Our Patrons

What our Patrons do:

Our Patrons are senior figures in Politics, Business or Civil Society who share a belief in the power of free markets, innovations and the teachings of Adam Smith to improve their communities, the United Kingdom, and the world. They support the Institute by volunteering to give the benefit of their decades of experience and insight. We are always interested to find more people who would like to support the ASI with their time and expertise. If you think you might fit the bill, do get in touch at info@adamsmith.org.

The Rt Hon Sir Brandon Lewis CBE, Patron

Sir Brandon has been involved in politics for many years, first in local government and later as Member of Parliament for Great Yarmouth from 2010 until 2024. Sir Brandon served most recently as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice.

One of his most challenging roles came when he was appointed as the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Here, he grappled with the intricacies of the Northern Ireland political landscape, Brexit-related challenges, and the delicate balance of power-sharing arrangements in the region.

He has also successfully held many other ministerial briefs, including as the longest serving Minister of State for Housing and planning. In this capacity, he was tasked with addressing some of the pressing challenges related to housing in the UK.

Subsequently, Sir Brandon held the position of Chairman of the Conservative Party and Minister without Portfolio. His chairmanship was marked by a successful revitalisation of the party’s grassroots. As Chairman, he was at the heart of many party strategies, playing a pivotal role in shaping its policies and direction.

Outside of his governmental roles, Sir Brandon has been a proponent of community cohesion and worked on numerous initiatives aimed at strengthening ties within diverse communities.

His political service was recognised when he was honoured with the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

Previously a successful businessman, Brandon originally also qualified as a barrister and has a BSc Economics and an LLB Hons (Law) from the University of Buckingham, and an LLM in Commercial Law from King’s College London.

The Rt Hon Nadhim Zahawi, Patron

The Rt. Hon Nadhim Zahawi was the Member of Parliament for Stratford-on-Avon, and is Patron of the Adam Smith Institute.

Born in Baghdad, Nadhim and his family fled Saddam Hussein’s attempts to murder them, and came to the United Kingdom when Nadhim was 11. He could not speak a word of English.

After graduating from University College London with a degree in chemical engineering, Nadhim worked in business before co-founding the polling and market research company YouGov in 2000, which now has a market cap of over $1.3 billion.

He was CEO of YouGov until 2010, when he stood down to become the Member of Parliament for Stratford-on-Avon, birthplace of William Shakespeare.

Nadhim has served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Education Secretary, and Chairman of the Conservative Party & Minister Without Portfolio in the Cabinet Office, as well as a string of other ministerial posts.

His notable successes include that which he is probably best-known, leading the UK's world-beating COVID vaccination rollout, as well as organising her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's funeral, and raising grown-up twin boys and a 10-year-old girl with his wife Lana.

The Lord Mendelsohn of Finchley, Patron

Senior Fellows and Fellows

To arrange an interview with one of our Fellows, please contact emily@adamsmith.org

Charlie White-Thomson, Senior Fellow

Charlie White-Thomson is a seasoned financial executive. He has spent the last 30 years working in various roles in both developed and emerging markets.

This included almost 4 years in Moscow, which overlapped the global financial crisis, where he was responsible for Credit Suisse’s equity business in the Former Soviet Union. Most recently he was Chief Executive Officer of Saxo UK, an FCA regulated multi-asset online trading platform, whose clients included both retail and institutional investors. During this time, he also worked for Barings and Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette.

Charlie is an engaged thought leader, commentator and writer, and has appeared on national media on TV, radio and in print, including: BBC Radio 4, Bloomberg TV and Radio, City AM, CNBC, Sky, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Scotsman, The Times. He is an advocate of a serious growth plan for the United Kingdom, which breaks the cycle of anaemic growth, excess tax and borrowing.

