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Arun Advani

Dr Arun Advani is a Research Fellow in TAXDEV at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), working on issues of tax administration in developing countries, as well as a Researcher in TARC studying tax compliance in the UK. Previously his work at IFS focused on environmental taxation and energy use. Arun is also an Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick. He has a PhD in Economics from University College London. From 2011-13 he was an Associate Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, where he taught microeconomics.

Jonno Roberts

Jonno Roberts has been acting in the US since arriving from New Zealand in 1999. He has become a popular performer on stage as well as screen, performing throughout the US and Europe. He rapidly gained a reputation for hard-hitting performances in a number of productions that have been acknowledged as American theatre landmarks, including the hit New York production of Tracey Letts' "BUG" (he replaced Michael Shannon in the lead role); as Eilif in Janos Szasz' devastating "Mother Courage" at the American Repertory Theatre; as Edmund the Bastard to Stacy Keach's "King Lear" at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago; and in notorious Catalan director Calixto Bieito's sole American production - "Camino Real", also at the Goodman. He was profiled as a notable artist by the National Endowment for the Arts. Before moving to the US, he was best known in New Zealand as a comedian, and can still be occasionally seen performing at the legendary LA venue Largo, alongside longtime friend and comedy partner Rhys Darby. Jonno received a Masters degree from the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University, and from the Moscow Arts Theatre School.

Paul Johnson

Paul Gavin Johnson CBE FAcSS is provost of The Queen's College, Oxford. He is a British economist and civil servant, serving as Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies from 2011 to 2025. He is a member of the Committee on Climate Change, and a visiting professor in Economics at the Department of Economics, University College London.

Bella Popa

Bella Popa is known for Without Ward (2022), The Haunting of Sharon Tate (2019) and The Institute (2017).

Shepard Fairey

​From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Frank Shepard Fairey (born February 15, 1970) is an American contemporary artist, graphic designer, and illustrator who emerged from the skateboarding scene. He first became known for his "André the Giant Has a Posse" (…OBEY…) sticker campaign, in which he appropriated images from the comedic supermarket tabloid Weekly World News. His work became more widely known in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, specifically his Barack Obama "Hope" poster. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston calls him one of today's best known and most influential street artists. His work is included in the collections at The Smithsonian, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Description above from the Wikipedia article Shepard Fairey, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Slavoj Žižek

A Slovenian continental philosopher and critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis. Žižek is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and a professor at the European Graduate School. He has been a visiting professor at, among others, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, London Consortium, Princeton, New York University, The New School, the University of Minnesota, the University of California, Irvine and the University of Michigan. He is currently the International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London and president of the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Ljubljana. Žižek uses examples from popular culture to explain the theory of Jacques Lacan and uses Lacanian psychoanalysis, Hegelian philosophy and Marxist economic criticism to interpret and speak extensively on immediately current social phenomena.

Sonny Valicenti

Cast · Known for MINDHUNTER

Actor Sonny Valicenti is set to return in the second season of David Fincher's thrilling drama series "Mindhunter." in 2017, Valicenti appeared in Steven Spielberg's "The Post," starring Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep. He was featured in a supporting role in the 2016 holiday comedy Office Christmas Party with Jason Bateman. The part was created specifically for Valicenti by directors Will Speck & Josh Gordon after the duo met him on the set of an Apple campaign shoot. Sonny's television work spans several beloved TV series including Tig Notaro's "One Mississippi" for Amazon, "Lady Dynamite" on Netflix, and the FX comedy, "You're the Worst." In 2015, Final Scene, the short film he wrote, directed and starred in about the break up of comedy duo Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis appeared at the Austin Film Festival and Dances with Films. Valicenti has appeared off Broadway in productions of Romeo & Juliet, Henry V, and The Spy. Regional credits include the Public Theater production of The Institute of Memory, Abacus, presented at BAM as part of their Next Wave Festival, The Children for the Theatre at Boston Court (a performance the LA Times called "beyond praise") and The Firebird with the LA Philharmonic. Originally from Barrington, IL, Sonny caught the acting bug in high school and went on to receive a BFA in acting from California Institute of the Arts. He currently lives in Los Angeles.

