head, Oxford Text Archive, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
Martin Wynne runs the Oxford Text Archive, a repository of digital data which, for more than forty years, has made available digital data for research in languages and literature, and has worked to preserve and share important historical texts. He is a former director of the European research infrastructure CLARIN, which supports the use of digital language data and tools in research across the humanities and social sciences. Martin has a background in research and teaching in languages and linguistics, has worked at a number of universities and research institutions in the UK and in Europe, speaks a number of European languages, and continues to travel widely, despite now being happily settled in Oxford. Martin looks forward to a future of improved cooperation and collaboration with European colleagues after Brexit.
philosopher, author
Dr Stephen Law is a humanist and author of the Oxford University Press Very Short Introduction to Humanism. Stephen defends a liberal attitude to moral and religious education in his book The War For Children’s Minds. He is also the author of several popular philosophy books including The Philosophy Gym: 25 short adventures in philosophy, and the young person’s The Complete Philosophy Files.
Stephen has no A-levels, and worked as a postman in Cambridge for four years before discovering philosophy and entering university as a mature student age 24. He was junior research fellow at The Queen’s College Oxford, reader and head of department at Heythrop College University of London, and is currently an honorary research fellow at Roehampton.
retired nurse; writer
Bríd is a retired nurse, midwife, health visitor and health service manager and worked predominantly in the NHS in London. She’s also worked as a fundraiser for a development aid charity. Since retiring, she has engaged critically with the shifting terms of debate around female genital mutilation/cutting via her blog at Shifting Sands. She is also using her retirement to indulge her interest in travel and walking long-distance paths. The next one she plans to tackle is in Portugal.
deputy director, associate professor, and senior policy fellow, Oxford Internet Institute
Victoria Nash is the Oxford Internet Institute’s deputy director and senior policy fellow. Her research focuses on the opportunities and risks experienced by children using digital technologies; she also leads OII engagement on Internet regulation and digital policy issues.
MSc student, WHT scholar, University of Oxford
Ramon is a Weidenfeld-Hoffmann scholar at the University of Oxford. He has participated as a panellist in several forums including the SDG tent at Davos 2019 and the Battle of Ideas session “Democracy under Siege: Renewed Liberalism or a Different Path for the Global South”.
He has previously worked for the Mexican Ministry of Finance monitoring public policies and developing analytic tools to evaluate the performance of federal agencies and subnational governments. Among other responsibilities, he has coordinated all federal agencies in Mexico to link the national budget to sustainable development goals. He has also coordinated the drafting process of the Budget Explanatory Memorandum that the Ministry of Finance presents annually to the Congress.
He is a co-author of a United Nation’s forthcoming publication as a contribution to the World Public Sector Report 2019 entitled “Institutional principles and strengthening of the budgeting process to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals”.
Michael lives in north Cumbria with his wife and six children. He works in education and has taught various subjects and ages since joining the profession in 2010. He was a contributor to the Blue Labour book of essays, which has sought to reclaim an authentic conservative legacy within the now liberal-dominated Labour Party, and was involved with research and writing for its close kin, Red Tory. He has written for various outlets and takes an interest in the ways in which a values clash is shaping education, politics, and the character of an increasingly fraught civic space in the UK.
writer and consultant
Martyn has written about design, technology and innovation for a number of publications including spiked, Blueprint, New Media Age, the Guardian‘s arts&entertainment blog and The Big Issue magazine. He has also organised and spoken at numerous events including at the Design Council and the Design Museum. He was a contributor to ‘The Future of Community: reports of a death greatly exaggerated’, published in 2008, as well as a co-author of ‘Big Potatoes: The London Manifesto for Innovation’
senior executive at Pagefield and DM alumnus
An alumnus of the competition, Tom is now a Senior Executive with Pagefield – a corporate communications consultancy specialising in public affairs, public relations and digital. Tom supports clients with public affairs and corporate communications in a wide range of sectors. He also performs the secretariat function for the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Freight and Logistics.
Before his time at Pagefield, Tom spent a year at The Academy of Ideas and the Ideas Matter charity, helping to organise Debating Matters, public forum events and researching and writing resources for educational initiatives.
Tom went to the University of Southampton and studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics. His dissertation was an investigation into the influence of Edward Bernays’ Public Relations theories over contemporary, social media-based, political activism.
Sarah studied History at the University of Bristol, graduating in 2018. She is now an MPhil student at Trinity College Dublin, where her research focuses on colonialism & the museum. She reached the National Final of Debating Matters in 2014/15, and has volunteered as an alumnus ever since. When not buried in books, she enjoys cooking, talking politics and when time and money permit, eating & drinking her way around Latin America.
Thea is a Queens School student, currently studying Religious Studies as an extra A level during her gap year after previously studying Physics, History and Politics. She hopes to study Liberal Arts at The University of Bristol. She has taken part in two Debating Matters competitions as well as Parliamentary debates and she has interned at the Academy of Ideas, helping to organise the Battle of Ideas.
