10:30 – 11:45 Defense and Diplomacy
Claire Chu is a senior China analyst at Janes, the open-source defense and geopolitical intelligence firm.
Her research work on the Geoeconomic Influence and Threat Intelligence team focuses on the national security implications of China’s global economic activity, including foreign direct investment and global financial flows.
Claire recently joined Janes through the acquisition of RWR Advisory Group, where she was the lead analyst in the China practice. She launched the Belt and Road Monitor in 2017, which provides a comprehensive biweekly overview of China’s overseas trade and investment activities and policy developments. Claire was a member of the 2022 class of National Security Fellows at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and previously held research roles at think tanks including the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin and the Project 2049 Institute in Arlington, Virginia. She has testified before Congress about Chinese economic and financial statecraft, and her commentary has been featured in major media outlets in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
Finn Lau is an advocate-in-exile and one of the 2019 Hong Kong movement leaders officially wanted by the Hong Kong authority.
Finn was detained under inhumane conditions in Hong Kong and was beaten to near death by Chinese Communist Party’s agents in London in 2020. He underpinned key strategies for the Hong Kong movement and launched global initiatives throughout 2019-22 addressing Hong Kong and China democracy and human rights issues.
As a chartered UK profession, Finn also specialises in infrastructure development with working experience across Hong Kong, Singapore and London in addition to his policy advocacy work across multiple parliaments like the Swedish, Danish, Swiss, UK, Canadian, Australian and European Parliament.
Andrew Small is a senior transatlantic fellow with the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
His research focuses on U.S.-China relations, Europe-China relations, and broader developments in Chinese foreign and economic policy. He previously worked as a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, as the director of the Foreign Policy Centre’s Beijing office, and as an ESU scholar in the office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. He is the author of The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics (2015) and The Rupture: China and the Global Race for the Future (UK/Commonwealth) / No Limits: the Inside Story of China’s War with the West (US), which was named one of the 2022 Financial Times Politics Books of the Year.
12:00 – 13:15 Business and Economics
David Aikman joined King’s Business School in April 2020 as Professor of Finance and Director of the Qatar Centre for Global Banking and Finance.
Previously, he spent 17 years working as an economist at the Bank of England – most recently in the role of Technical Head of Division in the Financial Stability Strategy and Risk Directorate where he led the Bank’s work on various macroprudential issues.
Between 2013 and 2015, David was seconded to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington DC, where he worked as an advisor in the Division of Financial Stability. In 2008, David was a Visiting Scholar at the Bank of Japan’s Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies. David has represented the Bank in various international fora, including meetings of the Financial Stability Board, the Basel Committee, and the European Systemic Risk Board.
He is the author of various research papers on financial stability and macroprudential policy, and has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Warwick.
Olly is a senior economist in the Institute for Government’s public finances team.
His current projects focus on the effectiveness of economic policymaking, the role of the Treasury, and energy policy & regulation. Before joining the Institute in 2022, Olly was an economist in the civil service. Most recently he led research projects on economic growth, productivity and investment for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, having previously worked on forecasting and macroeconomic strategy at HM Treasury. He studied Political Economy at KCL and Behavioural and Experimental Economics at UEA.
James Forder is Academic and Research Director at the IEA.
He has taught economics and sometimes politics at Oxford University since 1993, and is Andrew Graham Fellow and Tutor in Political Economy at Balliol College.
His principal research interests have been in central bank independence, and the history of macroeconomics ideas, including especially those following from the work of A W H Phillips; and the work of Milton Friedman. He has also written on the merits of the first past the post electoral system. He believes that public policy could be enormously improved by greater recognition of the power and utility of price mechanisms, as compared to regulatory controls such as prohibitions, licensing rules, and obligations on public bodies to pursue specific quantitative outcomes.
12:00 – 13:15 Education
Ronald Barnett is Emeritus Professor of Higher Education at University College London Institute of Education, where he was a Pro-Director and Dean, responsible variously for strategy, quality and academic development.
