student, The University of Oxford
William is currently studying theology and religion at Regent’s Park College, Oxford, where he also currently serves as the JCR President. He is a keen Westminster-watcher, and has written political comment pieces on Brexit and its ramifications for British democracy for Oxford student newspaper Cherwell and for The Spectator’s ‘Coffee House’ online blog.
He is particularly interested in the place of liberty in society and the necessity of its preservation. Consequently, much of his degree has become focused on the Enlightenment period in both Britain and on the continent; the religious history of liberty leading up to the modern age and the Reformation’s part in this story; and the intersections and interactions of religion with liberalism, rationalism and science in the West.
solicitor, David Isaacs Solicitors
David Isaacs is a solicitor who specialises in commercial law, employment law, IP, real property and civil litigation. He is interested in politics, history and literature. David is a member of the European Atlantic Group and Mid-Atlantic Club.
student, St. Hilda’s College, Oxford
Tom Gould is a Debating Matters alumnus. Having won the competition with Magdalen College School in its 2015-16 run, he spent a year as a debating coach at the school. He is in his second year of studying for a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics at St. Hilda’s College of Oxford University and is a member of the Oxford Union, at which he has spoken on two occasions. His particular academic interests include political liberalism, the philosophy of feminism and the works of Wittgenstein. He is also an amateur playwright and will be directing his first play, Section Two, at the Burton Taylor Studio in the first term of next year. Otherwise, Tom is a lifelong Chelsea fan and can often be found despairing in the Matthew Harding stand at Stamford Bridge.
graduate student, St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford
Grace is a taught graduate student reading International Health and Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford as a Weidenfeld and Hoffmann Scholar. She is a medical doctor from Malawi interested in designing and implementing solutions to challenges in global health and development. She is the health representative for UKANI Malawi where she works to improve access to education for women and girls in Malawi by addressing sanitation and hygiene challenges for young girls in Malawi and facilitating back to school programs for young mothers.
Grace loves historical fiction and travelling.
founder, Bao Advisory
Fenella has worked with China for over 20 years. First visiting when there were no cars, no mobile phones, and little to buy, the transformation is extraordinary. International and curious in outlook, she has lived and worked in New York, Beijing, Hangzhou and Hong Kong. For WPP, for an agency of the Economist Group, a festival of China, and the China-Britain Business Council, setting up her own China consultancy in 2017. There is still very little understanding of China here in the UK. She encourages curiosity and wants a better exchange of ideas, understanding and trade between China and the UK.
Ed Butler is an award-winning BBC presenter, producer, and reporter of some 25 years’ experience, who’s covered business, arts, and news from around the world for both TV and radio. He has interviewed heads of state and business leaders from five continents, and has reported on conflicts from Bosnia to Iraq and the Caucasus. Most recently, he has hosted the BBC’s World Service flagship business show, “Business Daily,” and has produced and presented documentaries covering the Financial Crisis and the Arab Spring. Ed teaches and trains journalists, as well as reporting from the world’s hotspots.
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.