Claire Fox

Claire Regina Fox is a British libertarian writer and politician. She is the director and founder of the think tank the Institute of Ideas, a trading name of the Academy of Ideas. A lifelong Eurosceptic, she was previously a member of the Trotskyist British Revolutionary Communist Party but later began identifying as a libertarian. She became a registered supporter of the Brexit Party shortly after its formation and was elected as an MEP in the 2019 European Parliament election. She was nominated for a peerage by the Boris Johnson-led Conservative government in 2020, despite her past opposition to the existence of the House of Lords. This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Claire_Fox which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Ahmed El Gendy

Director · Known for Crazy Rich, Incredibly Broke

Ahmed El Gendy began his career as an actor where he participated in the film “Wahed min al Nas” (“One of the people”), a title which starred Kareem A’bd Al A’zeez and Muna Shalaby. Ahmed also worked as an assistant director in that same production following his graduation from the Institute of Cinema. This was followed by his participation as an assistant director in the film “Zarf Tareq” (“Urgent Circumstances”) which starred Ahmed Helmy in the leading role. Ahmed’s participation in those works was followed by his directing a sitcom titled “Ahmed Itgawiz Muna” (“Ahmed Married Muna”) in addition to several movies such as “Hawish ely Wa’aa’ Minak”, “Etsh Dabour”, “Teer Enta” and “La Tarago’ wa la Istislam”. Ahmed’s son, Mahmoud El Gendy (born in 1980) has also done some directing in addition to contributing to the screenplays of several films such as “Teer Enta”. Mahmoud’s works are unique in that they derive comedy by making sarcastic remarks with regards to popular culture. He has also directed several works which were parodies of other cinema titles

Jelani Cobb

William Jelani Cobb is an American writer, author and educator. The Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism at Columbia University, Cobb was previously an associate professor of history and director of the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut, from 2012 to 2016.

Marius Stan

Marius Stan is a Romanian scientist and actor from Urziceni, currently a senior scientist at the Applied Materials division at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois, where he uses Artificial Intelligence to design materials. Stan is best known for playing car wash owner Bogdan Wolynetz in the AMC television series Breaking Bad. In 1986, Stan earned a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from the University of Bucharest. In 1997, he earned a PhD in chemistry from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Romanian Academy. Stan was a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico before moving on to the Argonne National Laboratory, a national research laboratory jointly operated by the University of Chicago and Department of Energy, in 2010. From 2013 to 2015, Stan served in the Office of Nuclear Energy within the United States Department of Energy. Stan is also a writer of short fiction and poetry. Stan was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico during the filming of the first season of AMC's Breaking Bad. His two children hoped to be extras in the series, so Stan sent the producers a family photo. Stan's wife and children were picked to be extras, but to Stan's surprise, the producers liked his look and wanted him for a speaking role: the owner of the car wash where Walter White works. The character of Bogdan Wolynetz and the scenes featuring him were further developed, and he would appear in four more episodes.

Helen Czerski

Cast · Known for Horizon

Helen Czerski is a physicist, oceanographer and television presenter. She is currently a Research Fellow in the department of mechanical engineering at University College London. She was previously at the Institute for Sound and Vibration Research at the University of Southampton. Czerski is a regular science presenter for the BBC. Her research focuses on temperature, ocean bubbles, bubble acoustics, air-sea gas transfer and ocean bubble optics.

Ning Chang

Cast · Known for The Advisors Alliance

Janine Chang Chun-ning is a Taiwanese actress. Chang attended National Taipei University and obtained a bachelor's degree in law. In June 2010, Chang graduated from the Institute of Industrial Economics at National Central University with a master's degree. Chang ranked 78th on Forbes China Celebrity 100 list in 2019.

