Speakers at Forthcoming Discussions David Lewin is currently Lecturer in Philosophy of Education at Liverpool Hope University. After an initial degree in Theological Studies, David Lewin took an MA in the Study of Mysticism and Religious Experience at Kent University where he first developed his interest in Heidegger. He later did an MSc in Computer Science followed by working in various IT roles (Cisco Systems). Returning to Kent to pursue a PhD in Religious Studies entitled 'Technological Thinking and the Withdrawal of Essence', he looked particularly at Heidegger’s philosophy of technology but also drew upon the likes of Herbert Marcuse and Albert Borgmann. David's current reseach involves developing a theology of technology by a consideration of agency in technology. My recent work hopes to show that Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical hermeneutics provides an important approach to understanding personal and social agency in relation to technological development. Writer and lecturer James Heartfield is a founding Director of the development think-tank, audacity. He lives in north London, and is currently based at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster where he tudied for his Ph. D. in European Union, International Relations. James enjoys public debate and speaks widely in support of industrial development. James co-edited the collection of essays in Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-machine Age, (2001). He is the author of The 'Death of the Subject' Explained, (2002) Let's Build! - Why we need five million new homes in the next 10 years, (2006), The Creativity Gap, (Blueprint, 2005) and Green Capitalism - Manufacturing Scarcity in an age of abundance, (2008). His latest book is The Aborigines' Protection Society: Humanitarian Imperialism in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Canada, South Africa, and the Congo, 1837-1909, (2011). Mike Koefman is the outreach worker for Planet Hydrogen, a Manchester-based NGO which advocates the supplanting of all fossil fuels by hydrogen, produced solely by the electrolysis of water using renewable electricity. Mike undertakes education on climate change with the public, and between 2002 and 2008 ran an evening course at the Friends Meeting House in Manchester. He is also involved with citizen groups, secondary schools and university groups, and enjoys meeting people, discussing matters which are important with them, and listening to what they say. Lauren Collins represented the UK's Nuclear Institute Young Generation Network at the MENA nuclear conference held in Dubai 2011. She was instrumental in setting up the first MENA Nuclear Institute branch, which is now based in the UAE. Lauren has presented at the 4th International Symposium on Nuclear Energy held in Jordan in 2011 covering the increased importance of public engagement and communications in the nuclear industry post-Fukushima. She was also invited to represent young science and technology professionals from the UK as part of the Fulbright Academy of Science and Technology delegation at the 2011 World Science Forum in Budapest. James' formative years were in the 1960s and early 1970s, before the end of the Vietnam War. Inspired by the Space Race, he wanted to be an astronaut so decided to read physics at university. He went to Sussex, where I followed my degree with an MA at the Science Policy Research Unit.
After that he pursued journalism, before going on to coordinate postgraduate studies at what is now London’s University of the Arts. For more than 20 years since that time, he's consulted for major corporations and for government. John Siddique is the bestselling author of Full Blood, Recital – An Almanac, Poems From A Northern Soul, and The Prize. He is the co-author of the story/memoir Four Fathers. He has contributed poems, stories, essays and articles to many publications, including Granta, The Guardian, Poetry Review, and The Rialto.
John is well known for his captivating readings, and his infectious love of literature. This highly influential writer has worked with The British Council, PEN, The Arvon Foundation, The Poetry Society and London 2012. He is the former British Council Writer-in-Residence at California State University, Los Angeles. He has been awarded the title of Honorary Creative Writing Fellow by Leicester University in recognition of his contribution to literature. Ian Betts is a Teacher of English and Media Studies in a Cheshire comprehensive school. For several years, he worked in international schools in Mexico and then Portgual before returning to Manchester where he studied. Ian is an aspiring writer, currently redrafting his first novel, The Fakers, about gangsters and revenge killings in Mexico, having also worked as a freelance journalist in previous years by contributing to magazines such as The Face and City Life. He is studying towards an MA in Education and also coaches a local rugby team. Articles: Votes at 16, Haywire, Happy New Year? Speakers at Recent Discussions Richard taught subjects ranging from Classics to History, Mathematics to De Bono’s Thinking Skills in independent and maintained schools, finally becoming a deputy head in a secondary school in Kent. Richard has also taught in several universities, working in primary, secondary and post-compulsory teacher education, and as a law lecturer. Rania is the Director of the professional network Muslim Women in Education and is a researcher, commentator and consultant on teacher education and the Islamic philosophy of Education. In 2011 she was profiled as one of the eight ‘Women of the World’ by the German magazine TUSH.
