Rt Hon. Alistair Burt

The Rt Hon Alastair Burt (moderator) was Minister of State for the Middle East at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Minister of State at the Department for International Development from June 2017 to March 2019. Alistair served as Minister of State for Community and Social Care at the Department of Health from May 2015 until July 2016. Previously he served as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office from May 2010 until October 2013. He entered Parliament for the first time in 1983. He is the Lancaster University Pro-Chancellor.

Paul Mason

Paul Mason (panellist) is a journalist and political consultant. He was economics editor at BBC Newsnight and Channel 4 News; he is a columnist for The New World Magazine where he writes on politics and geopolitics, and adjunct fellow in Defence and Resilience at the Council on Geostrategy, where he co-presents the podcast Defence Talks. He is the author of six books, including the bestseller Postcapitalism and most recently How to Stop Fascism. He was part of the team that authored Labour's defence industrial strategy.

Meia Nouwens

Meia Nouwens (panellist) is Senior Fellow for Chinese Security and Defence Policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Meia’s expertise lies in Chinese cross-service defence analysis, China’s defence industry and innovation, as well as China’s regional strategic affairs. She leads IISS research on China’s Digital Silk Road and was a co-lead of the China Security Project with the Mercator Institute for China Studies. Meia previously worked for the European External Action Service as a policy officer in Taipei, and as a trade analyst in the EU’s delegation to New Zealand.

Avinash Paliwal

Avinash Paliwal (panellist) PhD is Reader in International Relations at SOAS University of London. He specialises in the International Relations of South Asia. His latest book, India’s Near East: A New History (Hurst, 2024) has been shortlisted for the prestigious 2025 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Book Prize and was a Finalist in the 2025 Eastern Eye Arts, Culture, and Theatre Awards. His first book My Enemy’s Enemy: India in Afghanistan from the Soviet Invasion to the US Withdrawal (Hurst, 2017) has been translated into Pashto. In 2024-25, Avinash served as an ‘India and South Asia’ analyst at the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) as part of the British Academy’s Innovation Fellowship programme.

Alessio Patalano

Alessio Patalano (panellist) is Professor of War & Strategy in East Asia at the Department of War Studies (DWS), and Co-Director of the Centre for Grand Strategy (CGS) at King’s College London (KCL). A specialist in maritime strategy and doctrine, Japanese military history and strategy, East Asian security, and European defence and foreign policy, he has taught at the UK Joint Command and Staff Services College (JSCSC) and held research positions at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at the IRIS in Paris.

Cindy Yu

Cindy Yu (panellist) is a columnist and contributing editor at The Times and The Sunday Times. Previously, she was assistant editor (broadcast) at The Spectator magazine, where she also hosted the Chinese Whispers podcast, a series on Chinese politics, society and history.

Professor Edward Simpson

Ed is Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Lancaster University. He was previously head of College at SOAS University of London and have held positions at Goldsmiths College and London School of Economics. He is an anthropologist with a long-standing interest in South Asia and more recently in infrastructure and environmental questions in the northwest of England.

Ed is a strong advocate of humanities and social sciences in public life. He is interested in people: what we claim and do to each other (what anthropologists often mean by ‘ethnographic’). In other words, his research is on a human level on issues large and small. He has conducted many years of research in western India. He collaborates with artists and filmmakers in the belief that research is a public good.

Ed is primarily interested in how abstract ideas are made into concrete realities, this can relate to material infrastructures as well as political ideologies. How do you build a road? How do you engineer a society to believe certain things, dislike some other people, and vote in particular ways?

Ed has written three monographs, edited four collections of essays, and written over forty peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters. He has been centrally involved in the production of five anthropological films and two major exhibitions. Many of these works have been collaborative and have involved partnerships across disciplines, institutions and countries.

Olivia Cheung

Olivia is Lecturer in Politics at the Department of European and International Studies, King's College London. She is a political scientist with over 10 years of professional experience on China. She is the author of Factional-Ideological Conflicts in Chinese Politics: To the Left or to the Right? (Amsterdam University Press, 2023). The book examines elite debates and policy changes on socialist transformation and political reform in China from the 1960s through the end of Xi Jinping’s second term in 2022.

Olivia’s second book is The Political Thought of Xi Jinping co-authored with Steve Tsang (Oxford University Press, 2024). It is widely recognized internationally as an authoritative examination of ‘Xi Jinping Thought’—now the official dogma of the Chinese Communist Party. It is selected in the Financial Times’ ‘What to read in 2024’ and has been extensively reviewed.

Currently Olivia is working on a research project on China’s global strategy. Her research articles have been published in the China Quarterly, Third World Quarterly, Asan Forum, East Asia: An International Quarterly, etc. She is a frequent speaker on topics about China at professional events. Her news commentaries and research have been featured in TIME magazine, Five Books, Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times, Guardian, France 24, New Statesman, South China Morning Post, CNN, etc.

Olivia previously taught Chinese politics and East Asia’s political economy at the University of Warwick, where she was director of a MA programme. She obtained her DPhil and MPhil from the University of Oxford, where she was a Swire Scholar and a Rhodes Scholar.

Andrew Chubb

Andrew is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University. A graduate of the University of Western Australia, his work examines the linkages between Chinese domestic politics and international relations. More broadly, Andrew's interests include maritime and territorial disputes, strategic communication, political propaganda, and Chinese Communist Party history.

