Dr John Hewson is the former leader of the Liberal Party of Australia. John has had a distinguished business career both before and after his political career. He has worked as an economist for the Australian Treasury (Census and Statistics), the Reserve Bank, the International Monetary Fund and also as an advisor to two successive Federal Treasurers and the Prime Minister. John was a Director of Macquarie Bank and a past Chairman of ABN AMRO in Australia. His academic career included 11 years as a Professor of Economics, with four years as Head of the School of Economics at the University of New South Wales, and two years as Dean, Macquarie Graduate School of Management and Professor of Management at Macquarie University. John has been director of many organisations and has guided many from early stage to maturity. John has been extensively involved in the climate debate in Australia and internationally. He is a the Chairman of the Asset Owners Disclosure Project. John is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University.
Jeffrey R. Powell did his undergraduate work at the University of Notre Dame where he started working on the mosquito Aedes aegypti under the direction of George B. Craig. In 1969 he went to graduate school at The Rockefeller University where he began empirical population genetics studies of Drosophila under the mentorship of Theodosius Dobzhansky. He obtained his Ph. D. in 1972 from the University of California, Davis, where he moved with Dobzhansky in 1971. He began as an Assistant Professor at Yale in 1972 and has been on the faculty since. He has spent sabbatical leaves at the University of California (Riverside), University of Rome, California Institute of Technology, and Cambridge University. He continues to work on Drosophila and mosquitoes, while initiating in 1991 a research program on genetics of Galápagos tortoises that has taken on a life of its own. His major interests are basic issues of evolutionary genetics and molecular evolution largely using Drosophila as a model organism and application of genetic technologies and concepts to mosquitoes to aid in control of diseases they transmit. He has mentored 23 Ph. D. students to completion, 24 postdoctorals, and >40 undergraduates, as well as hosted six sabbatical visitors.
Jack Thompson is Lecturer at the Clinton Institute for American Studies, University College Dublin. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and his MA from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Dr Thompson’s research focuses on foreign policy and political culture in the United States. He is particularly interested in political (especially presidential) leadership, partisanship, transatlantic relations, and debates regarding American relative decline. Dr Thompson is currently working on two projects. One explores presidential leadership in US foreign policy. The second explores the emergence of modern conservative political culture.
Jody Agius Vallejo is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California. She will be associate director of the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration in Fall 2016. Her research concentrates on the Latino middle class, Latino elites, and patterns of wealth accumulation among Latinos and Chinese Americans . Her book, Barrios to Burbs: The Making of the Mexican American Middle Class (Stanford University Press, 2012) examines mobility mechanisms, socioeconomic incorporation, racial/ethnic and class identities, patterns of giving back to kin and community, and civic engagement among middle-class Mexican Americans. Her second book, in progress, investigates the rise of the contemporary Latino elite. Her research has been funded by The National Science Foundation, The American Association of University Women, The Lusk Center for Real Estate, the American Sociological Association’s Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline, the John Randolph and Dora Haynes Foundation, the UC Davis Center for Poverty Research, and the USC Office of the Provost. She has published in peer-reviewed journals such as Social Forces, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Latino Studies, Social Science Research, City & Community, and Sociological Forum. Her research has received coverage in print, radio, and television including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, NBC Latino, La Opinión, BBC World News, BBC Mundo, Agencia EFE, ABC’s Vista LA, OC Weekly, NPR, KCRW and KCPP.
Prof. James A. Sweeney's research is about the after-effects of conflict: principally human rights in transitional democracies, and the rights of refugees. His monograph, 'The European Court of Human Rights in the post-Cold War Era: Universality in Transition' was published in hardback by Routledge in November 2012, and in paperback in 2014. His work on the human rights of failed asylum seekers was cited by the House of Lords in the case of R (on the application of M) v Slough BC [2008] UKHL 52, by the Court of Appeal in R. (on the application of SL) v Westminster City Council [2011] EWCA Civ 954, and most recently in R. (on the application of Refugee Action) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2014] EWHC 1033 (Admin). In the latter case Home Secretary Theresa May was found to have acted irrationally by freezing the level of cash support to be provided to asylum seekers to meet their essential living needs, for the financial year 2013/14, at the rates which had applied since 2011. Prof. Sweeney has acted as an expert advisor to the Council of Europe in relation to freedom of assembly projects in Armenia, Azerbaijan (with the Venice Commission), Georgia, and Kosovo. In March 2011 he delivered human rights legal training to judges of the Ukrainian Supreme Court as part of a UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office project. Likewise in 2013 and 2014 he convened a series of workshops on human rights and judicial interpretation for the Constitutional and Supreme Courts of Kosovo, on behalf of the FCO. Throughout 2009 he acted as an expert advisor to the EU's Committee of the Regions as it prepared its Opinion on reforms to the Common European Asylum System. Prof. Sweeney joined Lancaster University Law School in 2013. Prior to that, he has worked at Durham, Newcastle and Hull. From 2011-2013 he was Deputy Director of Durham Global Security Institute.
James Knowles specialises in early modern literature and culture (1500-1700) and has published widely on early modern drama especially Jonson, Marlowe, Marston, Middleton, and Shakespeare. He is an internationally recognised expert on the court masque and civic pageantry and has written on literary and cultural geographies, orientalism, patronage and collecting, manliness and sexuality, verse libel and manuscript culture. He also retains a wider interest in gender, sexualities, and book culture including modern and contemporary gay writing and queer theory. Research area(s): Renaissance literature and culture, esp the court masque and civic pageantry, city comedy, revenge and political drama Caroline and civil war writing Literary and cultural geographies and orientalism, early modern Irish and Scottish cultures Patronage and collecting, esp libraries Manliness, sexualities and book culture including modern and contemporary gay writing and queer theory Book and manuscript culture, verse libels and literary circulations, censorship, and textual editing