Prior to his financial career, he served with the British Army where he saw active service in the First Gulf War. He was educated at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

James Price, Senior Fellow

Oliver Linch, Senior Consultant

Oliver Linch began his legal career with a leading global law firm, after which he became Chief Executive Officer and General Counsel of Bittrex Global, the global cryptocurrency exchange. He has over a decade of experience as a financial regulatory lawyer, having advised major investment banks, exchanges, and leading institutions on regulatory matters across the UK, EMEA, and North America. As part of one of the world’s top-ranking law firms, he specialised in various areas of financial regulatory advisory work, such as financial market infrastructure, payment services, and special economic zone and legislative drafting.

Oliver leads the Adam Smith Institute’s Future Markets Policy Unit.

The Rt Hon, The Lord (Peter) Lilley, Senior Fellow

After working on development projects in developing countries, Lord Lilley joined a leading City firm advising on investment in energy, becoming a Partner. Elected to Parliament in 1983, he became a Treasury Minister in 1987, served in the Cabinets of Mrs Thatcher and John Major as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, then for Social Security. In opposition he was Shadow Chancellor, then Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party until 2000. He chaired the Committee of Both Houses on Financial Services Legislation after the banking crisis and served on the Select Committees for Brexit and Energy & Climate Change. He stood down as an MP in 2017, was made a Peer in 2018, where he served on the Environment and Climate Change Committee and currently the Financial Services Regulation Committee.

Lord Lilley’s subjects of preference are: Thatcher and Thatcherism; Economics of Climate Change; Does Mass Migration Make Us Better/Worse Off?; Benefits and Costs of Brexit; Negotiating Trade Deals; Energy Policy

Dominique Lazanski, Senior Fellow

Dominique Lazanski is a digital policy and strategy freelance consultant and works on digital policy for the TaxPayers’ Alliance. She has spent over 13 years in the Internet industry with many of those years working in Silicon Valley. She has a long held interest in public policy and participatory government. She has written and spoken on digital issues over the years from a free market and entrepreneurial perspective. She holds degrees from Cornell University and the London School of Economics and is working on her PhD.

Keith Boyfield, Senior Fellow

Keith Boyfield is a well known economist, educated at the London School of Economics, specialising in economic, competition and development policy. He heads up a City consulting firm, Keith Boyfield Associates Ltd. He has written over one hundred studies for several leading think-tanks including The Adam Smith Institute, IEA, Centre for Policy Studies and the Euro Gulf Information Centre (EGIC), headquartered in Rome. Keith is an adviser to the African Development Bank and previously served as Chief Economist and Chairman of Leriba Limited (a pan-African research consultancy). He has written for a wide spectrum of well known newspapers, magazines and journals worldwide and he is the London editor of Finance Dublin. He also appears on a range of international broadcast channels including Al Jazeera, the BBC and Radio France International (RFI).

Keith has advised and acted as consultant to a range of multinational companies, trade associations and non-profits including the Advertising Association, Aon, the BBC, British Energy plc, BNFL plc, the British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (BVCA), the Commonwealth Business Council, The Crown Estate, J P Morgan, KPMG, the Swiss Bankers’ Association, and Thomson Reuters. His consultancy work has focused on the agri-business, energy, mining, financial services, media, property and aviation, shipping and transport sectors.

He has presented keynote addresses and co-chaired a number of major international conferences and summer schools in cities as diverse as Abuja, Nigeria; Baku, Azerbaijan; Dublin, Ireland; and Washington DC in the USA.

Sam Bowman, Senior Fellow

Sam Bowman is co-founder of Works in Progress.

Before founding Works in Progress he was, amongst other things, Executive Director of the Adam Smith Institute, responsible for strategy and overall management, and focused on labour market economics. In his final year at the Institute, it was ranked second globally among domestic economic policy think tanks by a University of Pennsylvania study.

He is also a co-founder of the Entrepreneurs’ Network, an entrepreneurship think tank, and the author of influential papers on labour market, monetary and migration policy.

