International Conference: Speakers and Organisers

Professor Bruce Ackerman

Professor Bruce Ackerman is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale, and the author of nineteen books in political philosophy, constitutional law, and public policy. He is a Commander of the French Order of Merit, a member of the American Law Institute and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The American Philosophical Society has awarded him the Henry Phillips Prize for lifetime achievement in Jurisprudence, especially noting his exploration of the great turning points in American constitutional history in his three volume series, We the People. His award-winning early work, Social Justice in the Liberal State, continues to provoke contemporary controversy. His scholarship has had a global impact. He has been named a Leading Global Thinker by Foreign Policy magazine, and has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Trieste, Italy, for his contributions to comparative constitutional law. Before the Next Attack (2006) served as a basis for the reform of the French constitution dealing with emergency powers. His most recent book, Revolutionary Constitutions, puts the world-wide constitutional crisis in historical perspective by comparing the post-war experience of countries as different as France, India, Iran, Italy, Israel, Poland, South Africa, and the United States — and demonstrating that these nations have a good deal to learn from one another in confronting the current assault on checks-and-balances. 

 

Professor Richard Albert

Professor Richard Albert is the William Stamps Farish Professor in Law, Professor of Government, and Director of Constitutional Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He has authored over twenty books on the study of constitutionalism, including “Constitutional Amendments: Making, Breaking, and Changing Constitutions” (Oxford University Press 2019). A graduate of Yale, Oxford and Harvard, he is a former law clerk to the Chief Justice of Canada.Professor 

Professor Lord Blunkett

Professor Lord Blunkett is a Professor of Politics in Practice at the University of Sheffield. Lord Blunkett has spent many decades as a senior Labour politician and served in Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government in senior cabinet positions. He served as Secretary of State for Education and Employment (1997-2001), Home Secretary (2001-2004), and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (2005). Prior to joining the government, he served as in the shadow cabinet from 1992-1997 and before that he was Leader of Sheffield City Council from 1980-1987. Lord Blunkett represented the Sheffield constituency of Sheffield Brightside (and Hillsborough) in the House of Commons from 1987 to 2015. David Cameron, the former Conservative Prime Minister, had commented, ‘As a new Back Bencher, I will never forget coming to this place in 2001 and, in the light of the appalling terrorist attacks that had taken place across the world, seeing the strong leadership [Lord Blunkett] gave on the importance of keeping our country safe. He is a remarkable politician, a remarkable man.’

Professor Vernon Bogdanor CBE, FBA

Professor Vernon Bogdanor CBE, FBA is a research professor at the Centre for British Politics and Government at King’s College London. He was formerly Professor of Government at Oxford University, and Senior Tutor and Vice-Principal at Brasenose College. He has written widely on government and politics, including books The People and the Party System, Monarchy and the Constitution, and Power and the People: A Guide to Constitutional Reform. Most recently, he has edited a book on The British Constitution in the Twentieth Century and written on The New British Constitution. He has been an adviser to government and parliamentary bodies on many occasions, and in 1998 was awarded the CBE for services to constitutional history. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.

Professor Frank Bowman

Professor Frank Bowman is University of Missouri Curators’ Distinguished Professor and the Floyd R. Gibson Missouri Endowed Professor of Law at the University of Missouri School of Law. He teaches Criminal Law, Evidence, Criminal Procedure, White Collar Crime, the Law and Practice of Sentencing, Law and Religion, and other subjects. He also holds an appointment as Dean’s Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University Law Center. Professor Bowman has written about impeachment since the Clinton affair and has published on that subject extensively in the academic and popular press. He writes the blog “Impeachable Offences?” and appeared extensively in print and electronic media in the U.S. and abroad before and during the impeachment and trial of President Trump.  He also consulted with members of the House and Senate during the Trump impeachment. His latest book is High Crimes & Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump (Cambridge Univ. Press 2019).