He has been a leader in developing the philosophy of higher education, a project heralded by his first book, The Idea of Higher Education (1990). He is the inaugural President of the Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Society, a past Chair of the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE), has had conferred on him both an earned higher doctorate and an honorary doctorate, and – among many prizes – was awarded the inaugural prize by the European Association for Educational Research for his ‘outstanding contribution to Higher Education Research, Policy and Practice’.
He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, the SRHE and the Higher Education Academy, has produced 35+ books (with many winning prizes &/or translated into other languages) and 200 papers, given 150+ keynote talks in 40+ countries and is a consultant in the university sector (in which role he has recently been advising UNESCO and currently working with the University of Copenhagen).
Jim Dickinson is an Associate Editor at Wonkhe and takes a particular interest in student experience, university governance, and regulation – and leads our work with students’ unions.
His career background is in support for student leadership. He has held senior roles at the National Union of Students – where he led on SU development, campaigns and political strategy – and was the CEO at the SU at UEA, providing strategic management for the union’s charitable and commercial vehicles as well as policy support for the elected student officers.
Jim has served as a governor and trustee in both further and higher education and the voluntary sector, and is a regular speaker at sector events and conferences. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, an obsessive fan of the Eurovision Song Contest, and dreams of visiting Moldova.
Dr Patricia Walker is an experienced academic, teaching and researching in British Universities.
She has taught internationally in Nigerian and Japanese institutions. She was recently a senior lecturer and Research Fellow at the University of East London (UEL) and is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of West London (UWL).
Her doctorate explored the commodification of Higher Education (HE), in particular the effects of the burgeoning of international student recruitment initiatives on curriculum enterprises with the inevitable marketisation of university courses.
She has published numerous articles in international academic journals, the Times Educational Supplement, Times Higher Education, and recently blogs for the Fabian Society.
14:25 – 15:40 Technology and innovation
Mariano works on promoting privacy in the online advertising sector, and supports Open Rights Group's strategic litigation and political advocacy efforts.
He holds a Juris Doctor in Law from the University of Milan, and a Master of Arts in IT Law from the University of Tartu.
He previously worked as Data Protection Officer of a political party, and as legal counsel in the field of data protection and legal tech. He also has extensive experience in policy analysis and structured dialogue processes.
Dr Keegan McBride is a departmental research lecturer in AI, Government, and Policy and course director of the MSc program in the Social Science of the Internet at the Oxford Internet Institute.
He is a widely cited expert who has published extensively in academic and journalistic outlets on the topic of digital government. His research aims to develop an understanding about the future trajectory of the state in the digital age by exploring the complex relationships between the state, technology, and society.
Sydney Reis is an Innovation Officer at NATO’s Innovation Unit, Emerging Security Challenges Division.
During her Master’s Degree in intelligence and International Affairs, Sydney focused on the ways that AI is used to proliferate misinformation and disinformation by hostile state actors. Her multidisciplinary approach to emerging technologies and security is informed by her previous work experiences, including as a Gender Consultant for UNDP Rwanda, and as a Policy Analyst in National Security for the Canadian Government.
14:25 – 15:40 Global Health
Dr Andrew Harmer is a Senior Lecturer in Global Health Policy at the Institute for Population Health Sciences at Queen Mary’s University, London.
He is Program Director of the Institute’s MSc Global Public Health (online). He holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Southampton and has taught at numerous institutions including the University of Edinburgh, Bocconi University (Milan), and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Dr Harmer’s research interests include WHO funding, and climate change and public health. He has published in leading global health journals, including The Lancet, the BMJ and the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation. Dr Harmer writes a popular blog www.andrewharmer.org which has attracted more than a million visits. He is active in the climate movement, participating in various demonstrations organised by Extinction Rebellion.
Richard Horton is Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet.
