Experts

Urvish is a member of the Macroeconomics Team at NIESR, working on forecasting the UK economy and contributing to ongoing improvements in NIESR’s global macroeconomic model, NiGEM. He is also developing models for the devolved nations of the UK and has been focusing on the rising cost of living and subsequent squeeze on real incomes in the UK. His main research interests are in macroeconomic performance and policy, especially in India, and Central Banking, particularly macroprudential

Raj is the strategic lead for policy engagement and impact at Understanding Society. He was previously a Director at the Learning & Skills Network, where he ran a large commercial research function and an independent think tank. His career includes formulating strategy and policy at one of the UK’s largest campaigns to stimulate enterprise culture amongst young adults, and heading up Research and Development at the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (now

Dr Elise Paul joined the Institute of Epidemiology & Health at UCL in September 2020. Broadly speaking, her research focuses on psychosocial predictors of mental and physical health outcomes across the lifespan. She completed her PhD in 2017 at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Her doctoral thesis examined predictors of self-harm ideation and behaviours in childhood and adolescence, with a particular focus on child abuse and neglect. Since then, she has worked as a consultant for the

Gillian Paull is a Senior Associate in the Public Policy practice at Frontier Economics. She undertakes research on the labour market and family-related policy for a variety of government departments and non-governmental organisations, with a particular focus on evaluating policy relating to childcare, mothers’ employment and poverty. Gillian has previously worked for the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and also served as a Specialist Advisor to

Martin Peitz is professor of economics at the University of Mannheim and a director of the Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation – MaCCI. Together with Paul Belleflamme he wrote the leading graduate textbook “Industrial Organization: Markets and Strategies,” and the forthcoming book “The Economics of Platforms: Concepts and Strategy”. He has been advising a number of competition authorities, sector regulators, and government agencies in Europe and abroad.

Cristina Peñasco is a Lecturer at the Department of Politics and International Studies and the current Director of the MPhil in Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. She is also a Fellow at Queens’ College, at the Centre for the Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (C-EENRG) and an associate researcher of the Bennett Institute. With a PhD in Economics, her research lines bring together innovation policy and energy economics with a focus on the policy instruments