Professor Margit Cohn

Professor Margit Cohn (LLB, LLD, Hebrew University of Jerusalem) is the Henry J. and Fannie Harkavy Chair in Comparative Law at the Faculty of Law, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Prior to her appointment at the Hebrew University Faculty of Law (2006), she was Lecturer in Law at the University of Leicester, UK, and a legal advisor at Israel’s Central Bank. Professor Cohn’s teaching and research interests span administrative law, comparative public law, constitutional theory, law and politics, law and society, legal cultures, and judicial review. Professor Cohn has visited and taught at various law schools, including University College London, Columbia Law School, Centre for Transnational Legal Studies London, Tulane University Law School, Georgetown University,and the University of Trento.  She has published in several prestigious journals, including the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, the American Journal of Comparative Law, the International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Public Law, Law and Policy, and the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, her book, A Theory of the Executive: Tension and Legality was published by Oxford University Press in 2021.

Timothy Foot

Timothy Foot is a research volunteer at the Constitution Unit, UCL, and a pupil barrister.

Professor Matt Flinders

Professor Matt Flinders is Professor of Politics and Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre at the University of Sheffield. He is Vice-Chair of the Political Studies Association of the UK, has served on the board of the ESRC and currently sits on the Higher Education Policy Committee of the British Academy. Prof. Flinders has written or edited 14 books and has published over 150 research articles.  These include Multi-Level Governance (Oxford University Press, 2004), Walking Without Order (Oxford University Press, 2009), The Oxford Handbook of British Politics (Oxford University Press, 2009), Democratic Drift (Oxford University Press, 2009), Defending Politics (Oxford University Press, 2012) and Anti-Politics, Depoliticization and Governance (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is a former winner of the Harrison Prize (2002), the Richard Rose Prize (2004), the W. J. M. MacKenzie Prize (2009) and the Sam Aaronovitch Memorial Prize (2012). In addition to his academic work, Prof Flinders has written and presented a number of documentaries for BBC Radio 4 and has served as a special adviser in both the House of Lords and House of Commons.  In 2018 he was awarded the ESRC’s ‘Overall Impact Champion’ Award.

Professor Conor Gearty

Professor Conor Gearty QC (Hon) is a professor of Human Rights Law at LSE.  He has published widely on terrorism, civil liberties and human rights. Conor is also a barrister and was a founder member of Matrix chambers from where he continues to practise. He has been a frequent adviser to judges, practitioners and public authorities on the implications of the UK Human Rights Act, and has frequently lectured at home and abroad on the topic of human rights. He has appeared in human rights cases in the House of Lords, the Court of Appeal and the High Court. He has also been a visiting professor at Boston University, the University of Richmond, the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney. Conor is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, a Bencher of Middle Temple and has honorary doctorates from Sacred Heart University in the United States, University College Dublin in Ireland and Brunel and Roehampton universities in the UK. In 2012 he became Director of LSE’s Institute of Public Affairs and in this capacity was responsible for a crowd-sourced UK Constitution, drafted in 2015. His latest book On Fantasy Island. Britain, Europe and Human Rights was published by OUP in September 2016.

Dr Marc Geddes

Dr Marc Geddes is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Edinburgh, and the Co-Director of the Centre for Science, Knowledge and Policy (SKAPE). His research has explored how MPs and officials interpret and act on the idea of ‘accountability’ in the UK Parliament. He has recently authored a book on the subject, Dramas at Westminster, which won the PSA Prize for best book published in political science in 2021.

Stephen Holden Bates is a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Birmingham, and co-convenor of the PSA Parliaments specialist group. His research concerns parliamentary committees, parliamentary roles, and parliamentary careers. During the 2021-22 academic year, he will be a Parliamentary Academic Fellow in the House of Commons.

Professor Tom Ginsburg

Tom Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Professor of International Law at the University of Chicago, where he also holds an appointment in the Political Science Department.  He holds B.A., J.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. He currently co-directs the Comparative Constitutions Project, an NSF-funded data set cataloging the world’s constitutions since 1789, that runs the award-winning Constitute website.  His latest book is How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (2018, with Aziz Huq), and his other books include Judicial Reputation: A Comparative Theory (2015) (with Nuno Garoupa); The Endurance of National Constitutions (2009) (with Zachary Elkins and James Melton), which won the best book award from Comparative Democratization Section of American Political Science Association; and Judicial Review in New Democracies (2003), winner of the C. Herman Pritchett Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  Before entering law teaching, he served as a legal advisor at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, The Hague, Netherlands, and he has consulted with numerous international development agencies and governments on legal and constitutional reform.  He currently serves a senior advisor on Constitution Building to International IDEA.

