Resident Physician at St Mary Mercy Hospital and Research Scientist for the Exposure Research Laboratory, University of Michigan Dr. Utibe Effiong is a US physician. Before his clinical appointment at St. Mary Mercy Hospital, he was the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Michigan Risk Science Center. In that role, he ran Risk Without Borders, a unique blog which examined emerging risk issues through the lens of a developing economy. Dr. Effiong is a qualified physician and public health scientist. He holds the MBBCh degree from the University of Calabar, membership of the Nigerian National Postgraduate Medical College of Physicians and the MPH degree from the University of Michigan. For his master’s degree he concentrated on Environmental Health and Infectious Disease Epidemiology. He is also a New Voices Fellow with the Aspen Institute. Dr. Effiong is no stranger to public health risk communication having spent 3 years at the University of Michigan where he has produced nearly 50 publications. He also has more than 13 years of experience in the Nigerian health system. Prior to starting Risk Without Borders, Dr. Effiong spent 2 years as a research scientist with the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Before that he had worked for six years as an Internist with several Nigerian hospitals including the University of Uyo Teaching hospital and General Hospital Umunnato where he carried out clinical duties, medical research, student/physician training and health education for diabetic patients. Drawing on 16 years’ experience in healthcare, research and risk communication, Dr. Effiong now focuses on creating an understanding of emerging global health risk issues from the perspective of a developing economy. He does this through his writing, interviews and public speeches. His articles have been featured by the World Economic Forum, Huffington Post and the Detroit Free Press. He has given several television, radio and magazine interviews and has spoken at various international fora. Most recently he spoke at Exponential Medicine in San Diego and gave a TED talk in Berlin.
PhD Candidate of Journalism, Film & Television, University of Johannesburg Leyla Tavernaro Haidarian is a media professional and ubuntu scholar. She has produced and presented for a variety of media outlets including Warner Brothers/KTLA5, the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, StarSat, MNet and the SABC. She has also appeared on HBO’s Generation Kill and played alongside Paul Walker in Vehicle 19. Leyla is a published author, co-founder of a leading educational enterprise and regularly speaks at international fora such as TEDx, The Unique Speaker Bureau and The European Baha'i Business Forum. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Johannesburg and creates TV shows for StarSat and The Africa Channel.
Research Fellow, University of Oxford Jonathan Pugh is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Applied Moral Philosophy on Wellcome Trust Investigator Award in Medical Humanities 'Neurointerventions in Crime Prevention: An Ethical Analysis'. He recently completed a DPhil project at Oxford University entitled, "Autonomy, Rationality and Contemporary Bioethics". His research interests lie primarily in issues concerning personal autonomy in practical ethics, particularly topics pertaining to informed consent. He has also written on the ethics of human embryonic stem cell research, and the use of genetic enhancement technologies.
Executive Director, UCL European Institute, UCL Uta Staiger joined UCL in 2009. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, gained with a scholarship from the Gates Cambridge Trust, as well as an MPhil from the same institution. She was also educated at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Konstanz (Germany). Prior to joining UCL, she held a post-doctoral position at the Cambridge Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH). Previously, she worked at a private foundation dedicated to cultural policy research in Barcelona, and was coordinator of a number of European Commission funded cooperative research projects. As the Executive Director of the UCL European Institute, Uta develops the long-term strategy for the Institute, and devises and implements its work programme. She also teaches on the history and theory of European integration for the UCL Department of History. Uta’s main research interests, spanning 20th century European thought, history and EU politics, are broadly in the relationship between culture and politics. She is interested in modern European, particularly early to mid-20th-century German thought that seeks to straddle aesthetics and the idea of the political. She has also worked on the role culture plays for citizenship and democracy, both in political thought and in policy developments over the course of European integration. She has published on the conjunction of culture and citizenship in European policy discourse, and the role of cultural practices for public discourses on contested urban sites. The latter also led to a co-edited volume, Memory Culture and the Contemporary City (Palgrave 2009). Most recently, she wrote a chapter on the historical policy context for the European Capitals of Culture programme for Patel, K. (ed.) The Cultural Politics of Europe. European Capitals of Culture and European Union since the 1980s (Routledge 2012). She has also contributed to and co-edited several policy reports for the European Commission, most recently writing the national report for Germany for the study Access of Young People to Culture for the DG Education and Culture (2010). She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts in 2012.
Lecturer, Monash University Paul is a lecturer at Monash University. He is interested in everything related to gravitational physics and Einstein's theory of relativity, and is involved in a variety of research topics such as neutron star and black hole physics, gravitational waves, cosmology, gravitational lensing and alternative theories of gravity. As a member of both the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration, and the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array collaboration he is contributing to the global gravitational wave detection effort by modelling gravitational wave sources and developing data analysis search algorithms.
Assistant Professor of Corporate Communication and Public Affairs, Southern Methodist University Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin brings nearly 20 years of experience in corporate, media and political (campaign) work to bear in her research, which investigates the discourse of conservative social movements in the contemporary United States. She is especially interested in how political rhetorics about fiscal issues intersect with political rhetorics about social issues, and so work to reinforce one another. She is currently writing a book that explores how evangelicals have used news and other forms of mass media to promote government policies of fiscal conservatism and personal responsibility for ameliorating economic hardship in the aftermath of the national recession of 2008, and have agitated against increased spending on public welfare programs. The book also examines how the public discourse (and political priorities) of evangelicals is not only about abortion and other such cultural hot-button issues, but includes a preference for conservative economic policymaking, as well. Martin has written journal articles and book chapters about conservative social and economic discourse in the United States. She is also interested in First Amendment jurisprudence. Martin worked for her first political campaign in the summer between her senior year of high school and first year of college, when she volunteered at a phone bank for a candidate to the United States Senate from her home state of Idaho. Since that time she has remained an active participant in and observer of the United States political process and has worked on both national and statewide campaigns. As a media practitioner, Martin served as a project coordinator and staff writer for a PBS affiliate in Washington, D.C., and has also written extensively for several business-to-business publications sponsored by General Motors. She began her career as a project manager and industrial engineer, first for the Boeing Company and then for Hewlett-Packard. As a teacher, Martin is deeply committed to helping students discover their own voices, as well as find ways to make their classroom experiences apply to their everyday, practical (and professional) lives. She encourages her students to apply their education to questions of social justice wherever they can, and to believe in the always-revolutionary notion that one person can make a real difference in the world.