Melissa Bolona

Melissa Bolona is an American actress and model. Her most current acting roles include starring in the films Category 5, Malicious, and Dog Eat Dog. Melissa's first acting debut was in the movies of the week, The Ten and The Saint, and in the summer of 2015 Melissa had her feature film debut as the support female lead in the theatrical release of In Stereo. She has continued her acting career by appearing in I Am Wrath, Shark Lake, The Neighbor, Snipped in the Bud, and I'll Be Home For Christmas. Melissa will also be starring in several films due for release in 2017 including Billy Boy, Frat Pack, The Institute, Mara, and Riders On The Storm. Description above from the Wikipedia article Melissa Bolona, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Elee Nova

Elee Nova was born in Minsk, Belarus, and from a very young age, showed a strong interest in the arts. She trained in piano at Minsk State Musical College named after M.I. Glinka, and further developed her musical abilities with three years of vocal training. Her musical talents subsequently led her to enroll in acting school and dance lessons, where she quickly became recognized as a rising talent in Belarus. At 16, she joined the pop group "Laki" and toured nationwide, working alongside singer Kirill Sluka and renowned composer Ivan Lucenko. When "Laki" disbanded, Elee made her debut on stage in the musical play "The Threepenny Opera" by Berthold Brecht at the Gorky National Academic Drama Theatre in Minsk, while studying for an arts degree at the Institute of Modern Knowledge. In 2008, a successful international modeling career took off, firstly in Dubai and then in London where she worked with many high-profile brands, including Louis Vuitton, Mikimoto, Emirates Airlines, Audi, and BMW, among others. Returning to her true passion of acting, Elee studied at the world-renowned Identity School of Acting in London from 2017 to 2020. Her first screen appearance was a small cameo in the comedy drama "Pure" (2019). Her next role was working with acclaimed director Peter Kosminsky in the TV series "The Undeclared War" (2022).

Filip Peeters

Filip Peeters or Philip Peeters (born 2 December 1962) is a Flemish actor. He is well known for his work in the television series Salamander as Paul Gerardi and Zone Stad as Didier Francks. He is one of a few Flemish actors who have been credited internationally. He was initially trained as a chef, however he found a talent in acting and attended the Studio Herman Teirlinck drama school. Since leaving the institute, he has starred in numerous Dutch, Belgian and German television programmes.

Leon Panetta

Leon Edward Panetta (born June 28, 1938) is an American retired politician and government official who served under several Democratic administrations as Secretary of Defense (2011–2013), Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (2009–2011), White House Chief of Staff (1994–1997), director of the Office of Management and Budget (1993–1994), as well as a U.S. representative from California (1977–1993). Panetta was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993. He served under President Bill Clinton as Director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1993 to 1994 and as White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997. He cofounded the Panetta Institute for Public Policy in 1997 and served as a distinguished scholar to chancellor Charles B. Reed of the California State University system and as a professor of public policy at Santa Clara University. In January 2009, newly elected president Barack Obama nominated Panetta to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta was confirmed by the Senate in February 2009. As director of the CIA, Panetta oversaw the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. On April 28, 2011, Obama announced the nomination of Panetta as defense secretary to replace the retiring Robert Gates. In June, the Senate confirmed Panetta unanimously and he assumed the office on July 1, 2011. David Petraeus became CIA director on September 6, 2011. Since retiring as Defense Secretary in 2013, Panetta has served as chairman of the Panetta Institute for Public Policy, located at California State University, Monterey Bay, a campus of the California State University that he helped establish during his tenure as congressman. The institute is dedicated to motivating and preparing people for lives of public service and helping them to become more knowledgeably engaged in the democratic process. He also serves on a number of boards and commissions and frequently writes and lectures on public-policy issues. Panetta's son, Jimmy, has held his father's former seat in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2017. Description above from the Wikipedia article Leon Panetta, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Yongwaree Anilbol

Fah Yongwaree Anibol is a Thai actress, model, pilot and lawyer under GMMTV. She graduated with a bachelor's degree from the Faculty of Law at Ramkhamhaeng University. She also studied at the Faculty of Science, Department of Commercial Pilot, Aviation Institute, Washington DC, and is now a pilot. By qualifying for the Institute of Aviation, she became one of two women who could pass the exam for commercial pilots. Fah started in the entertainment industry in 2014 when she became the host of the program Kid Sanook. She made her acting debut in 2017 with a supporting role in the series "Petch Klang Fai". Outside her pilot and acting career, Fah owns the accessories brand 'Forever Pumpkin'.

