Lord Syed Kamall
He is a co-founder of the Islam & Liberty Network which explores and demonstrates the compatibility of Islam with religious, economic, and political freedoms. He regularly meets and supports neighbourhood non-state civil society organisations tackling social exclusion and improving wellbeing.
In his spare time, he enjoys travelling, reading and playing guitar and electric bass in blues and rock bands.
Dr Nick Cowen
Nick Cowen is an Associate Professor in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lincoln. He received his PhD from the Department of Political Economy, King’s College London where he was supervised by Mark Pennington and John Meadowcroft. He was previously a Fellow at the Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law. He sits on the academic advisory council of the Institute of Economic Affairs. He is the author of Neoliberal Social Justice: Rawls Unveiled (Edward Elgar, 2021), a reconciliation of progressive political commitments with the institutions of commercial society. His work has been published in Critical Review, Public Choice, the American Journal of Political Science, Polity, and the British Journal of Criminology.
Professor Paul Dragos Aligica
Paul Dragos Aligica is a Senior Research Fellow in the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center, George Mason University, and a Professor of Governance at the University of Bucharest. He a Member of the Academy of Europe (Academia Europaea), where he is associated with the Governance and Social Theory sections. His background includes being a Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington DC, and being a student and team member of Noble Prize winner in Economics, Elinor Ostrom, at Indiana University Bloomington, where he continued to be an Affiliated Faculty and then a Senior Fellow of the Ostrom Workshop. Currently Aligica is a member of the Permanent Scientific Quality Committee of the World Interdisciplinary Network for Institutional Research. He is the author of numerous books and academic articles on institutional theory, political economy, social theory, and political philosophy. His publications include Public Entrepreneurship, Citizenship, and Self-Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Institutional Diversity and Political Economy (Oxford University Press, 2014). His most recent book is Institutional Diversity and the Economic Calculation Debate. The Feasibility Issue Revisited (Cambridge University Press, 2025).
Professor Thorsten Polliet
Dr. Thorsten Polleit is Honorary Professor of Economics at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. From 1997 to 2012 he worked as an economist for more than 15 years in the international investment banking industry. From 2012 to 2023 he was chief economist and board member of Europe’s largest precious metal trading house and served as a member of various investment committees. Thorsten is Adjunct Scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, US Alabama, and founder and President of the Ludwig von Mises Institut Deutschland, Germany. Thorsten’s fields of interest are money and financial market theory, the history of economic thought and epistemology. He has written many articles in refereed journals, published a number of books and is also editor and publisher of Dr. Polleit’s BOOM & BUST REPORT (www.boombustreport.com). Write him an email: boombustreport@gmail.com.
Professor Christian Bjørnskov
Christian Bjørnskov is professor of economics at Aarhus University in Denmark, and affiliated research at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN) in Stockholm. He is a trustee of the board of the Institute of Economic Affairs in London and the Center for Political Studies in Copenhagen, and the 2024-25 President of the Public Choice Society. H is also a regular columnist at the Danish financial newspaper Børsen.
Christian received his PhD from the Aarhus School of Business in 2005 and has since published more than 100 articles in international peer-reviewed journals, including the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Development Economics, Academy of Management Perspectives, Public Choice, and Journal of Law and Economics. He is also the author, with Stefan Voigt, of the recent book State of Emergency. His research interests are situated at the intersection of public choice and political economy and development economics, and mainly focus on the long-run influence of formal and informal institutions and economic freedom.
Dr Francis Vorhies
Dr Francis Vorhies is a conservation economist with a particular interest in the harvesting and trade of wild species for human benefit. Other areas of interest include conservation finance and corporate biodiversity responsibility. He is the Director of the African Wildlife Economy Institute and a Professor Extraordinary at Stellenbosch University and a Research Visitor at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit of the University of Oxford. He is also an expert advisor to the Wildlife Habitats Council and Fair Carbon. Previous positions include Academic Director of the School of Wildlife Conservation at the African Leadership University, CEO of Earthwatch Institute Europe, Chief Economist at IUCN, and Resource Economist at the African Wildlife Foundation. Over his career he has also set up Earthmind in Switzerland and EcoPlus in South Africa as professional associations promoting conservation economics. Dr Vorhies has a PhD in Economics from the University of Colorado and a diploma in integrated environmental management from the University of Cape Town.
Dr. Donald Boudreaux
Dr. Donald J. Boudreaux is a Senior Fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; a Mercatus Center Board Member; a Professor of Economics and former economics-department chair at George Mason University; an Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute; and holds the Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center.
Professor Mark Pennington
Mark Pennington has been Professor of Political Economy and Public Policy in the Department of Political Economy since January 2012 and was Head of Department between 2016 and 2020. Prior to joining King’s he taught for 12 years in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Mark is currently director of the Centre for the Study of Governance and Society
Dr Steve Davies
Dr Steve Davies is the Senior Education Fellow at the IEA. Previously he was program officer at the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) at George Mason University in Virginia. He joined IHS from the UK where he was Senior Lecturer in the Department of History and Economic History at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University, Ohio. A historian, he graduated from St Andrews University in Scotland in 1976 and gained his PhD from the same institution in 1984. He has authored several books, including Empiricism and History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) and was co-editor with Nigel Ashford of The Dictionary of Conservative and Libertarian Thought (Routledge, 1991).
