To prepare our research and deliver our services, we engage some of the world’s most talented thinkers, analysts and experts. We put together unrivalled expertise across a range of global issues and disciplines.
Core Team
Catherine Fieschi is the director of Counterpoint. After ten years as an academic Catherine moved in to the policy world: she led the London-based think tank Demos (2005-2008) and directed the think tank of the British Council. She has advised numerous governments, businesses and foundations on aspects of risk, strategy and policy.
Catherine holds a PhD in Comparative Politics from McGill University. She is the author of In the Shadow of Democracy: Fascism, Populism and the French Fifth Republic (MUP) and of numerous pamphlets and articles on extremism, populism, citizenship and identity politics.
Her approach is intrinsically comparative and draws on a variety of social science disciplines as well interpretive approaches in order to reveal the social and cultural dynamics that are too often left out of mainstream risk and political analyses.
Catherine is founder of the mentoring scheme 50 Foot Women and a trustee of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR). She is a Fellow of the Department of Government at LSE and a regular contributor to radio and television debates. Catherine grew up in Italy, Senegal, the United States, France and Canada and is fluent in a number of languages. She has lived in the UK for a very long time now.
Contact: catherine.fieschi[at]counterpoint.uk.com
Filippo Gamba is the director of strategy and development at Counterpoint.
From 2007 to 2012, he worked in Control Risks Group’s political risk department, where he was responsible for the company’s political risk retainer services. Before joining Control Risks, Filippo was a consultant at Oxford Analytica where he worked with public and private sector clients on projects related to global economic, strategic and political trends. He was also responsible for the firm’s geo-political early warning system.
Filippo started his career in Brussels at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and at the External Relations Directorate General of the European Commission. Filippo is currently a senior advisor at Global Resources Corporation, a boutique investment group specialising in energy and national resources.
Filippo was a Fulbright scholar at SAIS-Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies,where he obtained an MA in International Relations specialising in International Economics and American Foreign Policy. He also obtained a Masters in International and European Studies from the University of Bologna, Italy, and a BA in Political Science from the Luiss Guido Carli University, Rome.
Contact: filippo.gamba[at]counterpoint.uk.com
Lila Caballero is head of projects at Counterpoint and the project manager and senior researcher on the Recapturing Europe’s Reluctant Radicals project.
She holds a PhD in Government and an Msc in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics. During her postgraduate studies she focussed on the underlying dynamics of institutions that affect political behaviour and outcomes, an expertise she has furthered at Counterpoint – Lila has authored, co-authored and commissioned various pieces on the hidden wiring of populism within the Reluctant Radicals project, and often writes short pieces on current events for the Counterpoint website.
As Counterpoint’s head of projects, Lila monitors the financial and operational progress of all the projects developed within the organisation. She draws from previous experience in the Mexican financial sector and from her work at Fundar, a leading research and analysis centre on transparency and accountability in Mexico City. She is bilingual in English and Spanish and fluent in French.
Contact: lila.caballero[at]counterpoint.uk.com
Marley Morris is a researcher at Counterpoint on the Recapturing Europe’s Reluctant Radicals project. With a degree in Maths and Philosophy, Marley assisted with the quantitative analysis for the report 'Recapturing the Reluctant Radical: How to win back Europe's populist vote', which he co-authored. Marley also works on the 'Rival Political Narratives' project and is currently leading a series of populism 'self-defence' workshops for advocacy groups and political activists on how to counter populist rhetoric in Europe. Prior to his work at Counterpoint, Marley was at the Violence and Extremism programme at Demos, where he researched on the ‘Populism in Europe’ project.
Contact: marley.morris[at]counterpoint.uk.com
Victoria runs the 50 Foot Women programme at Counterpoint. She has a BA (Hons) in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Durham University and is currently finishing her MSc in Political Sociology at the London School of Economics, where she specialises on gender issues in the workplace.
Contact: victoria.zeeb[at]counterpoint.uk.com
Reuben Message has worked with Counterpoint since 2011. He has contributed to a number of Counterpoint initiatives, including the UK-India project, as well as helping to develop the Counterpoint offer and other aspects of organisational development
Reuben is currently a Doctoral candidate in sociology at the London School of Economics. Previously, he has worked as a researcher for the Intercultural and Diversity Studies centre at the University of Cape Town.
Advisory Board
Tom Burke is currently an Environmental Policy Adviser (part time) to Rio Tinto plc and a Visiting Professor at Imperial and University Colleges, London. He is a Senior Business Advisor to the Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative on Climate Change. He is a Founding Director of E3G, Third Generation Environmentalism.
