Episode 11 | Sanchayan Banerjee

Episode 11 | Sanchayan Banerjee

Sanchayan Banerjee is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Economics and Public Policy at the Policy Institute in King’s College London. He is a visiting fellow of the London School of Economics and an affiliate of Amsterdam Sustainability Institute and the Institute for Environmental Studies in Amsterdam. His research focusses on developing citizen-oriented, participatory behavioural public policies and testing their effectiveness and legitimacy using experiments (field, lab and online) in areas of food policy, energy policy, public health, and charitable donations. Sanchayan has co-developed the NUDGE+ toolkit with Peter John.

Episode 10 | Emma de Closset

Emma de Closset is the Chief Executive of UK Community Foundations (UKCF), a place-based network which invests in communities through local giving and philanthropy. Prior to joining UKCF in January 2025, Emma was a Director in the Cabinet Office. She led operational and policy delivery for international summits, serving as the Chief Operating Officer for the UK’s G7 Presidency in 2021 and the Prime Minister’s Deputy Representative for the AI Safety Summit in 2023. She was also instrumental in the creation of the National Leadership Centre for public sector leaders (now part of the Leadership College for Government). Emma has served twice in the Prime Minister’s Office:  first, as a No10 policy advisor during the coalition years, returning in 2017 to lead No10 special projects.

Episode 9 | Theresa Villiers

Between 2005 and 2024, Theresa served in the House of Commons as MP for Chipping Barnet. In December 2005, after just seven months in parliament, David Cameron appointed Theresa to his Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury. As well as working with George Osborne on Conservative economic policy, Theresa led the Opposition scrutiny of the Finance Bills in 2006 and 2007 – this process is a notoriously complex and difficult task but Theresa gained vital concessions from Gordon Brown who was then the Chancellor. At David Cameron’s first reshuffle in July 2007, she gained further promotion and was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Transport.

Episode 8 | Julia Ellingwood

Julia is a Research Fellow with the Experimental Government Team (XGT) at the Policy Institute. Before joining the Institute in March 2023, she contributed to research on public preferences on hate speech regulation at the Hertie School in Berlin, as well as on connections between labour conditions and voting, family health, and child behaviour at the Berlin Social Science Centre (WZB).  Julia holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the Hertie School and a BA in History from Kenyon College (USA). Prior to completing her master's, she worked in education for several years in the United States, first as a middle school math teacher and then in education technology. Her research interests proceed in part from her time working in classrooms, particularly around inequality, social stratification, and labour conditions of frontline service providers.

Episode 7 | Jon Roozenbeek

Jon Roozenbeek is a Lecturer in Psychology. As a computational social psychologist, Jon’s research seeks to understand the interplay between modern communication technologies and polarisation, misinformation, and authoritarianism. He covers topics such as human-AI interaction, group identity and ideology building, misinformation and propaganda (especially in Ukraine and Russia), institutional trust, digital technology use, and the psychological drivers of authoritarianism. He has recently published two books: The Psychology of Misinformation [https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/psychology-of-misinformation/2FF48C2E201E138959A7CF0D01F22D84] (with Sander van der Linden) and Propaganda and Ideology in the Russian-Ukrainian War [https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/psychology/social-psychology/propaganda-and-ideology-russianukrainian-war?format=HB&isbn=9781009244015]. Jon’s work has been awarded numerous distinctions, including the 2025 Jim Sidanius Early Career Award from the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP), the 2024 Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science (APS), and the ISI Highly Cited Researcher recognition. At Psychology, he lectures and supervises students for PBS02 (Social Psychology, Applied Psychology and Individual Differences) and PBS07 (Advanced Topics in Social and Applied Psychology).