Rania is currently the Vice-Chair of the Standing Committee for the Education and Training of Teachers (SCETT) and will be Chair in 2012. Muslim Women in Education, the group she founded, is for professional Muslim women working and teaching in education. Its aims are to: re-invigorate the Islamic intellectual tradition of rational discourse, defend the professional autonomy of Muslim women educators, and promote open discussion and debate on professional and educational issues. She was, until July 2011, Principal Lecturer and Director of Post-Compulsory Education, University of East London and was previously Head of Department, Health Related Studies at Southwark College from 1999 – 2004. She has uniquely been twice elected council member and non-executive director of the Institute for Learning (IfL). Dennis Hayes is Professor of Education at the University of Derby and a visiting Professor at Oxford Brookes University and was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2010. He is the founder and director of the campaign group Academics For Academic Freedom (AFAF). Since moving to Derby in 2009 he has helped organized the East Midlands Salon which meets monthly, alternating between Derby and Nottingham. Dennis is the author or editor of many books including: The McDonaldization of Higher Education (2002); The RoutledgeFalmer Guide to Key Debates in Education (2004); Teaching and Training in Post-Compulsory Education (4th Edition 2011); A Lecturer’s Guide to Further Education (2007) and The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education (2008), co-authored with Kathryn Ecclestone. He is currently working on a book on Academic Freedom. Charles Brickdale taught English and Religious Studies for thirty years in secondary schools in Leeds and Bradford. He is now a one-to-one intervention tutor in two schools helping students struggling with English or let down by what he sees as an increasingly dysfunctional state system. On Saturday mornings in term time he runs the supplementary school established by Civitas Schools in Keighley to promote traditional, subject-centred approaches to education. Charles wants to work with all those who seek to expand massively the scope of liberty in Britain so that people can take back responsibility for their own lives and communities. In the interests of consistency, therefore, he is involved in the life of his own community but, in the interests of sanity, leaves time for listening to music (very catholic taste), reading, writing and going abroad. He likes talking a lot. Reviews: Technology and the Philosophy of Religion, The Cambridge Quintet Kevin Warwick is Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, England, where he carries out research in artificial intelligence, control, robotics and biomedical engineering. He is a Chartered Engineer (CEng.), a Fellow of The Institution of Engineering & Technology (FIET), and is the youngest person ever to become a Fellow of the City & Guilds of London Institute (FCGI). In 2000 Kevin presented the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, entitled “The Rise of The Robots”.
Kevin instigated a series of pioneering experiments involving the neuro-surgical implantation of a device (Utah Array/BrainGate) into the median nerves of his left arm in order to link his nervous system directly to a computer, leading to the first extra-sensory (ultrasonic) input for a human and with the first purely electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans. The Institute of Physics selected Kevin as one of only 7 eminent scientists to illustrate the ethical impact their scientific work can have: the others being Galileo, Einstein, Curie, Nobel, Oppenheimer and Rotblat.
Kathleen's postdoctoral research is a study of special kinds of robots for the therapeutic assistance for children and adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). These robots are termed social and humanoid, robotic machines and persons with ASD are said to lack social capacities – yet Kathleen will follow their interactions in the clinical and lab spaces in the UK and US. Studies have suggested that the mere presence of a humanoid robot can enhance the social capacities of persons with ASD. This presents an interesting issue for anthropological theorizing of the social – what does it mean to be social? Who or what can or cannot be said to have it? Kathleen completed her doctoral studies in the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge and conducted fieldwork in robotics labs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her thesis, 'Annihilating Difference? Robots and Building Design at MIT' examined relationalities between humans and nonhumans through a study of robots and buildings on the MIT campus. Raymond Tallis is honorary visiting professor, department of English, University of Liverpool; former professor, geriatric medicine, University of Manchester. Over the last 25 years, Ray has published extensively outside of medicine. His prose has appeared in Granta, Encounter, PN Review, Philosophy Now, News from the Republic of Letters, Prospect, Times Literary Supplement and elsewhere. His novel Absence: a Metaphysical Comedy (Toby Press) came out in 1999, and was re-issued in paperback in 2006. He has published several volumes of verse, the most recent being Fathers and Sons (Iron Press, 1993). A comprehensive list of his non-medical writings can be found in the Bibliography (non-medical) section of this website, and his latest publication is The Hand: A Philosophical Inquiry into Human Being. Dr John Roberts is the Nuclear Fellow at the Dalton Nuclear Institute at The University of Manchester and a visiting academic at Imperial College London. As well as lecturing on nuclear energy to university students he is also engaging with industry, schools and the general public to educate them on nuclear energy and radiation. He has established the Nuclear Education website (http://www.nucleareducation.co.uk/) and is the Director of Science, Technology and Education of Nuclear Liaison TV. He has visited many countries worldwide working as an IAEA Technical Expert on Nuclear Knowledge Management, Education and Outreach. Sue is a Non-Executive Board Member at the government's Health and Safety Laboratory, and was previously Group Director of Technology for British Nuclear Fuels Limited, responsible for the Group's entire technology portfolio and playing a leading role in government and regulatory issues. With a first class honours degree and a PhD from Imperial College, Sue joined BNFL in 1979 where she made her career in materials science and metallurgy. She has an extensive knowledge of the nuclear fuel cycle, especially fuel manufacture, reprocessing and recycling technologies. In 2004, Sue was invited to become a member of the Council of Science and Technology, advising the Prime Minister and First Ministers of Scotland and Wales on strategic, longer-term issues. Sue holds fellowships with a number of learned societies and has maintained strong links with academia and academic research. She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and was awarded the OBE in 2002 for services to the nuclear industry. Sue was appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire in the Queen's New Year Honours List 2010 for her services to science and engineering. Rob Lyons is deputy editor of Spiked, the online current affairs magazine that aims to challenge conventional thinking on everything from major world events to the nitty-gritty of everyday life. Since Spiked launched in 2001, Rob has specialised in writing about science and risk, including the regular column 'Don't Panic', which aimed to challenge the endless stream of scare stories in the media. Rob visited Chernobyl in January for a feature article in The Australian entitled 'Chernobyl: when truth went into meltdown'. He is author of shortly to be published Panic on a Plate: How Society Developed an Eating Disorder. Dr Stuart Derbyshire is a Senior Lecturer in psychology at the University of Birmingham. His research aims to understand the nature of pain and especially pain that happens without obvious physical cause. Consequently most of his students spend their time trying to hurt people without touching them – touching is cheating. His work has been published in leading medical journals including the British Medical Journal and his current research is funded by the Medical Research Council. He has featured on several documentaries and news programmes and was most recently seen on the One Show hypnotising Michael Moseley before pushing a needle through his hand. In that case, touching wasn’t cheating. Anthony Jones is professor of Neuro-rheumatology at Manchester University and leads the Human Pain Research Group. Whilst at the Hammersmith Hospital he pioneered the development of techniques to image neurochemical and metabolic brain responses to pain using Positron Emission Tomography. Over the last twenty years he has used a number of functional brain imaging techniques to understand the normal and abnormal mechanisms of pain perception. There are some exciting prospects of using some of the insights gained in his studies to develop new approaches to pharmacological and cognitive interventions for chronic pain. He also leads the International Association of Pain Musculoskletal Pain Taskforce and is leading the development of National and International Guidelines on the Integrated Management of Musculoskeletal Pain (jointly sponsored by the BSR and the IASP). Kate Day is Director of Manchester Craft & Design Centre (MCDC), based in a Victorian market building in the Northern Quarter. The MCDC provides studio / retail space and business support to craftspeople and designers, an exhibition programme and café, and is open to the public 6 days per week. Kate’s current interests lie in the interplay between creativity and business, consumer trends, and all things material culture. Kate’s fascination with the world of ‘things’ was developed through studying History of Design at MMU, leading to a Post-Graduate Diploma in Art Gallery & Museum Studies at the University of Manchester, and a 10-year stint as Curator of Craft at Manchester Art Gallery. Kate is also a founder member of CraftNet, the UK cultural leadership development network for craft. Professor George McKay joined the university in 2005, as Professor of Cultural Studies and Director of the Communication, Cultural & Media Studies Research Centre. George is a fairly frequent contributor to BBC and independent radio, having appeared on programmes as varied as Thinking Allowed (several times) and The Johnnie Walker Show. He has also appeared on numerous television programmes-news and documentaries-and written for publications such as the Guardian, Independent, New Statesman. To date he has written or edited around a dozen books in cultural and media studies, his latest being 'Radical Gardening: Politics, Idealism & Rebellion in the Garden'. Barbara qualified in nursing midwifery and health visiting