Carmen Gutiérrez

Carmen Gutiérrez was born on November 2, 1969 in Zaragoza (Spain). She studied at the Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático in Madrid, at the Estudio Nancy Tuñón in Barcelona, and at La Factoría del Gutiérrez in Madrid. In THEATRE she starred in "Antigona", "La heredera" and "La Duquesa de Malfi", and participated in several productions of the Compañía Nacional de teatro Clásico and Centro Dramático Nacional, under the direction of Ernesto Caballero (El jardín de los Cerezos, Sainetes, Acastos, ...) She has also worked with directors such as Juan Pastor, Lucía Etxebarría or Gabriel Olivares, among others. At the same time she develops her career in TELEVISION with characters such as Benita in "Amar en Tiempos Revueltos", (nominated for best TV actress by the Actors Union), Encarna, the hypochondriac mother in "La Tira", or the lawyer of the Alcántara family in "Cuéntame". In 2011 she plays Mayte Zaldíbar in "Mi gitana", and in Los Misterios de Laura she is Isabel, internal affairs police officer. In the TVE series "El caso" she plays Loli, owner of the legendary newspaper. In CINEMA she has participated in "La Soledad", by Jaime Rosales, "El mal ajeno", or "Cándida", by Guillermo Fesser. She has recently starred in the short films "Página 52" (Best Short Film at the Castilla La Mancha Festival), "Sexteen", (Audience Award at the Malaga Film Festival 2016), "Némesis"(for which she won the Best Actress Award at the Raccord Gala at the Aragonia Cinemas), and "Ya no te quiero", screened at the SEMINCI in Valladolid and for which she won the Best Actress Award at the La Fila Festival, in Valladolid . In 2018 she obtains the SIMÓN Award from the Academia del Cine Aragones for Best Actress for her character in Grupo 2 Homicidios. In 2014 she premieres "LAISA", her first short film as director and screenwriter, an autobiographical story for which she won the First Prize at the Festival Cine y Mujer de Andorra, and the Second Jury Prize at the Faludi Festival, in Budapest. In her work as a teacher, after directing the theater group of the Ramón Llull University of Barcelona, she teaches acting seminars in front of the camera at the Actors Association of Zaragoza and courses in Performing Arts at the Institute of Spanish Radio and Television. She participates as a lecturer in the Master's Degree in Spanish Literature at the Complutense University of Madrid.

Horațiu Mălăele

Cast · Known for Las Fierbinti

Horațiu-Valentin Mălăele (born 1 August 1952) is a Romanian actor, cartoonist, writer, and theater and film director. In this last capacity his is often associated with the Romanian New Wave. Born in 1952 Târgu-Jiu, he had a public art exhibit in his final year of secondary school, the first of over 30 as of 2016. Mălăele graduated in 1975 from the Institute of Theater and Cinema in Bucharest and first became a professional actor with the National Theater of Romania in Piatra Neamț. He returned to Bucharest, where he became a prominent actor, working in many of Romania's leading theaters including Nottara, Odeon, and Bulandra. He then became a director, directing such plays as O sărbătoare princiară ("A Princely Feast") by Theodor Mazilu (1982 at Nottara Theatre), A Flea in Her Ear by Georges Feydeau (1993 at Nottara Theatre), and Carlo contra Carlo ("Carlo against Carlo") by Paul Ioachim (1994 at the Odeon), which won him that year's Romanian Comedy Festival Prize. He has since directed over a dozen other stage productions. He first appeared as a film actor in 1974, appearing in two films that year: Păcală ("Caution") and Muntele Ascuns ("The Hidden Mountain", and has gone on to act in over two dozen other films. He also directed Palaria ("The Hat", 2004, TV movie), Nunta mută ("Silent Wedding", 2008) and Funeralii fericite ("Happy Funerals", 2013). He has also written two books: the autobiographical Horaţiu despre Mălăele ("Horatiu about Malaele", ISBN 9731812172, and Wanderings, a collection of short episodes, aphorisms, and memories.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock

Dame Margaret Ebunoluwa Aderin-Pocock is a British space scientist and science educator. She is an honorary research associate of University College London's Department of Physics and Astronomy, and has been the chancellor of the University of Leicester since 1 March 2023. Since February 2014, she has co-presented the long-running astronomy television program The Sky at Night with Chris Lintott. In 2020, Maggie was awarded the William Thomson, Lord Kelvin Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics for her public engagement in physics. She is the first black woman to win a gold medal in the Physics News Award and she served as the president of the British Science Association from 2021 to 2022.

