From COVID-19 and how governments have responded, to the US Presidential Election, to Brexit finally becoming a reality with the imminent ending of the transition period, and to an historic coalition government in Ireland bringing Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael together, there is an enormous amount of ground to cover and reflect upon after what has been a truly unprecedented year.

To discuss all of this, the IIEA is delighted to bring together a panel of experts and commentators for our annual Young Professionals Network (YPN) Christmas Special.

About the Speakers:

Professor Anand Menon is Director of UK in a Changing Europe, a leading think-tank analysing the process and impact of Brexit. He is also Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs and Kings College London. He has held positions at a number of universities, including Sciences Po, Columbia University and NYU. He is co-author of Brexit and British Politics (Polity, 2017) and author of Europe: The State of the Union (Atlantic Books 2008). A frequent media commentator, he regularly appears on major UK current affairs programmes and he has also been published in the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and Le Monde, to name a few.

Dr Shana Cohen is Director of Thinktank for Action on Social Change (TASC) & Affiliated Lecturer with the Department of Sociology at Cambridge University. Prior to TASC, she was Deputy Director of the Woolf Institute in Cambridge, where she focused on interfaith and intercultural relations in Europe, India, and the Middle East. She studied at Princeton University and at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received a PhD in Sociology.

Dr Tom Wright, Director of the Center on the United States and Europe a Senior Fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. He is also a contributing writer for The Atlantic and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. His most recent book, All Measures Short of War: The Contest For the 21st Century and the Future of American Power, was published by Yale University Press in May 2017. Tom received his PhD from Georgetown University, his MA in Philosophy from Cambridge University, and a BA and MA from University College Dublin.

Aoife Moore is a Political Correspondent with the Irish Examiner, a position she has held since February 2020. In ‘Golfgate’, she co-broke one of the major news stories of the year, the consequences of which are still reverberating. Prior to joining the Examiner, she served as a Journalist covering politics with Press Association Ireland from 2018 to 2020. She previously worked as a Reporter with the Daily Record, the Irish Daily Star and the Irish Echo. She received her BA in Multimedia Journalism from Glasgow Caledonian University.