European Young Leaders

Dawood is one of the most promising young journalists and scholars of his generation in the UK. He has been working for the BBC World Service in London as a Senior Broadcast Journalist and is a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Westminster, where he teaches Globalization, Power and International Governance. He joined the BBC in 1998 and also worked as the BBC World Service Bureau Chief and Editor in Kabul, Afghanistan. He was also a visiting scholar at Ohio State University, USA. He holds three Bachelor’s and three Master’s degrees, including Science, Law, International Relations and Diplomacy. In 2010, Dawood became the youngest person to ever win the biggest award in the BBC, the “Global Reith Award for Outstanding Contribution”. He is also a poet/writer, calligrapher and painter/artist.

As a Professor of Forced and International Affairs and Associate Head of the Social Science division at the University of Oxford, Alexander Betts’ research examines the political economy of refugee assistance, with a focus on Africa. He has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian. Betts also currently leads the IKEA Foundation-funded Refugee Economies Programme, which undertakes participatory research on the economic lives of refugees in Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia. Prior to this, he served as Director of the Refugees Studies Centre.

Jane has dedicated most her life to climate and environmental issues, serving first as a strategic consultant on low carbon policy to the Mayor of London and is now running a world-class climate science and low carbon technology centre at the UK’s National Measurement Institute. In 2008, she founded Carbon Retirement, an award-winning social enterprise working with the EU ETS. Her dedication to sustainability and entrepreneurial drive was rewarded with being named as one of the ‘Top 30 UK entrepreneurs under 30’ by Real Business in 2010, a ‘Social Entrepreneur of the Year’ by Square Mile in 2011 and one of the ‘Top 10 Outstanding Young Persons of the UK’ by the Chamber of Commerce International in 2015, among others.

Tishani is an Indian-Welsh dancer, poet and freelance writer. She is currently Visiting Professor of Practice, Literature and Creative Writing at New York University, Abu Dhabi. Otherwise based in Madras, India, Tishani divides her time between dancing for one of India’s leading choreographers, Chandralekha, and writing pieces for publications such as The Guardian, Corriere della Sera, The New York Times, The Hindu, The National, India Today, Outlook, Tricycle, Vogue and Elle. Her written work has garnered various awards, including the prestigious Forward Prize (UK) for Best First Collection (2006) for her debut collection of poems, and she was selected to represent India at the 2012 Poetry Parnassus Cultural Olympiad in London. Her first novel, “The Pleasure Seekers”, was published to critical acclaim in 2010 and has been translated into multiple languages. Her latest book, “Everything Begins Elsewhere”, is a collection of poems and has been published in India, the UK and the USA.

Colum is an Irish politician, who has been at the heart of the post-conflict success in Derry, the second largest city in Northern Ireland. He is currently the Leader of the SDLP and a member of the British parliament. Colum previously served as a member of parliament in the Norther Ireland Assembly, during which time he was appointed SDLP representative on the committee overseeing the work of the First Minister and deputy First Minister. He also sat on the Standards and Privileges and the Environment committees. Colum was elected Mayor of Derry at age 27, making him the youngest mayor to serve the city to date, prior to which he was on the Derry City Council. Throughout his career, Colum has championed Derry as a city of culture and continuously stood against dissident republican violence, calling for an end to terrorist activities by armed groups.

Myriam is an academic, broadcaster and writer specialising in issues related to Islam and the Middle East. She is a regular contributor to the Middle East Eye, the New Statesman and the Telegraph. In 2014, she broke a headline story on an exclusive 36-page document written by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Al-Qaeda militant behind the 9/11 attacks. Since then, she presented two BBC documentaries, ‘The Muslim Pound’ (2016) and ‘A Deadly Warning: Srebrenica Revisited’ (2015) nominated for the Sandford St Martin religious programming award. Myriam is also a Research Associate at the Centre of Islamic Studies at SOAS University, where she focuses on British-Muslim integration issues. She recently completed her doctorate at Oxford University on the subject of Islamic political movements in Morocco.

Joss is a British environmental and humanitarian campaigner who currently works as the UK Programme Director for the European Climate Foundation. He also sits on the board of the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) and the Board of GreenerUK, a coalition of NGOs campaigning to protect high environmental standards through the Brexit process. He previously served as chief advisor to the Shadow Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change, in addition to serving as Associate Director for energy & climate change at the Institute for Public Policy Research. Among the many senior positions he occupied at Greenpeace UK, he has worked as Political Director, Head of Media, and Head of the Energy & Climate Campaign. During his time at Greenpeace, he co-founded the direct-action group, Plane Stupid, and acted as an advisor to the TUC and UNICEF.

