The School for Government Podcast

Abi Worrell is a PhD student in Applied Public Policy at King’s College London. Her research focuses on the motivations of ‘Gen Z’ to join the UK military. Alongside her studies, she works as a Research Assistant at the Policy Institute, contributing to the Evidence, Development and Incubation (EDIT), Experimental Government (XGT), and Delivery teams.
Before her PhD, Abi worked at the Policy Institute on projects including the Kerslake Commission on Armed Forces Housing and in qualitative research and policy impact for the UK in the World Values Survey. She is trained in both quantitative and qualitative research methods, and is particularly interested in public attitudes on issues such as defence policy and inequalities.
Abi holds an MA in Conflict, Security and Development from King’s College London. She also has a BA in Peace, War and Defence and Religious Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 (with Sander van der Linden) and Propaganda and Ideology in the Russian-Ukrainian War. 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).

Gloria is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the International School for Government. Working at the intersections of international political economy, feminist political ecology, and critical development studies, she studies how the existing global governance architecture forecloses avenues of international cooperation.
She is finalizing her book on the first universal development framework of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Agenda 2030) and advancing a long-term research project on the post-2030 agenda of planetary justice.
Her insight into global governance is further supported by her practitioner experience, ranging from policy leadership in the Canadian international cooperation sector to technical roles across the United Nations’ World Food Programme and Serbian civil society.
Gloria holds a dual PhD degree in Political Science and International Development (University of Guelph, Canada) and a MSc in International Relations from Roma Tre University (Italy). Prior to joining KCL, she was a Gender, Development and Globalisation Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a SSHRC-funded postdoctoral fellow at the University of Ottawa.

Dr Joseph Sherlock is a Lecturer at the School for Government whose work focuses on leveraging behavioural science to advance democracy and sustainability, as well as the science of behavioural science.
Joseph also serves as a Behavioural Science Fellow in the United Nations Secretary-General’s Office. Previously, he was a Principal Behavioral Scientist at Duke University, where he led a team dedicated to fostering innovation in civic society through behavioral science. He also held the role of Principal Behavioural Researcher at HM Revenue & Customs, contributing to public sector innovation and policy development.

Dr Georgios Samaras is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Public Policy at the School for Government. His research encompasses far-right extremism, political communication, and policy responses to illiberal political practices, while also exploring the dynamics of European and US politics and the global rise of authoritarianism. 

Roxana is a Senior Lecturer in Public Policy in the School for Government. Her research interests and publications focus on anti-corruption public policies and practices, digitalisation and its impact on (anti)corruption, narratives of corruption and integrity development, ethics and integrity in public policy and artificial intelligence public policies and regulations.