before entering higher education as a Senior Lecturer in Public Health. She now develops and authors unique sex education materials through Contraception Education, and provides sexual health information and resources such as Contraception the Board Game, Contraception the Computer Game and Safer Sex:An Interactive Learning Resource on Video and DVD. Barbara also works extensively in the voluntary sector and is a volunteer for Glossop Women's Aid, a mentor for Business in the Prince's Trust, and one of the directors of Manchester Diamonds Cheerleading Squad (MDCS) CIC. In quieter moments Barbara is known to knit and is an active knitting member of the International Vulva Knitting Circle Facebook Group. Nina Powell is a PhD student in social psychology at the University of Birmingham studying moral condemnation. Nina is interested in implicit and explicit moral judgments, and the conservation of moral outrage. She also intends to better understand the dichotomy in moral reasoning literature, suggesting that morality is either reasoned or intuitive, by studying the developmental changes in children's moral judgments. She says that we are living during an interesting period in history with moral dissonance and moral panic playing a major role in decision making; everything has a moral component, from recycling to parenting. Her goal is to understand culturally what has led us to this point as a society, and how and when these moral principles emerge. Anna Percy Completed a Creative Writing and Contemporary Culture Joint Hons BA at Cumbria Institute of the Arts in 2007 and a Creative Writing MA at Manchester University in 2009. Anna has been performing her poetry around the country for six years, her poems usually being concerned with love, loss, losing your mind, the natural world and the surreal. She has been a performer of racy feminist poetry for some years, and has won Manchester's poetry pillow (a cuddly slam) three times, and participated in the Hammer and Tongue Slam at 2010's Edinburgh Festival. Anna has two chapbooks; In Photographs (2007), and Ghosts at the Dinner Table (2010) and has been published in Libertine, Unsung Magazine, How Many Roads and BlankPages. She is a workshop facilitator, has collaborated with visual artists, runs (with her co host Rebecca Audra Smith) Stirred: For Women Who Write - a monthly poetry event, and also with Simon Rennie she helps facilitate Innverse - a poetry event that has just celebrated its third birthday. A fair sample of Anna's work can be seen at http://writeoutloud.net/profiles/annapercy. Angus Kennedy is head of external relations for the Institute of Ideas, working principally to programme the annual Battle of Ideas festival in London and its international satellite events. He chairs the Institute’s Economy Forum and helps organise its discussions. He writes for spiked and Culture Wars, among other publications, with particular interests in the Holocaust, classics, culture and the arts, economics and moral philosophy. Angus has a degree in Classics from Oxford, in Linguistics from the University of London and an M. Phil. in Artificial Intelligence from Dundee University. He has produced several strands and individual debates at the Battle of Ideas: on themes as various as history, opera, the Holocaust and memory, the ancient Greeks, social justice, the arts and the economy. Dr Kim Wiltshire was brought up mostly in Devon and Dorset, and after studying at Drama School in London for two years, she moved to Lancaster and then to Manchester. Following a series of jobs in theatre and TV, she decided to work on her true passion - writing, and enrolled in 2001 on the MMU Writing School's MA in Creative Writing course. Having completing an MA, she went on to complete her PhD (Theory & Creative Writing) at Lancaster University. Kim works as a creative writing lecturer in the Cheshire site of Manchester Metropolitan University, and also as a community artist and project manager for Lime, a health and arts charity, where she is currently working on the Cystic Fibrosis Transitions project. Kim has been commissioned to write scripts with young people around issues as diverse as knife crime, the Burnley 'riots' and social inclusion through organisations such as Activ8 at Bolton Octagon and Lets Go Global in Trafford. Former cellist John Summers arrived as Chief Executive of Manchester's breathtaking Hallé in 1999 from Northern Sinfonia, started to rebuild the orchestra, restructuring the organization and gradually seducing audiences back to the Bridgewater Hall. His approach has included public fund-raising, and since joining the Hallé he has been responsible for a number of new initiatives, including a significant expansion of the Orchestra's Education and Ensemble Programme, and the setting up of the Hallé's own recording label. He was a member of the Board of the Association of British Orchestras from 1991 with a special interest in Education and Outreach matters, and in 1995 was appointed Chairman through until 1998. John was Lead Adviser for Music to the Arts Council of England from 2003-2005 and is currently President of the Lakeland Concerts Society. Karl Sharro is an architect, writer and commentator on the Middle East. He previously taught at the American University of Beirut. Karl has written for a number of international publications, such as Springerin (Austria), Mark Magazine (Holland), Novo (Germany), Glass (UK) and Blueprint (UK), and he contributes regularly to the online publications Culture Wars and Muftah.org.