Sam holds degrees in economics and history from University College Cork and SOAS, University of London, and was the winner of the 2009 John B O’Brien prize for economic history.

He tweet as @s8mb.

Ben Southwood, Senior Fellow

Ben Southwood is a founding editor of Works in Progress. He has been head of research at Create Streets, and head of housing at Policy Exchange, been part of three successful Emergent Ventures grants, and worked as a public sector consultant for KPMG.

Most importantly, he edited the ASI's research for almost five years, producing dozens of impactful reports Beyond the Call of Duty: Why we should abolish Stamp Duty Land Tax and Patently Good: A Defence of Intellectual Property and writing several of his own, including the award-winning research paper Is the rate of scientific progress slowing down? co-authored with Dr Tyler Cowen.

He lives in South London and is a fan of natural wine, sour beer, ambient music and cricket.

He tweets at @bswud.

Lars Christensen, Senior Fellow

Lars Christensen is Chief Analyst and Head of Emerging Markets Research at Danske Bank, based in Copenhagen. He has worked there since 2001, before which he was an economic policy analyst at the Danish Ministry of Economic Affairs. He has a masters degree in economics from the University of Copenhagen. He wrote Milton Friedman: A Pragmatic Revolutionary in Danish in 2002 and has contributed to numerous other books as well as news media including The Telegraph, Bloomberg, Reuters, the Financial Times, City A.M., and Dow Jones. In 2006 he co-authored a report “Geyser Crisis” which forecasted a major economic crisis in Iceland.

His blogThe Market Monetarist has since it was started in 2011 become one of the leading international blogs on monetary policy, and coined the name of a new and highly-influential eponymous neo-monetarist school of macroeconomics. Many other economists, particularly those who also blog, including David Beckworth and Scott Sumner, have adopted the name market monetarism to describe their theories. Lars is also the founder of the Global Monetary Policy Network, an informal network of individuals with an interest in monetary policy issues.

Tom Clougherty, Senior Fellow

Tom Clougherty is the Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs, and was previously executive director of the Adam Smith Institute until Summer 2012. He previously worked as the Institute’s policy director, and before that was Research Director at the Globalisation Institute – a think tank focused on trade and development issues. Tom is interested in all things free market and libertarian, but is particularly enthusiastic about the Austrian school of economics.

In his spare time, Tom enjoys eating, drinking, and watching cricket. He has a degree in law from the University of Cambridge.

Professor Kevin Dowd, Senior Fellow

Kevin Dowd is professor of finance and economics at Durham University and a partner in Cobden Partners in London. Dowd’s main subject of research is private money and free banking, and he is the author of a number of books on the subject, including New Private Monies – A Bit-Part Player? (2014) and Money and the Market (2001).

He holds a BA (first class honours) in economics from the University of Sheffield, an MA in economics from the University of Western Ontario, and a PhD in macroeconomics from the University of Sheffield. He has held previous positions with the Ontario Economic Council in Toronto, Sheffield Hallam University, the University of Sheffield and the University of Nottingham.

Professor Anthony J. Evans, Senior Fellow

Anthony J. Evans is Associate Professor of Economics at ESCP Europe Business School. His research interests are in corporate entrepreneurship, monetary theory, and transitional markets. He has published in a range of academic and trade journals and is the co-author of The Neoliberal Revolution in Eastern Europe (Edward Elgar, 2009). He has conducted policy research for the Conservative Party and European Investment Fund, as well as managing consultancy projects for several corporate sponsors. He teaches Executive MBA classes across Europe and has written a number of teaching cases. His work has been covered by most broadsheet newspapers and he has appeared on Newsnight and the BBC World Service. In April 2011 he joined the IEA’s Shadow Monetary Policy Committee.

Anthony received his MA and PhD in Economics from George Mason University, USA, and a BA (Hons) from the University of Liverpool, UK.

He tweets at @anthonyjevans.