Professor Robert Hazell

Professor Robert Hazell was founder and first director of the Constitution Unit at UCL, where his recent book on The Role of Monarchy in Modern Democracy has led to his interest in reform of the prerogative.

Lady Hale of Richmond

Lady Hale of Richmond, DBE, DBE took up appointment as President of the Supreme Court in September 2017, succeeding Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury. This following her appointment as Deputy President from June 2013. In October 2009 she became the first woman Justice of the Supreme Court. In January 2004, Lady Hale became the United Kingdom’s first woman Lord of Appeal in Ordinary after a varied career as an academic lawyer, law reformer, and judge. In 1984 she was the first woman to be appointed to the Law Commission, a statutory body which promotes the reform of the law. Important legislation resulting from the work of her team at the Commission includes the Children Act 1989, the Family Law Act 1996, and the Mental Capacity Act 2005. She also began sitting as an assistant recorder. In 1994 she became a High Court judge, the first to have made her career as an academic and public servant rather than a practising barrister. In 1999 she was the second woman to be promoted to the Court of Appeal, before becoming the first woman Law Lord.

Professor John Keane

Professor John Keane is Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney and at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB). He is the co-founder and director of the Sydney Democracy Network (SDN). In 1989 he founded the world’s first Centre for the Study of Democracy in London. During his many years living in Europe, The Times ranked him one of Britain’s leading political thinkers and writers whose work has ‘world-wide importance’. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has described him as “one of Australia’s great intellectual exports”. He writes a ‘Democracy Field Notes’ column for the London/Melbourne/New York-based web platform The Conversation. He wrote the timeline for the new Museum of Australian Democracy and served as a member of the American-based Institutions of Democracy Commission. His Life and Death of Democracy was short-listed for the 2010 Non-Fiction Prime Minister’s Literary Award. It is the first full-scale history of democracy for over a century. Portuguese, Greek, Brazilian, Chinese and Japanese translations have appeared and Korean, Spanish and Arabic editions are on their way. His latest book, The New Despotism, was published in 2020 by Harvard University Press.

Baroness Kennedy QC

Baroness Kennedy QC practises predominantly in the criminal law, undertaking leading work of all kinds. She also undertakes judicial review, public inquiries and sex discrimination work. She has acted in many of the prominent cases of the last decade including the Brighton Bombing Trial, Guildford Four Appeal, the bombing of the Israeli Embassy, the abduction of Baby Abbie Humphries and a number of key domestic violence cases. She is Chair of the Human Genetics Commission and a member of the World Bank Institute's External Advisory Council and was recently appointed to the board of the British Museum. She stepped down as Chair of the British Council in July 2004 after completing six years. She is a Bencher of Gray's Inn and a Member of the House of Lords, speaking on issues of human rights and civil liberties. She is Vice-President of the Haldane Society, Vice-President of the Association of Women Barristers, Patron of Liberty, and is President of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.  She has lectured on Human Rights, Criminal Law and many other subjects, both in Britain and internationally. She was awarded a life peerage in 1997. She was created a member of the French Académie Universelle des Cultures by the French government, a Cavalier di Gran Croce (Italy's highest honour) by the President of Italy in 2004, Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2005 and Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in 2005. Her publications include the widely acclaimed Eve Was Framed: Women and British Justice (Vintage, 1993) and Just Law: The Changing Face of Justice and Why It Matters to Us All (Chatto & Windus, 2004).

David Lock QC 

David Lock QC was called to the Bar in 1985 and made a QC in 2011.   He is a public law specialist and was judged by a panel of leading lawyers to be the Legal 500 Public Law QC of the Year for 2020.  He sits as a Deputy High Court Judge in the Queen’s Bench and Family Divisions. David has appeared in the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal on many occasions, the High Court, the County Court, the Court of Protection, has drafted Parliamentary Bills and has advised individuals, companies and government bodies in a variety of international jurisdictions. He has vast trial experience, including cross-examining expert and lay witnesses, but also has a wide-ranging public law and appellate practice. David is joint editor (with Hannah Gibbs) of the leading practitioner’s book, “NHS Law and Practice” and his technical expertise as a public lawyer has been recognised by his appointment as one of the joint editors (along with David Blundell) of the leading journal “Judicial Review”.

