Senior Research Fellows
Professor Andrew Blick
Dr Karine Lisbonne-Azais de Vergeron
Bob Savic
Hugh Lawson-Tancred
Prof Colin Talbot
Prof Jo Shaw
Prof Stanley Henig
Professor Andrew Blick
Senior Research Fellow
Andrew Blick is Professor of Politics and Contemporary History, and Head of the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. He is also the Director of History & Policy.
He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Democratic Audit, University of Liverpool, which assesses the performance of democracies internationally according to a specially designed framework. He has acted as a consultant on constitutional issues for organisations including the United Nations Development Programme and the UK National Audit Office; and undertaken research projects for the Rowntree trusts; Carnegie UK; the German Marshall Fund; and the Madison Trust. He has written numerous books, articles and pamphlets on UK devolution for the Federal Trust and provided written and oral evidence to parliamentary committees. He has worked in Parliament and closely with parliamentarians on various occasions.
Please click here for Andrew’s full CV.
Dr Karine Lisbonne – Azais de Vergeron
Senior Research Fellow
Dr Karine de Vergeron is Associate Director and Head of Europe Programme at the Global Policy Institute. She has extensive experience in international relations and issues relating to European politics, culture and identity, and the relationship between Europe, China and India as well as the Belt and Road Initiative. She initiated several research projects on non-European views of Europe – Chinese and Indian Views of Europe – jointly with Chatham House in the United Kingdom and the Robert Schuman Foundation in France since 2006. She was the Federal Trust lead of the EU-India Think Tank Twinning project (2018 – 2020).
She provides regular strategic expertise to the European External Action Service on EU-India relations and has contributed extensively also on the development of culture in European external relations and EU-China cultural exchanges, as well as to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the French National Assembly. She is the author of numerous academic and book publications and has been guest speaker and contributor to many conferences and media across Europe.
She was previously Consultant Manager in European and international business strategy at Mars & Co and was awarded a special prize by the French Ministry for Culture in 2005 for her work on cultural patronage and the art. She is a Young Leader of the prestigious French-China Foundation and MBA Professor on European cultural policies at Icart Paris.
Her publications include notably: The New Silk Roads: European Perceptions and Perspectives (International Studies, 2018), China-EU relations and the future of European soft power (LSE Ideas, 2015), Chinese and Indian views of Europe since the crisis: New perspectives from the emerging Asian giants (Global Policy Institute, Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung and the Robert Schuman Foundation, 2012), France, European Defence and NATO (Forum Press, 2008), Contemporary Chinese views of Europe (Chatham House, 2007), Contemporary Indian Views of Europe (Chatham House & Robert Schuman Foundation, 2006).
Bob Savic
Associate Fellow, EU Industry and Trade Policy
Bob Savic has several years of professional experience in providing EU regulatory advice to large and medium-size businesses across the European Union, as well as EU accession and candidate states. During this time, Bob has principally worked in Brussels for international law firms in the areas of EU trade, competition, and health and safety regulation. Currently, Bob is also providing regulatory advice on the implications of the EU’s new machinery and foreign subsidies laws, for non-EU businesses, and advises international companies on the EU’s new corporate reporting sustainability directive.
Bob has also been involved in various EU-funded projects including for prospective EU member states, such as North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the application of the EU acquis and respective EU Stabilization and Association Agreements. Bob has also worked on Ukraine and Moldova in assisting foreign direct investors understand the business implications of these countries’ EU Association Agreements and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area agreements.
He has written many articles for the Federal Trust, such as New EU Machinery Regulation Poses Challenges and Benefits for UK Machinery Exporters to the Single Market.
Hugh Lawson-Tancred
Senior Research Fellow
Dr Hugh Lawson-Tancred is an Associate Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, where he has worked with the Birkbeck Institute for Data Analytics and the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development. At the former he has given the ethics module for the data science MSc, while at the latter he has been working on the application of narrow AI to specific issues in evolutionary complexity within cognitive neurodevelopment.
For 18 years he has been CEO of a company called Protext Translations Ltd which has specialised in the use of machine translation systems for the translation of complex legal submissions and pleadings.
As a Senior Research Fellow at the Federal Trust he focusses on AI governance, societal and geopolitical risks and the optimal use of AI for hypothesis generation and testing in the natural sciences, all from a perspective of maximising international and particularly European cooperation in these areas.
Professor Colin Talbot
Senior Research Fellow
Colin is Emeritus Professor of Government at the University of Manchester and a research affiliate at the University of Cambridge. He has extensive experience of researching, advising, consulting and teaching about Government and public services at all levels. In the UK he has worked with the Westminster, Scottish and Northern Ireland governments and legislatures. He has advised several Select Committees, and the National Audit Office. He’s also worked with dozens of public agencies. He’s advised many other governments internationally – including the US, Canadian, Japanese, Australian, French, Mexican, and others. His main research work has been on strategies, structures and performance of the institutions of government and he’s published several books and numerous articles – academic and for more popular audiences. He’s appeared in or on just about every national, and many local, news media in the UK as well as a few internationally. He is very active on social media, where he has over 16 thousand twitter followers (@colinrtalbot). He also runs a YouTube channel – Public Administration Xchange (PAX).
Professor Jo Shaw
Senior Research Fellow
Jo Shaw holds the Salvesen Chair of European Institutions and is the Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh.
Until December 2013 she was Dean of Research and Deputy Head of the College of Humanities and Social Science. She has previously acted as the Law School’s Director of Research, and as Co-Director of the Edinburgh Europa Institute.
Before coming to Edinburgh in 2005, Jo was Professor of European Law and Jean Monnet Chair at the University of Manchester between 2001 and 2004, and Director of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence. Her earlier appointments included a post as Professor of European Law and Jean Monnet Chair of European Law and Integration at the University of Leeds, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Law in Europe, between 1995 and 2001, and posts at the Universities of Keele and Exeter, and University College London.
From 2001-2004 she managed a study on “Constitutionalism, Federalism and the Reform of the European Union” at the Federal Trust in London, as a Senior Research Fellow.
Please click here for her full CV: http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/people/joshaw
Professor Emeritus Stanley Henig
Senior Research Fellow
Stanley Henig was Professor of European Politics at the University of Central Lancashire and Head of the Department of Politics and European Studies. Author or editor of ten books on European and British Politics: the most recent was Federalism and the British published by the Federal Trust. He has also written extensively on operatic performance including co-authoring a book on Enrico Caruso. He was a Member of Parliament from 1966 to 1970 and Leader of Lancaster City Council during the 1990s. He was also Chairman of the Royal Northern College of Music and Deputy Pro-Chancellor of the University of Lancaster.
