Judges

Cindy Yu

Cindy Yu is Assistant Editor (Broadcast) at The Spectator, where she also hosts the magazine’s Chinese Whispers podcast. The podcast is a deep dive into all the intriguing themes of Chinese politics, society and history that often go under the radar of mainstream China reporting.

She was born in Nanjing, China. She has written extensively about China for The Spectator, the Telegraph, Foreign Policy, among others. She is a frequent commentator on China issues for the BBC, TalkTV, RTE News, Channel 4 and GB News.

Colin Crouch

Colin Crouch is an external scientific member of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies at Cologne and professor emeritus of the University of Warwick. He previously taught at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Oxford (Fellow of Trinity College), and the European University Institute, Florence. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and of the Academy of Social Sciences, and a member of the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino. His most recent books include The Globalization Backlash (2019); Will the Gig Economy Prevail? (2019); Manifesto for Social Europe (2020); and Post-Democracy after the Crises (2020). His Rethinking Political Identity: Citizens and Parties in Europe will be published in 2025.

Katja Hoyer

Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and journalist. Her widely acclaimed debut book was Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire, 1871–1918. Her second book. Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990 is an international bestseller and has been translated into sixteen languages. Katja is a visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She is a columnist for the Berliner Zeitung and writes about current affairs in Germany and Europe for newspapers in Britain and the United States. She is co-host of the podcast The New Germany.

Kim Darroch (Chair)

Lord Darroch is a retired UK civil servant and life peer in the House of Lords. His diplomatic career spanned over 40 years, primarily focusing on national security issues and European policy. Most recently, Lord Darroch served as the British Ambassador to the United States (2016-2019). Prior to Washington, he was National Security Adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron (2012-2015), and in that role, oversaw issues such as the rise of Daesh in Iraq and Syria, Russian aggression in Ukraine, and the collapse of government authority in Libya. In addition, he worked in senior roles on UK-EU policy and multilateral negotiations, including spells as Permanent Representative to the European Union (2007-2011) and as EU Adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair (2004-2007).

Thangam Debbonaire

Thangam Debbonaire was Member of Parliament for Bristol West 2015-2024, serving as a Labour Whip and as Shadow Brexit Minister during those turbulent years. From the start of Keir Starmer’s leadership she served in his Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, then Shadow Leader of the House, finally as Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. She now writes, does media and provides consultancy primarily for arts creative industries and cultural partnerships.

Thangam was a professional cellist, now amateur, playing regularly with a string quartet. She worked for 26 years tackling violence against women, most recently with male perpetrators.

Anita Sethi

Dr Anita Sethi is an award-winning writer and critic and author of the acclaimed book I Belong Here: a Journey Along the Backbone of Britain which won a Books Are My Bag award and was nominated for the Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing, the Great Outdoors Award and Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize for writing evoking a strong sense of place. The Sunday Times review wrote: “Punchier and more political than most nature writing, this book is a thing of beauty”.

She has written columns, features and reviews for newspapers and magazines including the Guardian and Observer, Sunday Times, the i paper, Independent, Telegraph, BBC Wildlife, Vogue, New Statesman, Granta, Times Literary Supplement, among others.  In broadcasting she has appeared on several BBC radio programmes.

She has been a Judge of the Women’s Prize, British Book Awards, Costa Book Awards, and Society of Authors Awards among others.

Jim Crace (Chair)

Jim Crace is an English political fabulist and the multi prize-winning author of fourteen novels.

Laura Battle

Laura Battle is Senior Editor on FT Weekend. She joined the FT in 2011 and worked as an editor on the House & Home desk and as the FT‘s deputy books editor prior to her current role.

Matthew Beaumont

Matthew Beaumont is a Professor of English Literature at University College London and a Co-Director of UCL’s Urban Laboratory. He is the author of several books, including Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London (2015), Lev Shestov: Philosopher of the Sleepless Night (2021), and How We Walk: Frantz Fanon and the Politics of the Body (2024).

Isabel Hardman

Isabel Hardman is Assistant Editor of the Spectator and presenter of Radio 4’s ‘The Week in Westminster’. She regularly writes political columns for other publications, including The Times, Sunday Times, Observer and the Independent. Isabel is the author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians – which was longlisted for the 2019 Orwell Prize, shortlisted for Waterstones’ 2018 Book of the Year, and won a Parliamentary Book Award – and The Natural Health Service. Her most recent book, Fighting for Life, published by Viking/Penguin, explores the critical moments in the history of the NHS.