Baroness Manningham-Buller LG, DCB, FMedSci

Baroness Manningham-Buller LG, DCB, FMedSci has been Chair of Wellcome since 2015, having served as a Governor since 2008. In 2015, she became the Co-President of Chatham House, Royal Institute of International Affairs. She served on the Council of Imperial College from 2009 and was Chair of Council from 2011 to 2015. Baroness Manningham-Buller was appointed an independent, crossbench peer in the House of Lords in 2008, and has been a member of the Privileges and Conduct Committee, the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, and the Science and Technology Committee. Previously, she had a career with MI5 for more than 30 years, including a posting to the British Embassy in Washington. She served as Director General from 2002 to 2007 and before that was Deputy Director General, with responsibility for operations.

Joshua Matz

Joshua Matz is a partner at Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP. His specialties include complex commercial disputes, constitutional law, civil rights, and appellate and Supreme Court litigation. He recently rejoined Kaplan Hecker from the House Judiciary Committee, where he served among counsel for the impeachment and trial of President Trump. Joshua focuses on constitutional litigation. His recent matters have addressed subjects including LGBTQ rights, religious liberty, freedom of speech, privacy, firearm regulation, the separation of powers, due process, and the right to counsel.  Alongside his litigation experience, Joshua has written for diverse audiences about legal issues. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and Wired, and he has been invited to speak at Harvard Law School, the 92nd Street Y, the ABA LGBT+ Forum, the National Constitutional Center, and Politics & Prose. Since March 2017, Joshua has served as the Publisher of Take Care, a website that offers accessible coverage of the executive branch. In March 2012, Joshua and Professor Larry Tribe of Harvard Law School published “The Constitutional Inevitability of Same-Sex Marriage,” 71 Md. L. Rev. 471 (2012). In June 2014, they published an award-winning book, Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution (Henry Holt & Co.). In May 2018, they published their second book together, To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment (Basic Books). The Economist proclaimed this book “the definitive treatment of a vital subject.”

Professor Piotr Mikuli

Piotr, LLB/MA, Ph.D. (Habil.) is a full professor of law at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. He is the author or co-author of a number of publications dealing with constitutional issues. He has served inter alia as a visiting professor at Oxford University, an honorary visiting scholar at Leicester University, a guest researcher at Dalarna University (Sweden) and the University of Lucerne (Switzerland).

Lord David Edmond Neuberger

David Edmond Neuberger, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury was appointed President of the Supreme Court in 2012, the second person to hold that office since 2009 when the Court replaced the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords. He previously held the post of Master of the Rolls from 1 October 2009. 

Born on 10 January 1948, Lord Neuberger was educated at Westminster School, later studied Chemistry at Christ Church, Oxford. After graduating he worked at the merchant bank, N M Rothschild & Sons from 1970-1973 until he entered Lincoln's Inn and was called to the Bar in 1974. 

Lord Neuberger was made a Queen's Counsel (QC) in 1987 and became a Bencher for Lincoln's Inn in 1993. His first judicial appointment was as a Recorder from 1990 until 1996 when he was appointed a High Court judge in the Chancery Division and was then the Supervisory Chancery Judge for the Midland, Wales and Chester and Western Circuits 2000 - 2004. 

Since 1999 Lord Neuberger has been Chairman of the Advisory Committee on the Spoliation of Art (in the Holocaust). Between 2000 to 2011 he was governor of the University of Arts London and from 2013 to 2014 Chairman of the Schizophrenia Trust. In 2014 he became a patron of MHUK.

In January 2004 he was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal. He also led an investigation for the Bar Council into widening access to the barrister profession. In 2007 he was made a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and created a life peer as Baron Neuberger of Abbotsbury in the County of Dorset.

