I am interested in racism, especially antisemitism and Islamophobia; Empire; and the genealogy of global politics. My research focuses on European ideas of the Jew, the Arab, and the West; post-secularism; British and French colonialism in the Jewish and Middle Eastern worlds; the First World War and its afterlives; the Zionist-Palestinian conflict; the League of Nations Mandate system; the West and the Middle East relationship; and the political public sphere in the colonial world after 1914. My first book, The Zionist Masquerade: The Birth of the Anglo-Zionist Alliance, 1914-1918 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), was a new history of the Balfour Declaration. Placing the Declaration within the wider story of the global politics of race and nationalism in the Great War, the book put forward a new interpretation of its origins, purpose and significance. I am currently writing a biography of the idea of the Middle East, for which I was awarded an Early Career Fellowship by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. With Ben Gidley (COMPAS, Oxford), I am also co-editing a book on antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, from the Crusades to the 21st century. Outside of the academic world, I have written for Ha’aretz, openDemocracy, The Conversation, The Jewish Quarterly and Teaching History, and regularly give public talks. On television, I have featured in programmes including ‘Al-Nakba: The Debate’, which focused on the British role in the history of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict, ‘World War I through Arab Eyes- Episode 3: The New Middle East‘, and ‘The Grand Mufti’, a documentary about the Palestinian leader Muhammed Amin al-Husayni. I am a committee member of the British Association for Jewish Studies, an Honorary Senior Research Associate in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. I am also a member of the History & Policy Network, and the chair of ErRS: the Ethnicity, Race, and Racism Seminar at Edge Hill. In 2015, I organised the ErRS symposium ‘Islamophobia and Surveillance: Genealogies of a Global Order’.
I was awarded an MA in Politics from the University of Glasgow in 1994. Whilst continuing my studies at Glasgow, I lectured part-time in HM Prison, Saughton, Edinburgh before gaining an MPhil in Urban Policy in 1998. I became a part-time Research Associate on the ESRC-funded Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, within the Centre for Law and Society, University of Edinburgh and also joined the Department of Urban Studies, University of Glasgow as a part-time Research Assistant. I continued in both roles until 2000 when I was appointed as a full-time Research Fellow in the Department of Urban Studies and then Lecturer in Housing Studies in 2004. I moved to Sheffield Hallam University in 2005, where I took up a post as Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research. I became a Principal Research Fellow at Sheffield Hallam in 2006 and was appointed as Professor of Housing and Urban Governance in 2007. In October 2011 I was appointed to the post of Professor of Town and Regional Planning in the Department. My research interests include housing policy, housing management, citizenship, crime and anti-social behaviour, neighbourhood renewal and social cohesion and religion.
John Daley is the CEO of Grattan Institute, which conducts independent, rigorous and practical analysis of Australian public policy. John Daley has 20 years experience at the intersection of the public sector, private enterprise, and academia. His diverse background includes law, finance, education, and workers compensation. Previous roles include the University of Melbourne, the University of Oxford, the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet, consulting firm McKinsey and Co, and most recently ANZ where he was Managing Director of the online stockbroker, E*TRADE Australia. John has a DPhil in Public Law from the University of Oxford, and degrees in Law and Science from the University of Melbourne.
Originally a chemical engineer, I followed my first degree with a doctorate which allowed me to study how innovation was managed in a particular organization over an extended period of time. Since then I have written, researched and consulted extensively in the area. My recent interest in some of the psychological aspects of innovation led me to take another degree in that field.
Jonathan is Professor in Robotics at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). His main research interest is in the area of Field Robotics and in particular making machines operate autonomously in unstructured environments. He graduated from the University of Southampton, UK, in 1991 with an Honours degree in Aerospace Systems Engineering. Jonathan furthered his interest in computer vision while completing a PhD (1991-1994) at the University of Southampton where he also developed skills in parallel computing. In 1995 Jonathan joined CSIRO (Australia’s largest government research agency) to develop the area of mining robotics where he worked on numerous large robot machines including 3,500 tonne draglines, 30 tonne underground haul trucks and autonomous underground explosive loading vehicles. His work with his colleagues on the navigation system of semi-autonomous Load-Haul-Dump (LHD) vehicles was commercialised by Caterpillar. He was appointed a Science Leader at CSIRO in the area of Robotics and then went on to lead the Autonomous Systems Laboratory also at CSIRO where he was Research Director. Jonathan is the co-inventor, and current head judge of the UAV Challenge Outback Rescue, an international flying robot competition in which teams search for a lost bushwalker using autonomous robotic aircraft. In 2013 he and his research team won the Australia and New Zealand Internet Award for Innovation for their Museum Robot project. This project deployed two mobile robots in the National Museum of Australia in Canberra and continues to be used by remote school students to visit the museum with an educator guide, on a weekly basis. In 2013 Jonathan made international news by being the first person to 3D map the interior of the Leaning Tower of Pisa using his team’s Zebedee 3D laser scanning mobile mapping system. He continues to have an interest in the use of robotics technology for the use in documenting and protecting important cultural heritage sites. His team’s mapping of Fort Lytton in Brisbane in conjunction with Queensland Parks and The University of Queensland was the first Australian heritage site to be archived on CyArk, the international digital cultural heritage database. At QUT, Jonathan is now developing technology for medical and healthcare robotics and in particular has an interest in the use of robot vision to help with robotic surgery. Jonathan was President of the Australian Robotics & Automation Association Inc. from 2007-2008, and between 2008 and 2013 was Deputy Research Director of the Australian Research Centre for Aerospace Automation (ARCAA). Jonathan is also an expert on Star Wars, which he first saw after queueing around the block for tickets with his brother and parents to see the original film in 1977. He has maintained an active interest in all things Star Wars, especially droids, since that time.
John Vella is a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation (CBT) and a member of the Faculty of Law at Oxford. John studied law at the University of Malta (BA and LLD) and the University of Cambridge (LLM and PhD). Prior to his current post he was Norton Rose Career Development Fellow in Company Law at the Faculty of Law at Oxford. John has given evidence twice before the House of Lords EU Sub-Commmittee A on Financial Transaction Taxes (November 2011 and March 2013) and before the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards on the role of tax in relation to banking standards and culture (January 2013). He is the convenor of the Tax Section of the UK Society of Legal Scholars. He has been a Program Affiliate Scholar at New York University and has acted as a co-arbitrator in a tax dispute before the ICC International Court of Arbitration.