Dr Tim Evans, Senior Fellow

Dr. Tim Evans has worked for the Adam Smith Institute as Consultant Director from 2008-2012 and in the late 1980s as Press Officer and Senior Policy Consultant. Tim has a PhD from the London School of Economics.

From 1991-1992, Tim Evans was the Chief Economic and Political Adviser to the Slovak Prime Minister – Dr. Jan Carnogursky – and was Head of the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit. Between 1993 and early 2002, he was the Executive Director of Public Affairs at the Independent Healthcare Association in London where he oversaw the political affairs and public relations of the UK’s independent health and social care providers. And from 2002 to 2005, Tim was President and Director-General of the Centre for the New Europe.

Tim is also CEO of the Cobden Centre, Chairman of the Economic Policy Centre, Chairman of Global Health Futures Ltd, Managing Director of Farsight SPI Ltd, and a member of the Mont Pelerin Society.

Nigel Hawkins, Senior Fellow

Nigel Hawkins is an investment analyst who specializes primarily in the electricity, gas, water and telecoms sector; he also covers several other sectors. He has worked in the City since 1988, notably for Hoare Govett (now RBS), Yamaichi and Williams de Broe (now Evolution). Prior to joining the City, he worked for six years in politics, including three years as Political Correspondence Secretary to Lady Thatcher at 10 Downing Street. In 1987, he stood in the general election as Conservative Party candidate in Sedgefield against Tony Blair.

Hawkins was awarded a degree in law, economics and politics from the University of Buckingham. He has written a number of publications for the Adam Smith Institute, including High Speed Fail (2011), Privatisation Revisited (2010), and Privatisation – Reviving the Momentum (2008).

Tyler Goodspeed, Senior Fellow

Tyler Goodspeed was the Kleinheinz Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and is a Senior Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute. He is currently the Chief Economist at ExxonMobil. From 2020 to 2021 he served as Acting Chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers, having been appointed by the President as a Member of the Council in 2019. In that role he advised the Administration’s economic response to the coronavirus pandemic, as well as subsequent economic recovery packages. He previously served as Chief Economist for Macroeconomic Policy and Senior Economist for tax, public finance, and macroeconomics, playing an instrumental role in designing the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Before joining the Council, Dr. Goodspeed was on the Faculty of Economics at the University of Oxford and was a lecturer in economics at King’s College London. He has published extensively on financial regulation, banking, and monetary economics, with particular attention to the role of access to credit in mitigating the effects of adverse environmental shocks. Goodspeed has a PhD in economics from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in history from Harvard University. He also received a BA in economics and history from Harvard, an MA in history from Harvard, and an MPhil in economic history from Cambridge, where he was a Gates Scholar.

Miles Saltiel, Senior Fellow

Miles Saltiel read PPE at Oxford and wrote his MA dissertation on Japanese business and government at Sussex. In 1979, he joined GEC-Marconi, working in corporate finance and recoveries, to become no. 2 in Marconi Projects. In 1986 he went into investment banking, joining the WestLB Group in 1996 as Head of Equity Research, Emerging Markets. In 1998, he assumed responsibility for London-based Tech Research, and in 2000 was voted one of the UK’s top 50 in the New Economy, in 2002 becoming the senior tech banker at the WestLB group.

He is the CEO of the Fourth Phoenix Company which provides policy, research and associated services to banks, industry and others. His recent publications include Seeing the wood for the trees, which evaluated the Forestry Commission’s place in modern Britain; The revenue and growth effects of Britain’s high taxes, (with Peter Young), which presented cross-country and cross-period analyses of tax reform; Bank regulation: can we trust the Vickers report? (with Tim Ambler), which analysed the report of the Independent Banking Commission and made counter-proposals; On borrowed time, which argued for the reform of “age-related” expenditures to relieve otherwise insupportable fiscal pressure; and No reason to flinch, which argued against insulating the NHS from reform by comparing it to equivalent regimes internationally.

Gabriel Stein, Senior Fellow

Gabriel Stein is an independent macroeconomist with more than thirty years experience, specialising in monetary trends. He regularly guest lectures at universities in a number of countries; and from 2019 to 2021 he taught a course on EU Politics and Policy at St Mary’s University Twickenham. He is currently undertaking a PhD in Economics History at the University of Buckingham.

In addition to Sailing Free, he has written three historical novels that take place in the Byzantine Empire.

Gabriel is a libertarian and member of the Mont Pelerin Society.

Gabriel has written extensively on topics such as the problems of monetary unions, demographics and pensions issues, broad money and credit flows and on sectoral financial balances. In 2005 he predicted that central bankers would lose their semi-divine status through failure to control asset-price bubbles. With the Adam Smith Institute, he has calculated UK Tax Freedom Day on a number of occasions.

Jamie Whyte, Senior Fellow

A former leader of the New Zealand free market party ACT New Zealand, Jamie Whyte is also a classical liberal philosopher and writer. He is the author of Bad Thoughts: A Guide to Clear Thinking (2004), A Load of Blair (2005), Free Thoughts (2012) and Quack Policy (2013) and has also written columns for publications including The Times, City A.M., Standpoint, Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. He has also been a foreign exchange trader, a management consultant, and a philosophy lecturer at Cambridge.

Jamie won the Institute for Economic Affairs’ Arthur Seldon Memorial Award for Excellence for Quack Policy in 2014, and the Reason Foundation’s Bastiat Prize for journalism in 2006 (jointly with Financial Times‘ Tim Harford).

He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Auckland, and studied for an MPhil and a DPhil at St. John’s College, Cambridge.

Eben Wilson, Senior Fellow

Eben Wilson is the Director of Taxpayer Scotland, an advocacy group which brings the voice of the Scots taxpayer to Holyrood and Westminster, to campaign for lower taxes and limited government. Among his work for the Adam Smith Institute was Digital Dirigisme, in which he argued against government intervention in the emerging digital economy.

Formerly Editorial Director of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, Eben has an MA (Hons) in Economics from St Andrews University. He trained at the Tom Hopkinson School of Journalism and worked in radio and television broadcasting as an economics and technology journalist for twenty years before migrating to exploit commercial opportunities in convergent digital media. He now runs an internet services and telematics company specialising in data gathering in the field and industrial e-procurement.

Tim Worstall, Senior Fellow

Tim Worstall is the author of Chasing Rainbows: Economic Myths, Environmental Facts. He blogs at TimWorstall.com, the Adam Smith Institute blog and at Forbes. He has written for The Times, Daily Telegraph, Express, Independent, City AM, Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer and online for the Social Affairs Unit, Spectator, The Guardian, The Register and Techcentralstation. He’s also ghosted pieces for several UK politicians in many of the UK papers, including the Daily Sport. On top of that, he is, strangely, one of the world experts on the rare earth material Scandium.

Preston Byrne, Legal Fellow

Preston Byrne is a dual-qualified U.S. and English lawyer, partner with the digital commerce group in the Washington, D.C. office of the international law firm Brown Rudnick LLP, and an adjunct professor of law at Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. Preston advises the ASI on legal aspects of its policy proposals and writes on a range of subjects including housing and planning law, the security state, freedom of expression and cryptocurrency.

Preston often contributes to or is quoted by mainstream news media on a range of technology policy topics. In 2013, he was the lead author of Burning Down the House, the ASI’s paper opposing the Conservatives’ Help to Buy mortgage subsidy programme, which was covered by hundreds of national and international media outlets including Forbes, the Financial Times, City A.M., Reuters, the Telegraph, the New Statesman, Sky News, Deutsche Welle, and the BBC. More recently, in 2020, he wrote Sense and Sensitivity: Restoring Free Speech in the United Kingdom, a proposal for the repeal of numerous censorial laws in the United Kingdom.