Professor Aníbal Pérez-Liñán

Aníbal Pérez-Liñán is Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. His research focuses on political institutions, executive-legislative relations, and the rule of law in new democracies. He is the author of Presidential Impeachment and the New Political Instability in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America (with Scott Mainwaring, Cambridge University Press, 2013). He was editor in chief of the Latin American Research Review (2016-21), the scholarly journal of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), and he is co-editor of the Kellogg Series on Democracy and Development at the University of Notre Dame Press.

Karen Popp

Karen Popp is a partner at Sidley and the global co-leader of the firms White Collar: Government Litigation and Investigations group. Karen’s practice focuses on high-stakes matters with legal, political and public relations components. Before joining Sidley, Karen served as Associate White House Counsel to the President of the United States, where she advised President Clinton and the White House staff on congressional and grand jury investigations and domestic policy issues. She worked with senior administration officials at various federal agencies and congressional members and staffs on the administration’s policy initiatives. Prior to joining the White House, Karen served in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice where she advised Attorney General Janet Reno and the Department, the White House and other agencies of the executive branch on a wide range of legal matters. Before moving to Washington, D.C., Karen was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, where she prosecuted RICO and other charges involving fraud, bribery, extortion, tax evasion, money laundering, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and perjury. A frequent speaker at national conferences and before various other groups, Karen has provided legal commentary on CNN, Fox News and NPR, and served as a consultant on the television show The West Wing.

Charlotte Sayers-Carter

Charlotte Sayers-Carter is a research volunteer at the Constitution Unit, UCL, and MLitt student in Legal and Constitutional Studies at the University of St Andrews.

Professor Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey

Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey is Professor in Political Science and Fellow of the British Academy. Her mixed methods research focuses on deliberation, accountability, political economy, legislatures. She is author and editor of several books, on trade policy, monetary policy, and accountability, including Deliberative Accountability in Parliamentary Committees (OUP, 2022). She has published many articles on nineteenth century trade policy, as well as on more contemporary topics, like the use of nonverbal communication in UK parliamentary committee hearings, political rhetoric on US national security by George Bush and John Kerry, civil religion in presidential rhetoric, and US Senate debates on partial-birth abortion.

Jonathan Slater

Jonathan Slater is a Visiting Professor at King’s College London and Queen Mary’s University London. He sits on the boards of the Charter Schools Educational Trust, Morley College, Sheffield Hallam University, and the Institute of Government. Jonathan was Permanent Secretary of the Department for Education until 2020, at the conclusion of a 20 year civil service career that included Justice, Defence, the Cabinet Office and No.10. Before that Jonathan worked in local government for over 10 years, ending up as Director of Education and Deputy Chief Executive at Islington Council, though his career actually started as a mathematical modeller for British Rail.

Dr Se-shauna Wheatle

Dr Se-shauna Wheatle is an Associate Professor in Law at Durham Law School, where she teaches Comparative Constitutional Law and UK Constitutional Law. Her research interests include comparative constitutionalism, implied constitutional principles, common law constitutionalism and Commonwealth Caribbean constitutional law. Se-shauna’s monograph, Principled Reasoning in Human Rights Adjudication, was published by Hart in 2017 and was shortlisted for the Society of Legal Scholars Birks Prize in 2018. Se-shauna is also co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Constitutions, published by Oxford University Press in 2020. She is a series editor (with Jonathan Herring) of the Bristol University Press Diverse Voices book series. Se-shauna has co-edited special editions of the McGill Law Journal and the Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, both published in 2020. Her work has been published in journals such as Public Law, the McGill Law Journal and European Human Rights Law Review. 

Dr Hannah White

Dr Hannah White has strategic oversight of the Institute for Government’s programme of work on government, parliament and the civil service, focusing on external relationships and impact. She has extensive knowledge of Westminster and Whitehall based on over a decade of experience in parliament and the civil service. Before running the Committee on Standards in Public Life in the Cabinet Office, she was a clerk in the House of Commons managing select and legislative committees and advising on parliamentary procedure. She received an OBE in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to the Constitution. Hannah is a regular commentator for radio and television and has appeared on BBC1’s ‘Andrew Marr Show’, Radio 4’s ‘Westminster Hour’, ‘World at One’, the ‘Today programme’, ‘Newsnight’, BBC News and Sky News. She is a frequent contributor to the Institute’s comment pages and also writes for a range of media including The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph and Prospect magazine. Hannah joined the Institute for Government in May 2014 and leads the Institute’s work on parliament.