Ken McLaughlin’s book ‘Social Work, Politics and Society: From radicalism to orthodoxy’ (2008, The Policy Press) highlighted the authoritarian consequences of the ‘therapeutic turn’ in contemporary political life, with particular focus on social policy development and social work practice. His recent work looks at the rise of identity politics, and of how, in contemporary society, concepts such as trauma and vulnerability are increasingly ascribed to, and often embraced by, both individuals and political groups alike, and of the way such forms of personal or political identification entail a corresponding demand for the identity to accorded wider cultural recognition. Kevin Bean teaches Irish politics at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool: his research interests include theories of nationalism and national identity, state counter-insurgency policy and practice, and the emerging post-Good Friday Agreement polity in Northern Ireland. He has written on the Peace Process and the political evolution of the Provisional Republican movement in newspapers, magazines and journals. Chris Gilligan is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of the West of Scotland. He previously held lecturing posts at Aston University and the University of Ulster. He is Reviews Editor for the journal Ethnopolitics. His main field of research is in the broad area of nations, 'race' and ethnicity. His publications include: Peace or War? Understanding the Peace Process in Northern Ireland (co-edited with Jonathan Tonge); Northern Ireland Ten Years after the Agreement, and; Visualising Migration and Social Division (co-edited with Susan Ball). He is currently working on a book on racism and sectarianism in Northern Ireland which will be published by Manchester University Press in late 2011/early 2012. Louise has worked as a journalist since 1978. She started out as a rock writer on a regional listings magazine and is now a freelance journalist and copy-editor. She has covered topics as diverse as technology, finance, disability and social issues, TV, green issues, consumer/lifestyle, culture, media, business, food and health. She has written for a very wide range of publications including The Guardian, The Observer, Fabulous, Candis, Screenjabber, New Consumer, Sweet, Your Home, How-Do and Skin Two, to mention just a few. In 2010, she co-founded Manchester’s independent news site, Inside the M60. Louise has also been a talking head on air discussing everything from business networking and epilepsy to regional news provision and her crying habits via MPs’ expenses and memories of her impossibly glamorous grandmother. She also occasionally reviews the papers and participates as a panel guest on radio chat shows. Her first book, Epilepsy: Epilepsy: The Essential Guide, was published in May 2009. Brendan O’Neill is the editor of the independent online phenomenon, spiked online, and author of the green satire Can I Recycle My Granny and 39 Other Eco-Dilemmas, published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2008. He started his career in journalism at spiked‘s predecessor, Living Marxism, then its successor LM, until it was forced to close in 2000 following a notorious libel action brought by ITN. When he’s not writing for and editing spiked, and commissioning journalists who have something to say and the guts to say it, O’Neill writes widely for publications on both sides of the Atlantic. His journalism has been widely published in the New Statesman, the Spectator, the Guardian, The Sunday Times, the British Journalism Review, the Press Gazette and the Catholic Herald in Britain, and in Salon, Slate, the Chicago Sun-Times, the American Prospect, the American Conservative and Reason magazine in the United States. He is also a feature-writer for the Christian Science Monitor in America and for the BBC in Britain. Alan is the Director of Oxford University’s Leadership Programmes for China, and in the last five years he has been responsible for writing the curriculum training programmes in UK public policy and public administration which have been delivered to over 1000 senior Chinese public officials at municipal, provincial and national level including national ministers. The programmes include the Advanced Leadership Development Programme for those national ministers charged with the strategic implementation of the 11th Five Year plan for a Xiaokang or ‘well balanced society’ of economic development and social justice. With wide experience in both quantitative and qualitative research and analysis Alan has acted as a consultant in public, private and voluntary sectors. In the 1990’s he directed a widely cited Attitudes to Work Survey with a national sample. His most recent work has been in the areas of education, training and employer recruitment strategies and also on the relationship between citizens and cities with reference to urban planning and group and national identity. Berthold Schoene is Professor of English and Director of the Centre of Research in English (CORE) at Manchester Metropolitan University. His research interests are in contemporary British fiction, Scottish literature, masculinity and gender studies, literary representations of nationhood, as well as globalisation studies and cosmopolitan theory. His most recent publications include The Cosmopolitan Novel (2009), The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature (2007) and the Edinburgh Companion to Irvine Welsh (2010). He is currently coordinating the first Annual Research Programme (on ‘globalisation’) hosted by MMU’s new Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences Research. For further information click on this Globalisation 2010-11 link. Dr Angelica Michelis is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her current research interest and publications focus on the meaning of food and how the process of eating can be understood as a complex exchange between the self and what is considered as its other, with the effect that any concept of