Our People

Professor Colin Leys

Co-chair

Colin is an emeritus professor at Queen’s University, Canada, and an honorary research professor at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author or co-author of twenty books and since 2000 has written extensively on health policy and is co-author with Stewart Player of Confuse and Conceal: the NHS and Independent Sector Treatment Centres. His most recent article is ‘The English NHS:  from market failure to trust, professionalism and democracy’, in Critical Times: Soundings 64, Winter 2016.

Professor Sue Richards

Co-chair

Sue was Professor of Public Management at the University of Birmingham, and is now a freelance writer on issues of public management and leadership. She has worked in several different academic institutions and has had two separate periods in the civil service, latterly (2005-10) as a senior civil servant in the Cabinet Office and a Director of the National School of Government. Her last post was as Senior Fellow at the Institute for Government, where she was the UK Co-ordinator of a six-nation collaboration developing ideas about public administration in the 21st century.

Dr Guddi Singh

Guddi is a Paediatrician at the The Whittington Hospital in London. She has a Masters degree in Public Health from Harvard University and has worked for the World Health Organization.

Keir Wright-Whyte

Finance Officer

Keir trained as a Chartered Accountant with Price Waterhouse Coopers, where he primarily worked in an audit role with clients that included pharmaceuticals and PFI Infrastructure companies. Keir is currently a director of an architecture practice and runs a small construction business.

Dr David McCoy

David is a part-time professor at Queen Mary University London and Advisor and former Director of Medact, a London-based global health charity. He previously spent ten years working in South Africa, first as a clinician and then as a health systems policy and strengthening specialist. He is a fellow of the Faculty of Public Health and a former Director of Public Health within London.

Vivek Kotecha

Research Officer

Vivek previously worked as a manager in Monitor and NHS Improvement analysing and reporting on the operational and financial performance of the provider sector. Before that he worked for 4 years as a management consultant at Deloitte. He holds a BSc Economics (Hons) from the LSE and is a chartered accountant. He is currently studying for an MSc in Economics at the University of London.

Dr Jonathon Tomlinson

Jonathon Tomlinson is a full-time GP in Hackney, East London. He is a GP trainer and undergraduate tutor with special interests in ‘Poverty Medicine’, shame, trauma and education. He writes a blog about the relationships between doctors, patients and health policy at abetternhs.net

Dr John Owens

John is a Lecturer in Ethics and Public Policy at King’s College London. His research focuses on applying philosophical, political and sociological perspectives to issues in contemporary public policy, particularly in the areas of healthcare and education. John is also co-founder of the Wellcome Trust-funded Interdisciplinary and Empirical Ethics Network.

Professor David Hunter

Chair

David Hunter is Director of the Centre for Public Policy and Health, School of Medicine, Pharmacy & Health, Wolfson Research Institute for Health & Wellbeing, Durham University. He advises WHO on public health and health system reform issues and in March 2014 his Centre was designated a WHO Collaborating Centre on Complex Health Systems Research, Knowledge and Action.  From 2009 to 2016 he was a non-executive director on the Board of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. He served as special advisor to the House of Commons Health Committee on its 2015-16 inquiry into the public health changes in England introduced in 2013.  He conducts research into health policy and practice and publishes widely. His most recent book, The Health Debate, Second Edition, was published by Policy Press in 2016.

Professor James Curran

James Curran is Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Director of Goldsmith’s Leverhulme Media Research Centre. He has held visiting chairs as McClatchy Professor (Stanford), Annenberg Professor (University of Pennsylvania), Bonnier Professor (Stockholm University) and NRC Professor (Oslo University). He has written or edited 22 books, including Media and Democracy (2011); Power Without Responsibility (with Jean Seaton), 7th edition (2010); Media and Society, 5th edition, 2010; and Media and Power, 2002 (translated into five languages). His latest book is Misunderstanding the Internet (with Natalie Fenton and Des Freedman), 2012.

Professor Marianna Fotaki

Marianna Fotaki is Professor of Business Ethics at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick. She has a PhD from the LSE and was an Edmond J. Safra Network Fellow at Harvard University. Before joining academia she worked for Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins du Monde in Turkey, Iraq and Albania, and  was EU residential senior advisor to the governments of Russia, Armenia and Georgia for a total of ten years. Marianna has published over 50 papers on the marketization of public services, health inequalities, gender and otherness in organizations and businesses in leading international journals. Her recent books include The Psychosocial and Organization Studies: Affect at Work (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, with Kate Kenny) and Gender and the Organization. New ways of working and working lives (Routledge, with Nancy Harding forthcoming in 2017). She is currently working on an ESRC-funded project on whistleblowing and a British Academy-funded project on corruption, and conducting pilot projects on solidarity responses and migration in Greece.

Professor Bob Hudson

Bob Hudson is Visiting Professor in Public Policy in the Centre for Public Policy and Health at the University of Durham, a position he has held since 2004. From 1995 until 2004 he was Principal Research Fellow at the Nuffield Institute for Health at the University of Leeds, and held earlier lecturing positions in social policy at the University of Durham and New College, Durham. His main areas of work have been in public sector policy, and especially health and local government – topics on which he has undertaken national research and published widely in the academic and trade press. He has served as a local councillor, chaired local voluntary groups and worked as a special advisor to the House of Commons Children’s Select Committee.

Professor John Mohan

John Mohan is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Birmingham, and Deputy Director of the Third Sector Research Centre, leading its programme of quantitative research. His current research is focussed on the contemporary British voluntary sector, including projects on the distribution of resources and the pattern of engagement in voluntary activity. Previous work has included studies of health policy in the UK.

Dr Alex Scott-Samuel

Alex Scott-Samuel is an Honorary Professor in the School of Medicine, Pharmacy and Health at Durham University and a Visiting Professor at Chester University. His research interests are health politics and policy, health and gender inequalities, and health impact assessment. He has advised the parliamentary Health Select Committee and the World Health Organisation.

Professor Gareth Williams

Gareth Williams has worked in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University since 1999, where he teaches medical sociology. He is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Director of the Cardiff Institute of Society, Health and Wellbeing.  He is a former Non-Executive Director of the Board of Public Health Wales, and joint Editor-in-Chief of Sociology of Health and Illness Gareth has written and published widely in journals and books on the themes of chronic illness and disability, health policy, health inequalities and community action.