Professor Alison Young

Alison Young is the Sir David Williams Professor of Public Law at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Robinson College. She researches in all aspects of public law, including human rights. She is the author of Turpin and Tomkins’ British Government and the Constitution (8^thedition, CUP 2020), Democratic Dialogue and the Constitution (OUP, 2017) and Parliamentary Sovereignty and the Human Rights Act (Hart, 2009). She is also a legal advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution.

Presenters

Valeriya Mechkova is a PhD candidate at the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg. Broadly, the focus of her research is democracy and development. Her dissertation examines the conditions under which descriptive representation works for achieving substantive representation using the case of women’s political empowerment and development outcomes women tend to prioritize. Mechkova has published scholarly articles in American Political Science Review, European Political Science Review, Democratization, Journal of Democracy, Political Research Quarterly among others.

 

Petra Guasti is an Associate Professor for Democratic Theory at Charles University in Prague. In April 2021 she completed her (cumulative) habilitation — Democracy Disrupted — at the Goethe University Frankfurt. In March 2019, she completed an eight-month Visiting Democracy Fellowship at Harvard University’s Ash Centre for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Her research focuses on the reconfiguration of the political landscape revolves around three themes – representation, democratization, and populism. Her research has appeared in Democratic Theory, Democratization, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, European Political Science, East European Politics and Societies and Cultures, Politics and Governance, East European Politics, and elsewhere. She serves as an expert for Bertelsmann Foundation’s Bertelsmann Transformation Index and Sustainable Governance Indicators for over a decade, and V-Dem since 2018. In 2020 she has been appointed to the expert board of the Nation in Transit (Freedom House). As of August 2021 is Social Media Editor for Democratic Theory. 

 

Dr. Rumena Filipova is Chairperson and Co-Founder of the Institute for Global Analytics in Bulgaria. She received a DPhil and MPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford and a BA in Politics, Psychology and Sociology from the University of Cambridge. Rumena’s main research interests focus on the politics and international relations of Central and Eastern Europe, with a particular reference to questions of identity, Constructivist IR theory, media and disinformation, the authoritarian influence exercised by Russia and China in the region. Her forthcoming book Constructing the Limits of Europe: Identity and Foreign Policy in Poland, Bulgaria and Russia since 1989 is forthcoming with Ibidem Verlag, distributed by Columbia University Press. 

 

Gergana Dimova is an associate lecturer at the University of Winchester and an associate researcher at Oxford University. She received her PhD from Harvard University and has been a research fellow at the University of Cambridge. Her first book monograph is Democracy beyond Elections: Government Accountability in the Media Age and her forthcoming book is Political Uncertainty: A Comparative Exploration. She is the associate editor of the journal Democratic Theory and the convenor of the Anti-Politics Specialist Group of the UK Political Science Association.

 

Dr Enrique Peruzzotti PhD in Sociology, New School for Social Research is the Chair of the Department of political science and international studies at Torcuato Di Tella University in Argentina and researcher of CONICET.  His research interests are in the area of democratization, with a regional focus on Latin America. More specifically, his work analyses transitions to democracy, the strengthening of existing political regimes via social accountability politics processes of democratic innovation, as well as on the challenges that contemporary expressions of populism pose to existing polities. He has published in numerous venues, including Global Governance, Citizenship Studies, Journal of Democracy, Human Rights Quarterly, Chinese Political Science Review, Journal of Latin American Studies and Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory.

