People

freelance journalist; creator, Fairyland! Substack; project assistant, Academy of Ideas

Ella Dorn is a freelance journalist and a project assistant at the Academy of Ideas. She has written about culture, film and politics for publications including the New Statesman, i-D, the Spectator, and the Guardian. She runs the Fairyland! Substack and sometimes contributes to Grambank, a database of syntactic structures. She graduated from SOAS in 2024 with a degree in Chinese and linguistics, and competed as part of the SOAS team in the 2024/2025 series of University Challenge.

Follow Ella on Twitter/X: @elladorn_

senior lecturer in Criminal Justice, Liverpool John Moores University; presiding justice, Merseyside Criminal Bench

Dr Elizabeth Peatfield is a senior lecturer in Criminal Justice at Liverpool John Moores University and a serving justice on the adult criminal bench in Merseyside.

Leaving home at 15 during the 1980s in Liverpool, she had no access to education and struggled with poverty and social exclusion. Working as a bouncer for over 20 years, she returned to education as a mature student and her working-class background has influenced her work, which focuses on the phenomenon of identity and shifting master status.

Her current status as a criminal court justice has also influenced her research in which she examines the effect of the lack of access to legal aid in the lower courts and the effects on duty solicitors regarding their perceptions of equity in justice.

She is a multiple award winner, with awards such as The Merseyside Women of the Year, The Kirsty Raynor award for Academic Excellence and Rising Star Award for teaching amongst others.

Labour member of the House of Lords; Fellow Magdalen College, Oxford; Visiting Fellow Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford

Lord Wood of Anfield is a Labour member of the House of Lords, a Fellow of Magdalen College, where he taught politics from 1995–2011, and a Visiting Fellow at the 2025 Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University (2019-2025)

From 2001–2007 he was a member of the Treasury’s Council of Economic Advisers, working on a range of public policy issues for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. From 2007-2010 he worked at 10 Downing Street as a Senior Special Adviser to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, leading on foreign policy (Europe, USA & Middle East); culture, media & sports policy; and Northern Irish affairs. He was a member of the Labour Shadow Cabinet & an adviser to Ed Miliband from 2010-2015.

He writes regularly on issues of contemporary public policy. His research and teaching focused on political economy in western Europe and issues of public policy – ranging from training and skills policy to constitutional reform.

Head of Learning and Skills, G4S Care and Rehabilitation Services

Alex Waldron is the Head of Learning and Skills at HMP Five Wells, a large training and rehabilitation prison.

Alex spent 10 years as the Head of English at several schools in London. She then moved to the USA to be Head of English and a teacher coach at private and public schools in the USA, returning to the UK in 2020 to serve as Assistant Headteacher at a secondary school in Cambridgeshire. She then moved into higher education as a senior manager of academic strategy at the Open University before transitioning to educational leadership in the prison sector.

Alex holds a master’s degree in English from Harvard University, a PGCE (secondary English) from the University of London, a bachelor’s degree in classics from the University of Bristol, and she is currently completing a master’s degree in International Relations with the Open University. 

web and computer technology consultant; founder, Simply Better IT; founder, Manchester Salon

Simon helps small businesses punch above their weight by deploying market leading technologies to truly take on the challenges of a global market on equal terms with larger businesses and institutions through his Managed IT Services company, Simply Better IT. Having begun his working life within the very structured practises of the civil service and thereafter enjoying the opportunities available within the international outsourcing world, he now relishes the challenges small businesses present as they try and blend market demands with technologies available and business processes.

Born and brought up in Yorkshire, he moved to Lancashire on a civilising mission some 30 plus years ago. After some success there, he’s moved out to the High Peak, Derbyshire where he enjoys business networking through golf with the dramatic backdrop of Kinder Scout. When he has the time he also tries to provide engaging debate through the Manchester Salon discussion forum.

Follow Simon on Twitter @SimonBelt

Classics student, Durham University.

Frank Hudson is second year Classics student at Durham University with an interest in Athenian democracy. He has recently applied to be part of a university research project examining Athenian curse tablets: what they might reveal about social history and how they might be incorporated into the UK secondary school curriculum. 