Andrew is the author of Chinese Nationalism and the Gray Zone: Case Analyses of Public Opinion and PRC Foreign Policy (Naval War College Press, 2021) and the PRC Overseas Political Activities: Risk, Reaction and the Case of Australia (Routledge and Royal United Services Institute, 2021).

Meia Nouwens

Meia Nouwens is Senior Fellow for Chinese Security and Defence Policy - International Institute for Strategic Studies

Meia’s expertise lies in Chinese cross-service defence analysis, China’s defence industry and innovation, as well as China’s regional strategic affairs and international relations. She leads IISS research on China’s Digital Silk Road, and was a co-lead of the China Security Project with the Mercator Institute for China Studies.

Prior to commencing at IISS, she worked for the European External Action Service as a policy officer in Taipei, and as a trade analyst in the EU’s delegation to New Zealand. She has previously worked in private-sector consulting firms and international organisations, on topics of foreign policy, security and defence.

Meia holds a BA Hons in international relations and political science from Macquarie University, a master’s in international relations and diplomacy from Leiden University in conjunction with the Clingendael Institute, and an MPhil in modern Chinese studies from the University of Oxford and Peking University.

William Matthews

William is Senior Research Fellow for China and the World in the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House. He is an expert in China’s foreign relations, specialising in the geopolitical implications of China as a rising power, including technological competition, China–US and China–Global South relations, and UK China strategy.

He was formerly Director of Geopolitical Research at UK AI company Adarga, and prior to that taught China in comparative perspective at the London School of Economics.

William completed his PhD in Anthropology at University College London, focusing on the relationship between worldviews and reasoning in Chinese popular religion. He studied advanced Mandarin and classical Chinese at Beijing Language and Culture University and holds an undergraduate degree in anthropology from UCL.

William is the author of a book, Cosmic Coherence (Berghahn, 2022), on Chinese belief systems and social theory, as well as numerous research reports and scholarly articles on China.

Rt Hon. Alistair Burt

Rt Hon. Alistair Burt was appointed Pro-Chancellor of Lancaster University in October 2020. A law graduate, he qualified as a solicitor, before entering Parliament as MP for Bury North (1983-97). He served as MP for NE Bedfordshire (2001-19) and retired from the Commons in December 2019. He served in six ministerial posts from 1992-2019, including Minister for People with Disabilities, Minister of State for Health and Social Care, and Minister of State for the Middle East and North Africa. He is now the UK Commissioner on the International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP), a Distinguished Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a Council Member of the European Council for Foreign Relations (ECFR), and on the Advisory Council of Chatham House. He chairs the Dept of Health and Social Care Global Workforce Advisory Committee. He remains associated with a number of charities and local organisations in Bedfordshire and social enterprises engaged in the Middle East.

Hugo Meijer

Hugo Meijer is CNRS Research Fellow at Sciences Po, Centre for International Studies (CERI) and the founding Director of the European Initiative for Security Studies (EISS), the largest and most diverse network of Security Studies scholars in Europe. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS), in Brussels, and an Honorary Researcher at the Centre for War and Diplomacy, Lancaster University.

Previously, he was Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the European University Institute (EUI, Florence), Lecturer in Defence Studies at King’s College London and a Researcher at the Institute for Strategic Research (IRSEM, Paris). He was also a Senior Common Room Member at St Antony’s College, Oxford University, and a visiting scholar at the Sigur Centre for Asian Studies at George Washington University.

Avinash Paliwal

Avinash Paliwal is Reader in International Relations at SOAS. Previous to this, he was Deputy Director of the SOAS South Asia Institute, taught defence studies at King’s College London, and was the Defence Academy Postdoctoral Fellow also at King’s.

He specialises in the international relations of South Asia. His first book, My Enemy’s Enemy – India in Afghanistan from the Soviet Intervention to the US Withdrawal was published by Hurst and Oxford University Press (2017). It details India’s role in Afghanistan during and after the Cold War. His forthcoming book, India’s near East – A New History (Hurst 2024) unpacks India’s faltering attempts to exert control over its eastern hinterland and the neighbouring states of Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Avinash holds an MA and PhD in International Relations from King’s College London and a BA (Hons) in Economic History from the University of Delhi. Formerly a Visiting Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), New Delhi, he briefly worked as a foreign affairs journalist before entering academia.

Simona Soare

Dr Simona Soare is Senior Lecturer in Strategy and Technology at Lancaster University. Prior to joining Lancaster University, Simona was research fellow for defence and military analysis with IISS, Senior Associate Analyst for transatlantic defence and EU-NATO cooperation with the EUISS, Senior Security and Defence Advisor to the Vice-President of the European Parliament and Defence Analyst with the Ministry of Defence.

Simona specializes in defence innovation and emerging technologies, software-defined defence, digital transformation of defence, and future of war.

She holds a PhD in International Security (2011), and she is a US Department of State Fellow and a Denton Fellow.

Cindy Yu

Cindy Yu is Assistant Editor at The Spectator where she also hosts the magazine’s Chinese Whispers podcast and writes on Chinese politics and society, China’s foreign relations, as well as the lives of Chinese diaspora overseas.

A fluent English and Mandarin speaker, she was born and raised in Nanjing, China, until the age of 10. Cindy read Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at the University of Oxford, where she also read for a Master of Science in contemporary Chinese studies. Her research focused on Chinese political propaganda and modern youth opinion. She is a frequent radio and TV commentator on China issues.