Preston received an MA (Hons) from the University of St Andrews, an LL.B. in English law from the College of Law of England and Wales, and an LL.M. in U.S. law from the University of Connecticut Law School.

James Gillespie, Fellow

James Gillespie is an experienced public policy professional and is the Adam Smith Institute's Fellow specialising in Economic Statecraft, sanctions policy, and international financial crime. James was previously a Policy Advisor at HM Treasury, where he worked on financial regulation, sanctions and counter illicit finance policy. He also worked at the Department for Business, on the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement. 

In addition to his work for the ASI, James is also an Associate Fellow in the Centre for Finance and Security RUSI, where his main research interests concern ransomware, illicit finance, and the use of sanctions in a cybersecurity context.

James holds an MA in Jurisprudence from the University of Oxford, where he was a member of Corpus Christi College, and a Master of Laws from the University of Southern California's Gould School of Law.

Professor David Collins, Fellow

Professor David Collins is a recognised authority on World Trade Organization law and international investment law, leads the Digital Trade Research Group at City Law School and is co-editor of the forthcoming Routledge Handbook on International Economic Law. He boasts a multifaceted legal career, having served as a prosecutor for the Attorney General of Ontario, and practices as a Solicitor in England & Wales, as well as being a member of both the Ontario and New York bar associations. As Co-Editor in Chief of “International Trade Law and Regulation” and Series Editor for Routledge’s “Insights on International Economic Law,” Collins has solidified his academic presence, supplemented by visiting academic positions at institutions like Columbia, Berkeley, and the Max Planck Institute. A recipient of grants from the British Academy and other scholarly councils, David contributes to the policymaking process through his roles in the Academic Advisory Councils of Politeia and the Institute of Economic Affairs, and as a Senior Fellow of the Macdonald Laurier Institute. Engaged in both academic administration and policy advisory, he has been nominated to international trade dispute panels, provided expert testimony to the UK’s International Trade Select Committee, and has been integral to the UK’s trade remedies authority.

James Bartholomew, Fellow

James Bartholomew is a British author and journalist who has written for the Financial Times, the Far Eastern Economic Review, The Telegraph, the Daily Express, The Spectator, and the Daily Mail. He is also a fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs

He is the author of seminal work on British benefits The Welfare State We’re In (2004), which won the Institute of Economic Affairs’ 2005 Arthur Seldon Award for Excellence, as well as the Atlas Foundation’s 2007 Sir Anthony Fisher Memorial Award.

He tweets as @JGBartholomew.

Anthony Boutall, Fellow

Anthony Boutall is an Assistant Headteacher at one of the UK’s leading grammar schools, simultaneously holding responsibility as Head of Faculty for Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. In education, he has deployed robust pedagogical tools and helped facilitate self-development. His students have attained more progress than 90%< of the country, as well as being in the top 1% for attainment.

He studied PPE at Oxford, where he wrote a dissertation on the 1979 budget, and he has since written articles for think tanks and political organisations. He has successfully campaigned on behalf of taxpayers and actively supported the introduction of greater choice in education, breaking LEA monopoly power at a local level.

Before moving into education, Anthony worked in executive search and consulting. He was directly responsible for advising Chairmen of FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 PLCs, and he went on to become the youngest director at his firm.

Anthony advises and supports the ASI in the organisation’s extensive educational offering, helping to spread knowledge and understanding of the philosophical, political, and economic foundations that underpin the intellectual weight of Adam Smith’s ideas, as well as those of his successors.

Bryan Cheang, Fellow

Bryan Cheang is the Assistant Director of the Centre for the Study of Governance & Society at King’s College London, where he received his PhD and MA in Political Economy. He is also a graduate of the National University of Singapore. He brings with him his policy experience from the Singapore civil service.

Bryan’s academic research focuses on topics relating to comparative political economy, the developmental state model and particularly, the challenges of successful industrial policy interventions.

