Democracy on Trial: The verdict and the road ahead Gavin Esler, Patrick J Houlihan, Alexander Hurst, Kate Pickett and Joan Concannon (chair)

Gavin Esler is a writer, journalist and award winning broadcaster and podcaster. His most recent books are Britain Is Better Than This and How Britain Ends, and his podcast series on international relations and defence is This Is Not A Drill.

Patrick J Houlihan FTCD is Associate Professor in History at Trinity College Dublin, where is also an elected Fellow. His research interests include war and ideology in European and Global History from the American Revolution to the present. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Oxford, for which he serves as an Alumni Ambassador in Ireland for Pembroke College. He is also a consulting professor for the research group, The Global Pontificate of Pius XII: Catholicism in a Divided World, 1945-1958, which is exploring the newly opened Vatican archives of Pope Pius XII.  His book, Catholicism and the Great War: Religion and Everyday Life in Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914-1922 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), was awarded the Fraenkel Prize of the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide. His most recent book is Religious Humanitarianism During the World Wars, 1914-1945: Between Atheism and Messianism (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

Alexander Hurst is a Paris-based writer, editor and columnist at The Guardian, and an adjunct Lecturer at Sciences Po, the Paris Institute of Political Studies. He holds an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics and an MA in International Public Policy from Sciences Po. He spent most of his childhood in a quirky, pre-gentrification, inner-city neighbourhood in Cleveland, Ohio, US before crossing the Atlantic. After a year working in Moundou, Chad (where he learned to properly peel a mango), he ended up in Paris, writing longform stories and essays for various magazines. His memoir, Generation Desperation (available Jan 2026), is a modern fable about money and greed; at its centre, the story of how he made - and lost - $1.2 million trading ‘meme stocks’ during the chaotic Covid lockdowns of 2020. Alexander became a French citizen in summer, 2022.

Kate Pickett OBE is Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York where she leads the Public Health & Society research group and is the Director of the Born in Bradford Centre for Social Change. She is an academic co-director of Health Equity North and co-founder and patron of The Equality Trust. She is the co-author, with Richard Wilkinson, of the award-winning and best-selling The Spirit Level (2009) and The Inner Level (2018). The Spirit Level was awarded Publication of the Year by the Political Studies Association, chosen as one of the Top Ten Books of the Decade by the New Statesman, and one of the top 100 books of the century by the Guardian. In 2023, Kate received an OBE for services to societal equality.

Joan Concannon is the Chief Reputation and Stakeholder Relations Officer at the University of York. Her portfolio includes reputation and brand management, stakeholder engagement identifying opportunities to develop scalable quadruple helix partnerships to drive public, private, academic, and philanthropic income diversification with a specific focus on aligning with regional economic growth and investment priorities. She is responsible for a portfolio of functions including Communications (institutional brand strategy, digital engagement, media and research communications, staff and student communications and events and public engagement), the Office for Philanthropic Partnerships and Alumni (OPPA) and Economic Development.