Mind Games

Nancy MacLean is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University. Prior to moving to Duke, she taught for two decades at Northwestern University, where she served as Chair of the Department of History and Peter B. Ritzma Professor in the Humanities. She is the author of Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan; Freedom is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace; The American Women’s Movement, 1945-2000: A Brief History with Documents and Debating the American Conservative Movement: 1945 to the Present. Her scholarship has received more than a dozen prizes and awards, and been supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowships Foundation. In 2010, she was elected a fellow of the Society of American Historians, which recognizes literary distinction in the writing of history and biography. 

Frank Dikötter is Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong. Before moving to Asia in 2006, he was Professor of the Modern History of China at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is also Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has published a dozen books that have changed the way we look at the history of China, from the classic The Discourse of Race in Modern China (1992) to China before Mao: The Age of Openness (2007). His People's Trilogy has documented the impact of communism on the lives of ordinary people in China on the basis on new archival material, much of it never seen before. The first volume, Mao's Great Famine, won the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 2011 and was translated into thirteen languages. The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957, was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2014. The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962-1976 concludes the trilogy and was published in May 2016.

Professor Anne Tiernan is the Dean (Engagement) in the Griffith Business School at Griffith University.

A political scientist, with earlier careers in government in the Commonwealth and Queensland public services, and in teaching and consultancy, Anne is respected for her independent, professional and research-informed analysis of national politics, public administration and public policy.

Professor Tiernan's research focuses on the work of governing. Her scholarly interests include: Australian politics and governance, policy advice, executive studies, policy capacity, federalism and intergovernmental coordination. She has written extensively on the political-administrative interface, caretaker conventions, governmental transitions and the work of policy advising.

Anne is a Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG). She was appointed a National Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA) in 2010 for services to the ‘study and practice of public administration’.

Anne is author of several books including: Lessons in Governing: A Profile of Prime Ministers’ Chiefs of Staff, Learning to be a Minister: Heroic Expectations, Practical Realities and Power Without Responsibility: Ministerial Staffers in Australian Governments from Whitlam to Howard.

Former writer and foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times, and then The Guardian, Levy won the One World award for foreign reporting, and One World Media's Press Journalists of the Year. He has produced documentaries for HBO, BBC 1, BBC 2, C4 and VICE on HBO. In 2010, his film City of Fear, on Pakistan's bloodiest year, was nominated for an award at the Edinburgh International Festival. In 2012, Torture Trail, won the 2013 Amnesty International award and was short-listed for a Grierson and a Rory Peck award. Chinese Murder Mystery, an investigation into the death of Neil Heywood, was long-listed for a BAFTA and nominated for the Monte Carlo Television Awards 2013. He produced the Emmy-winning Season Three, Four and Five of Vice-on-HBO.