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Polly Mackenzie is Chief Executive of Demos.

Polly started her career as a business journalist. In  2004 she became a Policy Adviser on housing and local government for Edward Davey MP. She then worked for Nick Clegg from 2006 to 2015, helping to write the 2010 Coalition Agreement, and serving as Director of Policy to the Deputy Prime Minister from 2010-15.

After leaving Government, Polly established the operations of the Women’s Equality Party, and then went on to found the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, a charity working to break the link between financial difficulty and mental health problems. She lives in South East London, and has three children.


Sheri Fink is a bestselling author.

Her New York Times bestselling book, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital (Crown, 2013) is about choices made in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She is a correspondent at the New York Times, where her and her colleagues' stories on the West Africa Ebola crisis were recognized with the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, the George Polk Award for health reporting, and the Overseas Press Club Hal Boyle Award. Her story "The Deadly Choices at Memorial," co-published by ProPublica and the New York Times Magazine, received a 2010 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting and a National Magazine Award for reporting. A former relief worker in disaster and conflict zones, Fink received her M.D. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. Her first book, War Hospital: A True Story of Surgery and Survival (PublicAffairs), is about medical professionals under siege during the genocide in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina.


Martin Westlake Martin Westlake has spent over four decades studying European integration and working in European Union government and politics.

Having completed a first degree in philosophy, politics and economics at University College, Oxford, he went on to take a master's degree at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (Bologna Center) and a PhD at the European University Institute in Florence. Since beginning his professional life as a clerk to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, he has worked in the Council of Ministers and the European Commission, with the European Parliament and, since 2003, in the European Economic and Social Committee, where he served as Secretary General, 2008-2013. Martin Westlake has published widely on the European institutions and on European and British politics. He is also the author of a major political biography (Kinnock, The Biography). He has occupied a number of visiting positions and, from 2000 to 2005, was a visiting professor at the College of Europe, Bruges, teaching a seminar on the European Parliament. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the College, running a research seminar on Constitutional, Institutional and Political Reform in the EU and a Visiting Professor in Practice in the LSE's European Institute. His most recent publication is: 'Slipping Loose: the UK's long drift away from the European Union' (Agenda Publishing, 2020).


Anthony Teasdale

Anthony Teasdale is Director General of the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), the in-house research centre and think tank of the European Parliament.

He has been a political adviser and civil servant both in Brussels and London. Within the Parliament, he was head of policy and strategy for the EPP Group, debuty chief of staff to the President of the Parliament, and director for EU internal policies, before taking up his current role in 2013. In Whitehall, he served as Special Adviser to Sir Geoffrey Howe, UK Foreign Secretary, at the FCO, and to Kenneth Clarke, Chancellor of the Exchequer, at HM Treasury. Co-author of The Penguin Companion to European Union, he is, like Martin Westlake, a visiting professor in practice at the European Institute of the LSE, where they teach a joint seminar on EU institutions and politics.


Alan SimpsonAlan Simpson, roundtable participant and co-chair of the breakout session 'Environmental Research', is a writer, campaigner and (currently) the UK Shadow Chancellor's Advisor on Sustainable Economics.

He was a Labour MP for 18 years (1992-2010) and works on changing the way we think about sustainable futures. Alan lives in an eco-house, generating as much electricity as it uses. He is a member of the local MOZES energy co-op in Nottingham and a national board member of the Schools Energy Coop. As the MP for Nottingham South, he was the key architect of 'Feed-in Tariffs' amendments in Labour's Energy Act 2008 and subsequently advised Labour Ministers on energy transformation. By 2010, Alan concluded that change would have to be driven from elsewhere, so decided to get out a bit more. He is an active member of Extinction Rebellion. 


Dr. Fabian ZuleegRoundtable participant Dr. Fabian Zuleeg is Chief Executive and Chief Economist of the European Policy Centre, with overall responsibility, including providing strategic direction, managing its staff and resources and representing the EPC.