Dr Arthur M. Diamond, Jr, Fellow

Arthur Diamond’s recent research is on innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship, all of which feature prominently in his book Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism from the Oxford University Press.

He studied philosophy and economics at the University of Chicago, where he also was a Post-Doctoral Fellow with Nobel laureate Gary Becker.  After Chicago, he was on the faculty at The Ohio State University and is now Professor of Economics at the University of Nebraska Omaha.

Arthur’s academic articles and reviews have appeared in a wide range of journals including:  Economic Inquiry, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Political Economy, History of Political Economy, Science, and Theory and Decision.

Outside of academia, Arthur wrote the script for “Frank Knight and the Chicago School” in the Great Economic Thinkers series and writes commentaries or reviews for InsideSources and for publications such as the Telegraph, Reason, the Orlando Sentinel, and the Wall Street Journal.  He is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, and a Senior Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research.

He is the co-author of the ASI’s paper, ‘Against The Man of System: Innovative Dynamism after Covid-19,’ which argues that the state lacks the entrepreneurialism and innovation provided by the private sector.

Dr Helen Evans, Fellow

Dr Helen Evans RGN is a senior nurse with nearly twenty years’ experience in the National Health Service, as well as the director of Nurses for Reform. Her career has seen her work in some of Britain’s leading hospitals including Senior Infection Control Nurse, Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust; Infection Control Nurse, the Royal London Hospitals NHS Trust; Operating Theatre Sister, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.

Helen trained at Whipps Cross Hospital in London’s East End, holds a degree in Health Management from Anglia Ruskin University and was awarded her Ph.D in Health Economics at Brunel University she has also been a guest lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University.

In addition to running NFR, Helen is a health policy consultant who has worked with a range of British and European think tanks including the Stockholm Network and the Centre for the New Europe. She is also a director and Senior Health Policy Consultant with Farsight Strategic Political Intelligence Ltd (Farsight SPI).

Dr Anton Howes, Fellow

Anton Howes is a historian of innovation. He is the head of innovation research at The Entrepreneurs Network.

He is currently writing a book on why innovation accelerated in the eighteenth century in Britain, which in turn led to the Industrial Revolution. He is also historian-in-residence at the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce

His first book was Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation is out now from Princeton University Press. He received a PhD in Political Economy from King's College London in 2016, studying the British Industrial Revolution’s implications for explaining the sources of modern economic growth.

He co-wrote ‘School Vouchers for England’, a joint publication between the ASI and the Centre for Market Reform of Education, at which he was a Research Consultant.

Anton holds a BA in War Studies and History from King’s College London, and tweets at @antonhowes.

Jonathon Kitson, Fellow

Jonathon Kitson qualified as a Superforecaster at Good Judgement Inc in January 2021 after answering over 200 questions, finishing in the top 1% of forecasters on topics such as Brexit, Coronavirus and Geopolitics. He has written regularly for Capx on defence issues, prediction and coronavirus and also correctly predicted when the vaccine would be approved in the UK.

He co-authored a report with ASI fellow James Lawson and Head of Research Matthew Lesh on accelerating the vaccine rollout programme. He has a BA in politics from SOAS, University of London.

He tweets @KitsonJ1

Matthew Lesh, Fellow

Matthew Lesh is Country Manager for Freshwater Strategy. He was Head of Public Policy at the Institute of Economic Affairs, and was formerly Head of Research at the Adam Smith Institute.

He is also the author of Democracy in a Divided Australia (2018). Matthew graduated with First Class Honours from the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Arts (Degree with Honours) and completed a Masters in Public Policy and Administration at the London School of Economics where he received the Peter Self Prize for Best Overall Result.

Matthew is a former Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs (Australia). He has also worked for Australian politicians, in digital communications, and founded a mobile application development start-up. 

He tweets as @matthewlesh.