Emily Blunt

Cast · Known for A Quiet Place, Oppenheimer, Looper

Emily Olivia Laura Blunt (born 23 February 1983) is a British actress. She has received several accolades, including a Golden Globe Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards, in addition to nominations for an Academy Award and four British Academy Film Awards. Forbes ranked her as one of the highest-paid actresses in the world in 2020. Blunt made her acting debut in the 2001 drama production of The Royal Family and portrayed Catherine Howard in the television miniseries Henry VIII (2003). She made her feature film debut in the drama My Summer of Love (2004). Blunt's breakthrough came in 2006 with her starring roles in the television film Gideon's Daughter and the comedy-drama The Devil Wears Prada. The former won her a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her profile continued to grow with leading roles in the period film The Young Victoria (2009), the romantic comedy Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011), the science fiction films The Adjustment Bureau (2011), Looper(2012) and Edge of Tomorrow (2014), and the musical Into the Woods (2014). Blunt received critical acclaim for playing an idealistic FBI agent in the crime film Sicario (2015), an alcoholic in the psychological thriller The Girl on the Train (2016), and a survivalist mother in her husband John Krasinski's horror film A Quiet Place (2018), for which she won a SAG Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has since starred in the sequels Mary Poppins Returns (2018) and A Quiet Place Part II (2021), the fantasy adventure Jungle Cruise (2021), and the revisionist Western television miniseries The English (2022). Her portrayal of Katherine Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan's biographical thriller film Oppenheimer (2023) earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Blunt has been working with the American Institute for Stuttering since 2006 to help children overcome stuttering through educational resources and raise awareness of the realities of the condition. She is on the institute's board of directors and hosts a gala to raise funds for speech therapy scholarships for children and adults. Description above from the Wikipedia article Emily Blunt, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Pierre Tchernia

Cast · Known for Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra

Pierre Tcherniakowski (29 January 1928 – 8 October 2016), better known as Pierre Tchernia, was a French cinema and television producer, screenwriter, presenter, animator and actor. In France, he was known as "Magic" Tchernia and Monsieur Cinema. Born in Paris as Pierre Tcherniakowski, he was the youngest of four children. His father, a Ukrainian immigrant, was an engineer and his mother a seamstress. He grew up in Courbevoie. In 1940, at age 12, he saw John Ford's Western Stagecoach and was inspired to work in cinema. After graduation, he enrolled in a film and photography technical school, and then joined the Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies. He was part of the creation of the first televised news in France in 1949 and was an early French news presenter. In 1955 he became a producer of animation (with a heavy influence from the early animation of Walt Disney). For many years he hosted a television game show of movie trivia, Monsieur Cinéma (in French). He was also host or presenter for various French talk, variety, quiz and music shows over the years such as La Clé des champs. Tchernia was the regular French commentator in the Eurovision Song Contest on 14 occasions from 1958 until 1974. On 14 July 2011, he became Commandeur of the Legion of Honor. Source: Article "Pierre Tchernia" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA.

Magda Szubanski

Magda Szubanski AO (born Magdalene Mary Therese Szubanski 12 April 1961) is an Australian television and film actress, comedian, writer and LGBT rights activist. Szubanski's career started as a writer and performer of sketch comedy and has since progressed to production of TV, film acting, and musical theatre. In 1985, while performing in a University of Melbourne revue of Too Cool for Sandals, Szubanski, Michael Veitch, Tom Gleisner and others were talent-spotted by Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) producers, which led to The D-Generation television sketch comedy show. Szubanski was one of the creators and performers of the Fast Forward television sketch comedy for the Seven Network, in which she played various characters, including Pixie-Anne Wheatley, Chenille from the Institute de Beauté, Wee Mary MacGregor, Joan Kirner and Michelle Grogan. Szubanski famously played Sharon Strzelecki on Australian comedy show Kath & Kim which ran for four seasons. In 2015, Szubanski released her first book; a memoir titled Reckoning which had themes of familial trauma and accepting her sexual identity as a lesbian. It won the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non fiction, as well as "Book of the Year" and "Biography of the Year" at the Australian Book Industry Awards. Szubanski released a follow-up memoir, I Can't Tell You But I Will, in September 2026. The book chronicles her complicated relationship with—and the demise of—her mother, as well as her cancer diagnosis and recovery.