identity is directly intertwined with the way we regulate our orifices. Angelica has published a range of articles discussing, for example, the relationship between food and culture, eating and poetry, cooking and crime. She is currently working on a monograph entitled EatingTheory: The Theory of Eating for Manchester University Press. To find out more about her research, click on this Angelica Michelis link. When she is not writing about food she is cooking it, reading about it and eating it! Antony is Professor of Literary Studies in English at The University of Salford where he teaches literature and creative writing. He is chair in Memory Studies and lead the Poetry and Poetics and Memory Studies research clusters. His research interests include memory studies, Holocaust studies, contemporary poetry and masculinity. His poetry has been published extensively in journals, magazines and anthologies including Critical Quarterly, Stand, P.N. Review, New Poetries III (Carcanet, 2002), and, most recently, the Bloodaxe anthology Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poets (2010). He received an Eric Gregory Award in 2000, and a Learning Northwest Award in 2001. His first collection, The Land of Green Ginger, was published by Salt in 2008, and was well-received, with reviewers drawing comparisons with the work of poets as disparate as John Ashbery and Ezra Pound. Rowland's writing is at the forefront of a developing strand of contemporary British poetry, which connects the established mainstream with the avant-garde, without either diluting the seriousness of the latter's engagement with language, or failing to startle, amuse and intrigue through his imaginative flair - often realised through the form of monologue. Prior to Carol Ann Duffy accepting the laureateship, Rowland also co-edited Choosing Tough Words: The Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy (2003). The anthology situates Duffy's poems in relation to debates about the state, value and social relevance of contemporary British poetry, and asks whether Duffy's work is part of a feminist tradition of writing, and whether her work is anathema to men. Daniel Ben-Ami has worked as a journalist and author for over 20 years, specialising in economics and finance. His work has appeared in general and specialist publications including most of the UK's broadsheets and popular europen talk radio stations. His day job is to edit Fund Strategy, a specialist weekly magazine on investment funds and financial markets, and also writes a blog on economics. His book on global finance, Cowardly Capitalism (Wiley, 2001), argues that the financial markets are characterised by risk aversion rather than the aggressive risk taking generally assumed. Although it was published almost a decade ago it provides a foundation for developing a critique of the way in which the more recent financial crisis is generally understood, and was recommended by the Baker Library of Harvard Business School. His new book Ferraris For All, defending economic progress, will be published in July 2010. Clive George followed a career in nuclear physics and industrial management before joining the University of Manchester to undertake research and consultancy on international development. As a Senior Research Fellow in the University's School of Environment and Development he was principal advisor to the World Bank on the evaluation and development of impact assessment systems in the Middle East and North Africa and has acted as a consultant to the OECD, UNEP, UNDP and other international agencies. Through his work for UNEP and the European Commission he has become one of the world's leading experts on assessing the economic, social and environmental impacts of international trade agreements. His books include 'The Truth About Trade' (Zed Books, 2010), 'Environment and the City' (Routledge, 2008, with Peter Roberts and Joe Ravetz), 'Impact Assessment and Sustainable Development' (Edward Elgar, 2007, with Colin Kirkpatrick, eds.) and 'Environmental Assessment in Developing and Transitional Countries' (John Wiley & Sons, 2000, with Norman Lee). He has published numerous articles on sustainable development, impact assessment, global governance and international trade. Michelle Di Leo is the Director of pro-aviation campaign, FlyingMatters. The campaign represents a broad coalition of tourism organisations, trade unions, business, farmers in the developing world as well as the aviation industry which support sustainable growth in aviation. Prior to setting up FlyingMatters, Michelle’s career spanned the consultancy, trade union and voluntary sectors. She has a Masters Degree in Government and Politics. On her Twitter account she describes herself as an armchair politician, know it all and generally pretty opinionated on everything under the sun - see her in action by clicking on this Sunday Programme link. Austin Williams is the director of the Future Cities Project. An architect and project manager by profession, he was previously technical editor of the Architects' Journal and now writes for a wide range of publications on urban and transport issues. He was the coordinator of the 'Future of' series of festivals and is a founder member of ManTowNHuman. He also runs the Bookshop Barnies. His recent book, The Enemies of Progress (Societas) examines the concept of 'sustainability' and presents a critical exploration of its all-pervasive influence on society. It argues that sustainability, manifested in several guises, represents a pernicious and corrosive doctrine that has survived primarily because there seems to be no alternative to its canon: in effect, its bi-partisan appeal has depressed critical engagement and neutered politics. Yvonne Hübner is the Principal Policy Advisor at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, and responsible for transport and manufacturing policy. The IET is one of the world’s leading professional societies for the engineering and technology community, with more than 150,000 members in 127 