Toby Norfolk-Thompson, Fellow

Toby Norfolk-Thompson is the CIO of Matrixport and previously spent over 20 years in senior trading roles at Coinbase and Barclays. He has been heavily involved in decentralised finance since 2016 and has set up a number of fintech businesses including Flare, a layer-1 protocol, and Singularity, an Egyptian payments platform.

He advises the ASI on fintech, digital assets, crypto and regulation.

Mark Oates, Fellow

Mark Oates is the Director of We Vape and the Snus Users Association. He has a keen interest in legalising anything from safe standing in football stadiums to recreational cannabis. He advocates evidence-based harm reduction in a range of areas from tobacco to drug policy, a subject he has written on for the Institute of Economic Affairs. He also provided evidence in the 2018 ECJ case to overturn the ban of snus across the European Union and worked on the successful 2018 campaign to legalise medical cannabis in the UK. He has personally circumvented planning regulations by building and living on a boat.

Christopher Snowdon, Fellow

Christopher Snowdon is an author and freelance journalist, writing principally as a vocal opponent of government intervention in matters such as smoking, alcohol, and obesity. He is a research fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, and blogs at Velvet Glove, Iron Fist. His bibliography includes The Art of Suppression: Pleasure, Panic and Prohibition since 1800 (2011), The Spirit Level Delusion: Fact-checking the Left’s New Theory of Everything (2010), and Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking (2009).

With the Adam Smith Institute, he has written The Wages of Sin Taxes (2012) and, with John C. Duffy, The Minimal Evidence for Minimum Pricing (2012).

He tweets as@cjsnowdon.

Dr Michael Turner, Fellow

Michael Turner is a pollster and strategist, with expertise in campaigns, public policy, behaviour change and strategic communications. He is currently Director of Freshwater Strategy.

He has more than a decade of experience working in politics and elections, having worked with several major political parties in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

Michael regularly advises senior decision makers in politics, government, and business, working on projects across the globe.

He is a Fellow at the Royal Statistical Society, and a Research Fellow at the Elections Centre, where he completed his doctoral thesis.

He is the co-author of the ASI’s paper, ‘Ever closer mates: The deep support for a United Kingdom-Australia free trade deal’ on popular opinions about the Australia-UK trade deal.

Michael holds a PhD in Political Science, a Masters in Social Research, and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations with Politics from the University of Plymouth, UK.

He tweets as @pollstermike.

Dr Vuk Vuković, Senior Fellow

Vuk Vuković is a lecturer at the Department of Economics, Zagreb School of Economics and Management (ZSEM), where he teaches Political economy, Principles of Economics, International Economics and Public Finance. He is a co-founder and vice president of the Adriatic Economic Association.

He holds a Master of Science degree from the London School of Economics, in the field of political economy. He received his BA in economics from the University of Zagreb, from which he graduated magna cum laude. During his studies he attended summer schools at the University of California at Berkeley and at Harvard University. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, Clare College during the summer of 2013.

He has published at top academic journals, and is working on a number of forthcoming publications, in addition to writing articles, blogs, and op-eds for several newspapers and think tanks. He blogs at http://im-an-economist.blogspot.com.

Professor Khalid Al Khalifa, Fellow

Khalid Al Khalifa is the founder of University College of Bahrain (UCB) and Chairman of its Board of Trustees. He is a member of the Bahraini royal family. He has been an academic for over 30 years holding a Doctorate of Philosophy of Management from the University of Northumbria.

When he conceptualised UCB, and brought it in existence, in 2002, Professor Al Khalifa’s vision was to provide a world class university for the people of Bahrain.

Professor Al Khalifa has undergone specialized training in Financial Management (both Islamic & Corporate) at London Business School and in Educational Management at Harvard Graduate School of Education, amongst many others.

What makes him a true leader is his love and passion for the field of education and his generosity, whether it is in his offering scholarships to needy students or supporting with the staff of his university.

He brings expertise on topics around education, Islamic finance, and international cooperation, with a particular emphasis on exploring the ideas of the enlightenment era internationally.