Frank is advocate of public as well as private freedom and believes that an open public realm of ideas is the cornerstone of any democratic society. He enjoys watching films as well as watching and playing football, having represented Collingwood College for two years running at Durham.

lecturer in US political history, University of Liverpool; author, Citizenship in Chicago: race, culture and the remaking of American identity

Cheryl Hudson is a lecturer in US political history at the University of Liverpool and a former director of the academic programme at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the histories of citizenship and political culture in the US and on the philosophy of history. She has published in academic and popular journals, is co-editor of Ronald Reagan and the 1980s (Palgrave MacMillan, 2008) and Why Academic Freedom Matters (Civitas, 2016). Her forthcoming book is titled Citizenship in Chicago: Race, Culture and the Remaking of American Identity.

Follow Cheryl on Twitter @HudsCheryl

Senior Research Fellow, Border Security and Immigration Center

Simon Hankinson is a Senior Research Fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation.

From 1999–2022, he was a Foreign Service Officer serving in India, Fiji, Ghana, Slovakia, Togo, Washington, D.C., Marseille, and Nairobi. Prior to entering the State Department, Hankinson worked as a lawyer in London, and then taught history, English, and drama at a private school in Miami.

Hankinson holds a master’s degree in modern history from St. Andrews, Scotland, a degree from the College of Law in London, and a master’s degree in international security affairs from the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing

Dr. Jessica Temple is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, teaching creative writing and composition classes. She holds an MA in English from Mississippi State University and a PhD in Creative Writing—Poetry from Georgia State University. She is the author of Daughters of Bone (Madville Publishing, 2021) and Seamless and Other Legends (Finishing Line Press, 2013).

She serves as managing editor of Blackwater Review and faculty advisor for the Raider Writers. She is a QEP Scholar, Faculty Fellow, Learning Commons Scholar, and graduate of the President’s Leadership Academy. She also coordinates Red Cross blood drives on campus, leads weekly beach cleanups, fosters animals, and volunteers with several environmental organizations.

Sarah Tucker is an editor, broadcaster, author, columnist, lecturer and academic lead with the British Guild of Travel Writers (BGTW).

As a broadcaster, Sarah has won several awards including the BGTW best radio programmes in 1996, 1998 and 1999, as well as the best TV report award in 1999. She has also produced award winning reports on tracing the gold rush from Skagway Alaska to Dawon City for the Discovery Channel in 1999, ViaRail trip across Canada for Classic FM, the inaugural Celtic Colours festival in 1996 and for an exclusive interview with Kiri Te Kanaway, Opera in the Outback for Classic FM in 1997.  In addition, she has won a number of Sony Broadcast Awards for a range of outlets across TV and radio.

Sarah is the author of nine best-selling fictional novels bringing awareness to emotional abuse in the playground, including the 2006 novel The Playground Mafia which was runner-up to Sebastian Faulk’s Birdsong in the Good Housekeeping Novel of the Year.

Sarah devised, produced and presented the highly acclaimed travel series on Sky TV, Who’s been sleeping in my bad and sourced exclusive interviews with Sir David Frost, Lord Yehudi Menuhin, Anita Roddick and Dai Llewellyn in a series that, in the pre-Hello and OK! magazine era, was ground breaking in that it opened up celebrity lifestyles to the wider public

In publishing, Sarah is the author of the authorised biography of Edward de Bono Love Laterally which was published in September 2024.  After a chance meeting with de Bono in Malta 12 years earlier, the imminent physician invited Sara to write his biography with the first-time full cooperatino of his family, friends and colleagues which included a range of famous voices including HRH Prince Phillip, Sir Tony Blair, Annie Lennox and Baroness Helena Kennedy who wrote the introduction.

In addition to her creative work, Sarah is a lecturer, Changemaker Ambassador, a school speaker, a workshop leader and a corporate speaker. In what little spare time she has left, she is an avid yoga and meditation instructor.