countries and offices in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. She became a Chemical Engineer after studying in Germany at the University of Applied Sciences Fresenius, and is about to finish a PhD in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Surrey. Yvonne recently published a paper on the unintended consequences of transport policy, organised debates on alternative transport fuels, and facilitated the transport session of the joint Defra and Engineering the Future conference on Engineering, Infrastructure & Climate Change Adaptation. Josie Appleton is a journalist and writer based in London and convenor of the Manifesto Club, a civil liberties group that campaigns against vetting, booze bans, photo bans, and other forms of state hyperregulation of everyday life. She writes regularly for spiked, and has contributed to a number of publications, including the Spectator, The Guardian, The Times, Times Literary Supplement and Daily Express. She wrote the Manifesto Club reports, ‘The Case Against Vetting’, ‘How the Child Protection Industry Stole Christmas’, and ‘Hobby Clubs’. Mike Jones is the Alcohol Programme Manager for the Greater Manchester Public Health Network and is leading the call for a minimum unit price for alcohol. Over his career he has worked as a nurse, specialising in Gastroenterology, in the independent sector working with individuals with HIV and in the homeless sector. For the last ten years he has worked in the drugs and alcohol field and has gained first hand experience of alcohol related harm. He feels we should all understand that alcohol is a harmful drug and should recognise the damaging effects that this has on individuals in our communities. Stephen is a freelance writer and researcher, and has a PhD in political theory. He is currently researching a book on the pathology that is 'healthy living', and is fascinated by joggers, gyms and the (tragic) ascendancy of ‘health’ as a moral good. A series of essays for spiked and a recent chapter on biomedicine and Cartesian dualism explored these themes. His book on the limits of biomedical objectivity in an era of addled subjectivity is well overdue. Stephen is involved in bringing ideas and debate to life in Sheffield by helping to organise the Sheffield Salon.
Geoff Kidder is membership and events director for the Institute of Ideas. He runs the Institute of Ideas’ associate member scheme, which was set up in May 2002, and now have associates throughout the UK and around the world. He also convenes the monthly IoI Book Club in central London, and supervises the IoI's administration and event management. Geoff is also the Institute of Ideas’ resident expert in all sporting matters and covered the Beijing Olympics for Culture Wars - the IoI's online review website. He produces debates, particularly on sport, at the annual Battle of Ideas festival in London - see Are we a nation of sporting losers? and School sport - selling kids short? at the Battle of Ideas 2007. Hilary Salt is a qualified actuary and a director of First Actuarial plc. She started her career in the insurance industry before moving to the consultancy sector. After qualification, she took a break from actuarial work to study politics and modern history at Manchester University. But the actuarial world called her back and she now advises a wide range of clients including local businesses, national trade unions and a number of not for profit organisations and is also the independent advisor to the Technical Advisory Group reviewing the NHS Pension Scheme. Hilary thinks the national Debating Matters competition provides just the right challenge to 6th form students keen to argue their corner and plays a prominent in its success in the nothern regions. Born in Blackpool but a Salfordian by choice, Ian grew up in Salford with Old Trafford as his back drop and attended his first game in 1973 - a reserve match which cost just 5 pence to get in. He joined Shareholders United / Manchester United Supporters Trust (MUST) in 2004, and has been a passionate, vocal supporter of fan ownership since. He strongly believes that football clubs should benefit the community and fans rather than a corporate asset of distant owners who are only motivated by profit. He would like to see a day when football fans are valued for the contribution they make to the club in terms of passion and pride, and not for how much money can be squeezed out of them, and for 'Football Club' to be back on the badge. Dan Travis is the Director of the Brighton Salon and graduated in Philosophy from Heythrop College, London University in 1995 and has recently completed an MSC in Social and Political Theory at Birkbeck College. He is currently helping companies optimise their marketing strategies by effectively using the Google Search Engine, something that he strongly urges organisations to do more of. Dan has been a Tennis Coach for most of his adult life and is Director of the coaching company 'The Tennis Tigers', having competed for his county at tennis, athletics and cross-country. He is still a competitive tennis player and likes to lift weights. Dan has written extensively about the changing role of Sport in society, the problem of a 'self esteem' based approach to sports coaching and is a regular contributor to Spiked and Culture Wars. He has written a Thinkpiece for the Manifesto Club entitled 'In Support of Competitive Sport' that has provoked a critical response from parents, coaches and government bodies. Further to this Dan is undertaking a project that attempts to examine modern Britain's attitude to excellence and elites. Keith McCabe grew up in Birmingham and has moved around the UK before moving North five years ago. He started work as an apprentice engineer, worked his way up to become a Chartered Engineer, and is currently working as a transport consultant specialising in environment and technology issues. Keith has been interested in the arts for a long time, having being one of the founders of the Angle Gallery in Birmingham - well known for its support for freedom of expression. Latterly, he has been involved in the arts and mental health organisation Brainstorm, and was a member of the committee of the Artsmill gallery in Hebden Bridge. He is keen to draw on his experience in both the arts and engineering to help the Salon to reach out to other organisations in the North West, in creative and innovative ways. Professor Inderjeet Parmar is Professor of Government and Head of Politics at the University of Manchester. He has published several monographs and is the co-editor of the 'Studies in US Foreign Policy' series published by Routledge. He studied Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Sociology at the University of London, obtaining his doctorate at the University of Manchester, and joined the Department of Government at Manchester University as a lecturer in 1996. His research interests focus on the history, politics and sociology of Anglo-American foreign policy elites over the past 100 years, specifically embodied in organisations such as philanthropic foundations, think tanks, policy research institutes, university foreign affairs institutes, and state agencies. He has, more recently, become interested in Anti-Americanism, post-9-11 US foreign policy shifts, and the changing character of the US foreign policy Establishment. Finally, he is working on a long-term project on why Britain almost invariably backs the United States in wars, from Korea 1950 to Iraq 2003. To keep up with Inderjeet's latest insights on US foreign policy, click on this Anglo-American relations link. Justine Brian loves good food and hates food snobbery. She trained to cook at Westminster College, and fantasises about giving up the day job to sell high-class cupcakes. For her, the contemporary debate about food confuses the creative and adventurous impulse to try to make better food with a manipulative attempt to use food as a tool of social engineering in areas as diverse as health, parenting and ‘ethical’ living. When not thinking about, reading about or eating food, she is the National Coordinator of the Institute of Ideas and Pfizer Debating Matters Competition, an innovative and engaging new style of debating competition for sixth form students in the UK and internationally. Jeremy Taylor is a freelance television producer/ director, specializing in popular science, who has recently turned to book-writing. His first major book, Not a Chimp: The hunt to find the genes that make us human, has recently been published internationally by Oxford University Press. In a previous career he was a stalwart producer for the BBC's flagship science series, HORIZON, for many years, having made over a dozen films for them, including a brace of films with Richard Dawkins which introduced him as a science presenter for the small screen - an act for which Taylor might not be wholeheartedly thanked in some quarters! His great love is evolutionary biology and he has made a number of other films with evolutionary themes including PLAYING WITH MADNESS, for the BBC, and MINDREADERS for Channel 4. Dolan Cummings is Research and Editorial Director at the Institute of Ideas and edits their reviews website, Culture Wars. He has edited two books, ‘The Changing Role of the Public Intellectual’, and ‘Debating Humanism’, and is currently writing a book about, and in defence of, propaganda. He is also a co-founder of the Manifesto Club, which campaigns for freedom in everyday life. Jennie Bristow is a journalist whose writing focuses on parenting issues and intergenerational relations. She was part of the launch team of the website spiked, for which she now writes the monthly ‘Guide to Subversive Parenting’. She has recently launched the website Parents With Attitude. Bristow is author of Maybe I do? Marriage and Commitment in Singleton Society (2002), and several essays on love, intimacy and the politics of the family. In 2008 she co-authored, with Frank Furedi, a high profile report on the impact of the national vetting scheme, titled Licensed to Hug: How child protection policies are poisoning the relationship between the generations and damaging the voluntary sector. Jennie's latest book, Standing Up To Supernanny, will be published by Societas in September 2009. Professor Heather Piper is now a Professorial Research Fellow in the Education and Social Research Institute at Manchester Metropolitan University, having previously been a Social Worker with wide experience of children and families. Her research and publications span a range of contested educational and social issues, and recently co-authored books that share risk as a central concern - Don’t touch! The educational story of a panic (with Ian Stronach), and 'Researching sex and lies in the classroom: Allegations of sexual misconduct in schools' (with Pat Sikes) due to be published by Routledge on 20 November 2009. Her work (click on her photo for link) is characterised by a critical and contrarian approach, drawing on a broad-based and eclectic intellectual territory in sociology, philosophy and social policy, as well as her own professional experience. Kevin is a researcher and lecturer in twentieth century American history and a writer on contemporary issues affecting American society. He is the author of a book on the intellectual history of affirmative action and is now preparing a book on the 1924 Immigration Acts and their impact on American identity and history in the twentieth century. Previously, Kevin has worked on the rise of therapeutic methods of governing during the Nixon administration, the history of post-war liberalism, immigration policy in the early twentieth century, the development of policy, especially of affirmative action, and the development of American culture between the wars. He also maintains an interest in current American political and cultural issues and has published material on assisted suicide, gun control and other current American political issues.
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John Siddique