He qualified in physiology and medicine with honours from the University of Birmingham in 1986. He joined The Lancet in 1990, moving to New York as North American Editor in 1993. In 2016, he chaired the Expert Group for the High Level Commission on Health Employment and Economic Growth, convened by Presidents Hollande of France and Zuma of South Africa. From 2011 to 2015, he was co-chair of the UN’s independent Expert Review Group on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health. In 2011, he was elected a Foreign Associate of the US Institute of Medicine and, in 2015, he received the Friendship Award from the Government of China. In 2019, he was awarded the WHO Director-General’s Health Leaders Award for outstanding leadership in global health and the Roux Prize in recognition of innovation in the application of global health evidence. In 2021, he received the Physicians for Human Rights Award in recognition of extraordinary leadership in advancing health and human rights. He now works to develop the idea of planetary health – the health of human civilizations and the ecosystems on which they depend. In 2020, he published The COVID-19 Catastrophe: What’s Gone Wrong and How to Stop It Happening Again. A revised, updated, and expanded second edition was published in 2021. As part of the UK’s 2023 Honours, Dr Horton was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in recognition for services to Health and Medical Journalism.
Dr Anneke Schmider is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House whose interest is connecting research, evidence and innovation with global health policy.
Working in collaborating partnerships, Dr Schmider has delivered a wide range of research for international agencies and consortiums, including WHO, World Bank, the International Vaccine Institute and Chatham House. Currently she supports the Chatham House Commission on Universal Health and the Chatham House collaboration with UHC2030 movement.
15:50 – 17:30 European Affairs
Professor Michael Cox is a Founding Director of LSE IDEAS. He was Director of LSE IDEAS between 2008 and 2019.
He was appointed to a Chair at the LSE in 2002, having previously held positions in the UK at The Queen’s University of Belfast and the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth. He helped establish the Cold War Studies Centre at the LSE in 2004 and later co-founded LSE IDEAS in 2008 with Arne Westad.
Professor Cox has lectured to universities world-wide as well as to several government bodies and many private companies. He has also served as Chair of the United States Discussion Group at Chatham House, as Senior Fellow at the Nobel Institute in Oslo; as Visiting Professor at the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies in Canberra, Australia, and as Chair of the European Consortium for Political Research. He is currently visiting professor at the Catholic University in Milan.
Jeremy Shapiro is the research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. His areas of focus include US foreign policy and transatlantic relations.
Shapiro was previously a fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy and the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings, where he edited the Foreign Policy program’s blog Order from Chaos. Prior to Brookings, he was a member of the U.S. State Department’s policy planning staff, where he advised the secretary of state on U.S. policy in North Africa and the Levant. He was also the senior advisor to Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon, providing strategic guidance on a wide variety of U.S.-European foreign policy issues.
Dr Stepan Stepanenko is a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, a London based foreign policy and national security think tank, focusing on Eastern Europe, post-Soviet states, and defense.
He has written and commented for the Kyiv Post, Daily Express, the Mail Online, Epoch Times, Jerusalem Post and Jerusalem Times amongst others.
Dr Leslie Vinjamuri is Director of the US and the Americas programme and Dean of the Queen Elizabeth II Academy for Leadership in International Affairs at Chatham House.
Dr Vinjamuri is Deputy Chair of the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission and a Trustee of the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and on the Advisory Board of LSE IDEAS and the LSE Phelan United States Centre and Vice President of the Board of the Institute for Integrated Transitions.
Dr Vinjamuri leads research on the US, Geopolitics, and Democracy in America and is leading a project on the US role in a Global Recovery.
She has written extensively on US politics and foreign policy, human rights, international order and transatlantic relations and is co-editor and contributing author of Anchoring the World (with Charles A. Kupchan, Foreign Affairs, 2021) and Human Rights Futures (with Stephen Hopgood and Jack Snyder, Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Her articles have appeared in many journals and books including Foreign Affairs, International Security, Ethics and International Affairs, Daedalus, Law and Contemporary Problems and Survival.