He was appointed by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to chair an Independent Review of Environmental Governance in Northern Ireland from 2006 – 2007. He was a member of the Council of English Nature, the statutory adviser to the British Government on biodiversity from 1999 – 2005. He was Special Adviser to three Secretaries of State for the Environment from 1991-97 after serving as Director of the Green Alliance from 1982-1991.
Previously, he has been an environmental adviser (part time) to BP plc (1997 – 2001) and a member of the OECD’s High Level Panel on the Environment (1996-1998). He has acted as Executive Director of Friends of the Earth, and been a Visiting Fellow at the Cranfield Institute of Management and a Senior Visiting Fellow at Manchester Business School. He also serves on the European Advisory Council of the Carbon Disclosure Project. He is a Patron of the United Kingdom Environmental Law Association and a Vice-President of Environmental Protection UK.
Tom Burke has received many honours during his distinguished career, including his appointment to the United Nations Environment Programme’s `Global 500′ roll of honour in 1993. In 1997, he was appointed CBE for services to the environment, and in 2010 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Society for the Environment.
Phil Male is the executive chairman of UK2 Group, a leading international provider of domain name registration and web-site hosting services. Phil previously served as Chief Strategy Officer at Cable & Wireless Worldwide, Chief Operating Officer of Thus Group plc and Technical Director of Demon Internet Limited. He has advanced knowledge of data networking technologies, programming languages and operating systems. Mr. Male has been involved in the development of internet services in the UK since 1990.
Stephan Roman is currently the British Council’s regional director for South Asia. He has worked for the British Council since 1978, having served as regional director for both North America and Western Europe. He has worked in the Middle East, Africa, South-East Asia and the Balkans. He has written extensively on issues of cultural relations.
Alex has been in the financial communications industry for more than six years and leads a range of Smithfield’s listed and private clients including WS Atkins and Rothschild Investment Bank. He has also had responsibility for a number of M&A and capital raising and restructuring transactions. He joined Smithfield in 2009 from Finsbury where he worked for four years in the financial services team acting for and advising FTSE100 companies on their strategic communications. Prior to joining Finsbury, Alex worked in Corporate Finance at Deutsche Bank and ABN AMRO.
Tuija Talvitie has been CMI’s Executive Director since November 2009. Tuija has over twenty years’ experience in international leadership, cultural relations and social development. Her ambition is to make CMI a leading conflict resolution organisation. She emphasises multi-stakeholder approaches, innovation and ethical leadership. Prior to joining CMI, Tuija was the Director of British Council Finland where she led the office’s programme work on climate change, intercultural dialogue, education and research. She was in charge of a major change programme at British Council Finland and played an active role in the strategic leadership team of North and Central Europe.
She was a CMI board member between 2005-2009 and sits on the boards of various think tanks and NGOs. She holds an MA in English Philology and International Politics from the University of Helsinki.
Crisis Management Initiative (CMI) is a Finnish non-profit organisation that works to prevent and resolve conflicts and build sustainable peace. It was foundered by Martti Ahtisaari, the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
Associates
Dr Sabine Selchow is lecturer and researcher in the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit, Department of International Development at the London School of Economics (LSE). She is member of LSE’s Global Civil Society research programme and is in charge of the ‘Culture/s’-component in the ‘Security in Transition’-programme, funded by the European Research Council (2011-2016). Sabine’s academic background stretches across disciplinary boundaries and brings together the Humanities and the Social Sciences. She studied North American Studies, focusing on literature and culture, and Communication Studies, with a particular focus on public relations and semiotics, at Freie Universitaet Berlin (Germany) and Duke University (USA), and holds a PhD in Government from LSE. She has a particular research interest in the nature and political impact of collectively shared and culturally specific notions, such as notions of ‘the global’, ‘the new’, ‘the unknown’, ‘uncertainty’ and ‘risks’. Before embarking on an academic career, Sabine worked for several years in the ‘new media’-sector. She has comprehensive project management and consultancy experience. She is involved in various initiatives and international working groups, such as the working group ‘Cosmopolitan Communities of Risk’, set up by Ulrich Beck at the Center for Advanced Studies in Munich (Germany).
Jeffrey Howard was a researcher at Counterpoint, where he worked on the Recapturing Europe’s Reluctant Radicals project. He has a doctorate in political philosophy at Oxford University, his dissertation on the moral relations between liberal and illiberal citizens and societies. Jeff currently teaches political theory to undergraduates at Oxford, and he has previously worked in the Violence and Extremism programme at the think-tank Demos. He holds an MPhil from Oxford and a BA from Harvard.
Joël is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at Université de Picardie-Jules Verne in Amiens (France). His research interests include electoral sociology and the Front national. He graduated from the Institut d’Études politiques in Aix-en-Provence and also studied at the University of Durham. He collaborates with Counterpoint on the “Rival political narratives” research program.
Partners
