highly selective UK private sector to tutoring in challenging, inner city schools for Teach First. He was director of learning evolution with Digitalbrain, senior educational specialist with RM, the UK’s largest educational business and principal consultant with The Education Development Trust.

He currently works for a range of major commercial and NGO clients as Lead Writer, and as an essayist writes for a wide range of magazines including: The Spectator, The Critic, Areo, Quillette, The Country Squire and Spiked magazines and wrote a fortnightly column for TES for four years. He has authored books on Milton, Donne and Shakespeare; and his most recent book, Teaching English for the Real World, was published by John Catt in May 2020.

You can follow him online @JoeNutt_Author

co-founder, Leeds Salon

Paul is a civil servant who has lived and worked in Leeds for over 35 years. He has a degree in social sciences, an MA in British history, and is co-founder of The Leeds Salon public discussion forum. He has been involved in Debating Matters since 2008, first as a judge and then helping to chair and run competition events in the north of England. Paul also runs school debating competitions in Leeds and beyond, including Leeds Salon’s flagship annual Years 10&11 competition. Since 2023, he has also co-run the annual sixth form competition for the Royal Armouries Museum (Leeds).

TV presenter, financial commentator, entrepreneur, author

Jasmine Birtles is a TV personality, ‘money guru’, presenter, speaker, freelance journalist, author of 38 books and founder of popular consumer money web site MoneyMagpie.com.
A regular commentator about all things money on TV and radio, she can be seen on BBC, ITV News, Channel 5 News, Sky News, This Morning, BBC’s Inside Out and heard on UK-wide national and regional radio including BBC Radio 4 You & Yours, Money Box, Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio Wales, LBC and TalkRADIO; amongst many others.
A personal finance, property, fintech and lifestyle contributor for various publications including The Mail on Sunday, The Sun and Closer; Jasmine also has a monthly column in Platinum magazine for women over 50.
Jasmine broadcasts, writes and speaks about all aspects of personal finance including investments, pensions, mortgages, credit cards, banking and apps, savings, debt, utilities, FinTech and cryptocurrencies.
She is Patron of the charities Fair for You and Community Money Advice; and is an Ambassador for National Empathy Week.

businesswoman and former civil servant

Claire Smith worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, now FCOD, for 27 years in London, China, Germany, and Pakistan. For the last 12 years, she has run her own business, been a non-executive director of an international engineering consultancy, chair of governors at a London primary school, visiting professor, lecturer and speaker at a number of universities, a member of a UK government appeals panel and chair of an educational trust. She speaks German, Mandarin and French, enjoys old-fashioned detective novels and travel.