John Pienaar

John Pienaar is one of Britain’s best-connected and most highly respected journalists, spending nearly three decades at the BBC before joining Times Radio’s Drive programme as presenter in 2020. John’s BBC career began in 1992 as a political reporter. He went on to become BBC Deputy Political Editor and presenter of several TV and radio shows including Pienaar’s Politics on Radio 5Live. Before the BBC John was a political correspondent at The Independent and the Press Association. John trained at the South London Press before becoming its Old Bailey Correspondent.

Jonathan Shainin

Jonathan Shainin founded the Guardian Long Read and was later the paper’s head of opinion and the editor of Cotton Capital, an award-winning investigation into its founders’ connections to slavery. He edited The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent, an anthology of Israeli journalism. He has worked at the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, and The Caravan.

Maryam Moshiri

Maryam Moshiri is a Chief Presenter at BBC News. She began her career as a business news presenter, and was the face of business on the BBC News channel and BBC world for 16 years, covering all the top business stories from the economic impact of the 9/11 attacks to the global financial crisis.

In 2019 Maryam became a main news presenter on BBC World and BBC News, anchoring OS, Global and The Context, and covering significant events, such as the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the death of Queen Elizabeth II. In February 2024 the BBC launched ‘The World Today with Maryam Moshiri’ on the BBC’s news channel, which reaches 112 million people each week globally.

Matt Walsh (Chair)

Matt Walsh is head of school at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University. Prior to moving into higher education, Matt worked as a journalist and executive producer in broadcast and digital media for more than 20 years.

In 1999 Matt joined ITN from the BBC as a reporter and rose to become Deputy Editor of the ITV News Channel. Later, he set-up The Times’ multimedia journalism department and launched podcasts and web video series with presenters including John Oliver, Clive James and Gordon Ramsay. Matt continues to combine teaching with consultancy and industry work.

Caroline Wheeler

Caroline Wheeler is the political editor at The Sunday Times. Her work in the past year included the revelation that a British researcher working in the heart of Parliament had been arrested on suspicion of spying for China. She also broke the story about Rosie Duffield resigning from the Labour Party and Sue Gray’s imminent departure from No10 as the PM’s chief of staff. She was also responsible for numerous agenda-setting stories on the Covid pandemic, including Boris Johnson’s plans to introduce tougher restrictions for Christmas 2020. She also exposed Operation Yellowhammer, the government’s secret contingency plan for a hard Brexit. Caroline has also covered the NHS contaminated blood scandal for 20 years, since she was a junior reporter in Birmingham.

Lígia Teixeira (Chair)

Lígia Teixeira is the founding Chief Executive of the Centre for Homelessness Impact, a member of the What Works Network. She set up the Centre in 2018 to bring ‘what works’ methodology to homelessness: the use of reliable evidence and reason to improve outcomes with existing resources. In 2019 Lígia was conferred the Award of Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) for her contribution to social science. In 2016 she was awarded a Clore Social Fellowship on Housing and Homelessness, funded by the Oak Foundation.

Lígia was previously at Crisis UK, where over a period of nine years she led the organisation’s evidence and data programme – growing its scale and impact so that it’s now one of the largest and most influential in the UK and internationally. She joined the charity in March 2008 following stints at the Young Foundation and the Refugee Council. Lígia was awarded a PhD from the Government Department of the London School of Economics in 2007. She has also worked in research roles for Professor David Held, founder of Polity Press, for sociologist Professor Helmut Anheier, who founded and directed the LSE’s Centre for Civil Society, and for the International Labour Organisation where she covered issues including human trafficking, child labour and women’s rights.

Lorna Tucker

Lorna Tucker is an award-winning film director. Her first feature documentary Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist (2018) debuted to great acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2018 Lorna was named by both Harper’s Bazaar and Elle as one of the five biggest breakout female filmmakers of the year. 2018 also saw the release of Lorna’s second feature documentary, Amá. For her film Someone’s Daughter, Someone’s Son (2024), she drew from her own experience of homelessness to shed light on Britain’s homelessness epidemic. In 2024, Lorna was announced as an official Ambassador of Big Issue Group. Her debut novel BARE: If A Million Little Pieces were entirely true and written by a woman will be published by Octopus Books in 2025.

Robert Booth

Robert Booth is an award-winning journalist at The Guardian where he is UK technology editor. He has covered housing and homelessness for over two decades.