Fabian holds a PhD on the political economy of EU accession from Edinburgh University. Before coming to the EPC, he has worked as an economic analyst in academia, the public and the private sector. His analysis focuses on EU economic policies, including economic governance at EU/Eurozone level, the Single Market, Digitalisation, Industrial Policy, Better Regulation and the EU budget, as well as international economic relations. He has a long standing interest in the political economy of European integration, with particular focus on the UK-EU relationship, analysing the impact of Brexit on the UK and the rest of the EU, as well as the process of separation. Fabian is currently Honorary Fellow at the Europa Institute of the University of Edinburgh and Honorary Professor at Heriot Watt University, as well as sitting on the Advisory Board of the Scottish Centre on European Relations (SCER). He was appointed to the Standing Council on Europe, established by Scotland's First Minister after the Brexit vote in June 2016. Fabian works closely with decision makers in the European institutions, the EPC members and partners and the wider Brussels stakeholder community. Fabian regularly comments on current political and economic issues in the EU in the media. He also chairs and contributes to a wide range of debates, conferences and seminars and has researched and published widely on European integration and on European economic and social policies.


Isidoros KaratzasRoundtable participant Isidoros Karatzas is a biochemist and psychologist by training. 

After joining the European Commission, he was responsible for the ex-post evaluation of the Framework Programme. Consequently, he was a member of the first unit tasked with developing and supporting the scientific advice process. Isidoros managed the risk governance research file and was the scientific secretary of the European Research Advisory Board (EURAB), the high level body advising the Commission on research policy and research priorities. Currently, he is the head of the Research Ethics and Integrity Sector in DG Research and Innovation. As head of the sector, he established advanced training courses on research ethics for Commission staff and the ethics research community and has set up the first European system on ethics checks and follow-up. In addition, the sector oversees the research integrity policy activities, including the relations with relevant stakeholders such as ALLEA, LERU, Science Europe and the business community. 


Prof. Paul SpickerRoundtable participant Professor Paul Spicker is a writer and commentator on social policy, and an Emeritus Professor of Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland. 

His research has included studies related to benefit delivery systems, the care of old people, psychiatric patients, housing management and local anti-poverty strategy. He is a consultant on social welfare in practice, and has done work for a range of agencies at local, national and international levels.His twentieth book, The poverty of nations: a relational perspective, will be published in March. A range of his work is available on open access at www.spicker.uk



Roundtable participant Panagiotis Kavouras is a physicist by degree, with an MSc in Materials Science and Technology and a PhD in Physics focused on Technology of Materials.

Currently, his main research interests are characterization of mechanical properties with indentation methods at various length scales and the built up of a metrological approach for the calculation of Surface Free Energy through nano-indentation. His early career research interest was synthesis and characterization of vitreous and glass-ceramic silica-based materials for industrial solid waste management. He is the author of 42 published papers in peer reviewed journals, 1 book chapter and 1 textbook. He participates in four H2020 “Science with and for Society" projects, while he has participated in a Tender project related with Dual Use research in key enabling technologies. He is one of the contact persons and member of the coordinating team of Ethical Aspects in Research and Technology for Human network (EARTHnet), member of the European Network of Research Integrity Offices (ENRIO), through his participation in EARTHnet and member of the European Network for Ombuds in Higher Education (ENOHE).


Marie-Sophie Peyre Roundtable participant Marie-Sophie Peyre is a scientific officer at the ERCEA, specialised in the ethics domain.

She has studied public law in Paris (University Paris I - Panthéon - Sorbonne) with a special focus on rule of law, fundamental rights, moral and ethics and is a barrister. She also graduated from the Cycle des hautes études européennes of Ecole nationale d'administration (ENA). For seven years, she has worked as a judge for the United Nations High comissioner for refugees with a special focus on the former soviet countries. She had previously worked during for years for Robert Badinter, former President of French constitutional Council and former Minister of Justice. 


Roundtable participant Prof. Dr. Dirk Lanzerath is a Professor of Ethics and Research Ethics and the Managing Director at the German Reference Centre for Ethics in the Life Sciences (DRZE) at the University of Bonn. He will be representing the ENERI project (European Network of Research Ethics and Research Integrity) and the European Network of Research Ethics Committees (EUREC) .

He has studied biology, philosophy, catholic theology and education sciences at the University of Bonn, with a doctoral degree in philosphy at the University of Bonn (1998) and a habilitation at the Faculty of Philosophy (2013). He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal "Research Ethics Review", the Central Ethics Committee at the German Physician Association, the Review Board of UNESCOS's Global Ethics Observatory Database (GEObs) and the Ethics Committee of the University of Maastricht (The Netherlands).


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