Professor Rogério Christofoletti is a Professor at the Department of Journalism at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil. Fellow at the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), he is head of the Journalistic Ethics Observatory (objETHOS). Author and editor of 14 books and over 120 articles and book chapters on journalistic ethics, media accountability, media criticism and technology. E-mail: rogerio.christofoletti@ufsc.br 

 

Professor Danilo Rothberg is professor of sociology of communication at Unesp (São Paulo State University), Brazil. He currently holds a productivity grant from CNPq (Brazilian Council of Scientific and Technological Development) for a research on environmental public communication and co-leads the project “Communication and Democracy”, funded by CAPES / Brazilian Ministry of Education and DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service). E-mail: danilo.rothberg@unesp.br

 

Professor Fernando Oliveira Paulino is Professor at the University of Brasilia, Brazil, and Visiting Professor at the TU Dortmund, Germany (2020-2021), President of Brazilian Federation of Scientific and Academic Associations (SOCICOM), Vice President of Latin American Communication Researchers Association (ALAIC); mentored more than 120 students in graduate and undergraduate activities; published 53 scientific papers, 52 book chapters, and 16 books. E-mail: paulino@unb.br

 

Professor Carina Barbosa Gouvêa - Professor of the Postgraduate Program in Law at the Federal University of Pernambuco (PPGD / UFPE); Post-Doctorate in Constitutional Law Federal University of Pernambuco (PPGD / UFPE); Doctor and Master in Law from UNESA, Recife, Brazil.

 

Professor Pedro H. Villas Bôas Castelo Branco - Professor of political theory at the Institute of Social and Political Studies (IESP) at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ); Professor of the Postgraduate Law Program at the Veiga de Almeida University (PPGD / UVA). Doctor of Political Science (IUPERJ), Master of Laws (PUC-Rio), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.Lar

Lars Brummel works as a PhD candidate in the Utrecht School of Governance (USG) at Utrecht University. In his research, he has a strong focus on issues of democratic governance, with a particular interest for new forms of public sector accountability, citizen and stakeholder participation, and the governance and accountability of public agencies. As a PhD candidate, his research focuses on under which conditions public sector organisations are more inclined to societal and citizen-oriented forms of accountability.

Professor Matt Flinders

Professor Matt Flinders is Professor of Politics and Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre at the University of Sheffield. He is Vice-Chair of the Political Studies Association of the UK, has served on the board of the ESRC and currently sits on the Higher Education Policy Committee of the British Academy. Prof. Flinders has written or edited 14 books and has published over 150 research articles.  These include Multi-Level Governance (Oxford University Press, 2004), Walking Without Order (Oxford University Press, 2009), The Oxford Handbook of British Politics (Oxford University Press, 2009), Democratic Drift (Oxford University Press, 2009), Defending Politics (Oxford University Press, 2012) and Anti-Politics, Depoliticization and Governance (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is a former winner of the Harrison Prize (2002), the Richard Rose Prize (2004), the W. J. M. MacKenzie Prize (2009) and the Sam Aaronovitch Memorial Prize (2012). In addition to his academic work, Prof Flinders has written and presented a number of documentaries for BBC Radio 4 and has served as a special adviser in both the House of Lords and House of Commons.  In 2018 he was awarded the ESRC’s ‘Overall Impact Champion’ Award.

Dr Chris Monaghan

Dr Chris Monaghan is a Principal Lecturer in Law at the University of Worcester. He is the research lead for law and a member of the University of Worcester’s Research, Integrity & Governance Committee. Chris’ research interests include constitutional law, accountability and the use of impeachment. Chris has a PhD from King’s College London where his thesis explores whether a modernised form of impeachment might enhance political accountability in the United Kingdom.  Chris has previously acted as a consultant for the British Library’s National Life Stories: Legal Lives project. He has published extensively and has co-edited three collections of essays, and organised two research conferences. He co-edited Dissenting Judgments in the Law (Wildy, Simmonds and Hill 2012), Fifty Years of the British Indian Ocean Territory: Legal Perspectives (Springer, 2018) and has published in Legal Studies, Criminal Law Review, Judicial Review, European Human Rights Law Review and the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies. He is the author of Public Law which will be published by Routledge in 2021. 

Janey Robins 

Janey Robins graduated with a first-class honours in BSc Biology in 2012. She later joined the University of Worcester and an Administrator in 2014 and was promoted to Senior Administrator when she joined the School of Law when it opened in 2016. She provides dedicated support to the School of Law and the University’s Legal Advice Centre and enjoys helping to organise all School of Law events.