Chair
Professor Charles Tripp FBA
Professor Emeritus of Politics, SOAS, University of London
Charles Tripp has been Professor of Politics with reference to the Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London from 2007 to 2018 and is a Fellow of the British Academy.
His PhD was from SOAS and examined Egyptian politics in the latter years of the monarchy. He has worked at the IISS in London and at the Graduate Institute for International Studies in Geneva. At SOAS he has been head of the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies and is one of the co-founders of the Centre for Comparative Political Thought. His research has mainly focused on political developments in the Middle East and includes the nature of autocracy, war and the state, as well as Islamic political thought, the politics of resistance and the relationship between art and power. He is currently working on a study of the emergence of the public and the rethinking of republican ideals in Tunisia.
His publications include Islam and the Moral Economy: The Challenge of Capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 2006); A History of Iraq (Cambridge University Press, 2007) His most recent book is The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
Jury panel
Professor Madawi Al-Rasheed FBA
Writer and academic, Visiting Professor at the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics
Professor Madawi Al-Rasheed brings the disciplines of history and social anthropology to the study of contemporary Saudi Arabia. Her research has explored the interplay between politics and social change, religion and gender in Saudi society, and its impact locally, regionally and internationally. Most recently, she has examined the often contradictory themes of reform and repression, as Saudi leadership seeks to promote itself on the world stage while consolidating its power domestically.
A frequent participant in documentaries, debates and discussions on Saudi Arabia in both English and Arabic media, she also acts as an independent advisor to Government, Inter-Governmental and Non-Governmental Organisations.
She is the author of Salman’s Legacy: The Dilemmas of a New Era in Saudi Arabia which was published in 2018, and her most recent book is The Son King: Reform and Repression in Saudi Arabia, published by OUP in 2021.
Professor Rebecca Earle FBA
Food historian, Professor of History at University of Warwick
Rebecca Earle is a writer and professor of history at the University of Warwick.
Mostly she writes about the cultural significance of food and eating in the early-modern and modern world. She’s also written about Spanish American history.
She is interested in how everyday activities like eating or dressing can shed light on big historical processes such as colonialism or the emergence of racial categories.
She has authored five books and over forty articles and book chapters. Her most recent book (Feeding the People: The Politics of the Potato (Cambridge University Press, 2020) uses the history of the potato to trace out some of the key features of modernity.
She is currently researching the history of cookery books.
Fatima Manji
Channel 4 News broadcaster and journalist
Fatima Manji is a News Correspondent and regularly reports on a range of national and international stories.
Her broadcasting has included telling the story of the migration crisis from the borders of Europe, interviewing victims of ISIS atrocities in Iraq and challenging politicians here in the UK during the referendum campaign. She also occasionally presents the programme from the studio. Fatima has won a number of awards for her journalism and in 2015 she was a finalist for the Royal Television Society's Young Journalist of the Year.
During the last General Election she presented Britain's first ever Alternative Election Debate featuring young party leaders facing a live audience on Channel 4. Fatima joined Channel 4 News in 2012 and previously worked as a reporter and video journalist at the BBC.
Professor Gary Younge Hon FBA
Journalist and author, Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester
Gary Younge is an award-winning author, broadcaster and a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester.
Formerly a columnist at The Guardian he is an editorial board member of the Nation magazine and the Alfred Knobler Fellow for Type Media.
He has written five books: Another Day in the Death of America, A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives (Guardian Faber Publishing, 2016); The Speech, The Story Behind Martin Luther King’s Dream (Haymarket Books, 2013); Who Are We?, And Should it Matter in the 21st century (Penguin, 2011); Stranger in a Strange Land, Travels in the Disunited States (The New Press, 2006) and No Place Like Home, A Black Briton’s Journey Through the Deep South (Picador, 1999).
Gary’s latest book, Dispatches from the Diaspora: From Nelson Mandela to Black Lives Matter (Faber), will be published in March 2023.
He has also written for The New York Review of Books, Granta, GQ, The Financial Times and The New Statesman among others and made several radio and television documentaries on subjects ranging from gay marriage to Brexit.