Matthew, a political scientist by training, has tried to bridge the gap between academia and policy-making when it comes to topics such as radicalisation, extremism and integration. He is an outward-facing researcher who shares the view that social science should be as much about contributing to wider society as to the social sciences. Before his appointment as Professor of Politics and International Relations in Kent, he served as a member of the UK government’s working group on anti-Muslim hatred and spent twelve months on a full-time secondment in a central government department, working alongside policy makers on extremism and integration issues. Matthew also serves as co-editor of the Routledge book series on Extremism and Democracy and regularly contributes to news outlets such as The Guardian and Politico.

In his current position as special advisor to the UK government under Boris Johnson, Luke works on fostering greater unity amongst the different countries of the United Kingdom. He was previously a member of parliament for the Conservative Party and served as the parliamentary private secretary to the Cabinet Office. Before entering politics, Luke worked in the private sector as an accountant for over a decade. Upon returning from five years abroad in China, Thailand and the United States, he campaigned for Scotland to remain in the United Kingdom. He also notably took on the role of finance director for Stronger In, the official Remain campaign during the Brexit referendum. 

Ben is a British writer and technologist, specialising in the effects of the internet and the ubiquitous digital network on the worldʼs political, cultural and social spheres. He enjoys an international career as a speaker, explaining complex technological and sociological topics to lay audiences and as a high-level advisor on these matters to governments and business. He is currently a Robert Schuman fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, an Innovator in Residence at the Centre for Creative and Social Technologies at Goldsmiths, University of London, a non-resident fellow of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institute in Washington D.C., a member of the European Commission High Level Group on Media Freedom and contributing editor of the UK edition of WIRED magazine. He is the accredited inventor of the word “Podcast”, published in The Guardian (2004).

Mehdi is an award-winning journalist and political commentator. He is the presenter of ‘The Café’, ‘Head to Head’ and ‘UpFront’ on Al Jazeera English. He was previously political director at Huffington Post UK. Mehdi was named as one of the 100 most influential Britons on Twitter and was included in the annual global list of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world. In 2013, his debate-winning speech in an Oxford Union debate on Islam and peace went viral online, winning more than two million views. He is also the author of two books: a biography of former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband and an eBook on debt and the financial crisis.

Hera is a Scottish activist, feminist and tech expert. Passionate about empowering women, she created CHAYN as a global project run by volunteers that crowdsources online resources to address gender-based violence. CHAYN has reached more than 300,000 people through its projects targeted to helping survivors of abuse. Hera is a fervent believer in the power of open source technology and open data as a tool to solve the world’s pressing issues. When she is not busy running CHAYN, Hera works with governments and civil society seeking to open data sets as a way to fight corruption.

Anne-Marie co-founded and became the CEO of Stemettes in 2013. Through this social enterprise, she aims to inspire and promote the involvement of the next generation of women into scientific, technologic, engineering, and mathematics centred subjects (STEM) and careers. Within three years, Stemettes has attracted over 7000 girls across the UK, Ireland and Europe to their events. A child prodigy, Anne-Marie’s passion and success in the STEM scene started at an early age, with passing two GCSEs at the age of ten, and being the youngest girl ever to pass A-Level Computing. In recognition of her influence and achievements, Anne-Marie was awarded an MBE in 2017.

Owen is an author, commentator and political activist. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian, having previously written for the Independent. He has made several television appearances on the BBC, Channel 4 and Sky News as well as on ITV’s Daybreak and BBC One’s ‘Question Time’. His work also appeared in several publications, including the Sunday Mirror and Le Monde diplomatique. In 2011, Owen published his first book, ‘Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class’, which received favourable critical reviews, including from the New York Times. He was named one of the top 50 Britons of the year by the Independent on Sunday in 2011 and was awarded the Young Writer of the Year prize at the Political Book Award in 2013.

Sarah is the CEO and Founding Editor of emel, the premier Muslim Lifestyle brand. Through emel, she fundamentally formed the concept of Muslim Lifestyle, creating a seismic shift in the way Muslims were perceived and marketed to. She was a member of the Home Office Task Force on extremism after the July 2005 London bombings. Sarah was awarded an OBE in 2004 for services to inter-faith dialogue and the promotion of women’s rights. She was listed as one of the UK’s most powerful Muslims in the Muslim Power 100 by Carter Andersen, and one of the World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims by Georgetown University and the Jordanian Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre.