CONVERGENCE 2025 SPEAKERS
Prof Maria Ubiali
Prof Maria Ubiali is a particle physicist with a passion for mathematics, based at Cambridge and CERN.
Maria Ubiali read Physics at the Università degli Studi of Milan, in Italy, gaining a First Class Honours degree.
She obtained a joint doctoral degree from the University of Edinburgh and the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.
She has been working at the University of Cambridge as a post-doctoral research associate since 2013. She was awarded a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellowship in October 2016 and in 2017 became Lecturer in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.
In 2020 she became Principal Investigator of an ERC grant studying the “Physics beyond the Standard Proton.”
Maria is the Sheila Edmonds Lecturer in Mathematics at Newnham,
Prof. Giuseppe Pezzini
Prof. Giuseppe Pezzini is a Tutor and Fellow in Latin at Corpus Christi College, Oxford which he joined in 2021, after five beautiful years of teaching in St Andrews (2016–2021), and research fellowships at Magdalen College Oxford (2013–2015) and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2016).
He worked as an assistant editor for the Oxford Dictionary of Medieval Latin and has published especially on Latin language and literature, philosophy of language, and the theory of fiction, ancient and modern.
He is the Tolkien Editor for the Journal of Inklings Studies and an Associate Member of the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St Andrews.
Saturday 29 of March 10.30 - 11.30 AM
Prof Rosalind Cornforth
Professor Ros Cornforth is Professor of Climate and Development and Director of the Walker Institute at the University of Reading. She has a PhD in Tropical Meteorology and over 15 years’ experience collaborating with national met services, governments, and NGOs in developing countries. She is currently PI/Co-PI on several major collaborative research projects in Africa, Middle East and the Kush Himalayan region and has extensive high-level experience working as a technical consultant with UN agencies and governments, including Africa Union (AU-DRR team, AU-NEPAD), the UN (WHO/WMO, UNEP, UNDP, UNCCST, WFP), World Bank, and the UK Department for International Development (DfID).
Prof Sir Brian Hoskins FRS
Prof Brian Hoskins has been a Professor of Meteorology in the University of Reading for 40 years. He was also the Founding Director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London and is now its Chair.
His research interests have been in weather and climate, in particular the understanding and modelling of the motion of the atmosphere on all scales.
He has had many national and international positions and was a member of the UK Climate Change Committee for its first 10 years.
He is a member of the science academies of the UK, USA, China and Europe. He received a CBE in 1998 and was knighted in 2007 for services to the environment. His awards include the 2024 Japan Prize.
Dr Ben Wilson
Ben is Dthe irector of Public Engagement for SCIAF, the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, Caritas Scotland. Ben is responsible for SCIAF’s fundraising, community engagement, development education, communications and political advocacy. Since 2017, Ben has led SCIAFs climate justice advocacy work at the Scottish, UK and International levels, through which he has developed particular expertise on the issue of Loss & Damage. He holds a PhD from the University of Glasgow in development sociology and is a trustee of Scotland’s International Development Alliance and Stop Climate Chaos Scotland. Since 2021 he has advised the Vatican on the UNFCCC and was a member of the Holy See delegation to COP28.
Saturday 29 March 3 - 4 PM
Prof Paquita de Zulueta
Paquita has worked as a London GP for 35 years (retired 2021) specialising in mental health, migrant health, clinical ethics, professional education and development.
She is also a Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at Imperial College. Paquita has been working as a part time CBT, compassion focused, mindfulness-based therapist since 2008, and she is also a qualified coach and mentor.
For 10 years she was a member of Imperial College NHS Trust’s clinical ethics committee and for 6 years of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. She is a Schwartz Round facilitator since 2015 for Imperial College NHS Trust and medical school. She is also a trustee of the Institute of Medical Ethics and a member of the Royal College of GPs ethics committee.
Paquita has also set up a charity called Human Values in Healthcare Forum (HVHF) which aims to rehumanise healthcare through the core values of compassion, integrity, inclusiveness, justice and wisdom.
Dr Caesar Atuire
Caesar Atuire is a philosopher and health ethicist from Ghana who is currently the Ethics Lead for the MSc in International Health and Tropic Medicine at the University of Oxford. He is also an Associate Professor of Applied Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and Classics at the University of Ghana and an affiliate Instructor at the University of Washington’s Department of Bioethics and Humanities. Caesar is also the President of the International Association of Bioethics (2024-2026). Caesar is a member of the WHO’s Covid-19 Ethics and Governance Working Group, a member of the Steering Committee of the Global Forum for Bioethics in Research and a core member of the Africa CDC-linked Working Group on an African framework for research ethics during outbreaks of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Outside academic life, Caesar leads an NGO, Amicus Onlus, that operates in healthcare, basic education, vocational skills training, and re-integration of returned illegal migrants to Europe in Ghana. His recent publications include “What Is a Person?: Untapped Insights from Africa” (2025) co-authored with Nancy Jecker.
Jillian Hayes
Jillian Hayes is a Clinical Nurse Specialist in Palliative care working for St Joseph’s Hospice. St Joseph’s Hospice was founded in 1905 by the Sisters of Charity and provides specialist palliative care and support to people in the East End and City who have a life-limiting illness. Jillian’s prior experiences of volunteering in a hospice in Swaziland as well as working in the care home setting, the acute sector, homeless health and general practice have moved her increasingly in search of working more holistically with patients and significant others through their health journey. In the last 7 years she has become increasingly interested in the specialist field of palliative and end of life care, stemming from both personal and professional experiences.
Saturday 29 March 5.30 - 6.30 PM
Ignacio Carbajosa
Ignacio Carbajosa is Professor of Old Testament at San Damaso University (Madrid). He is a Catholic priest. He has written a Commentary on the book of Psalms in two volumes (2018-2023). Among his books in English the following stand out: Hebraica veritas versus Septuaginta auctoritatem. Does a Canonical Text of the Old Testament Exist? (2024); Faith: the Fount of Exegesis. The Interpretation of Scripture in Light of the History of Research on the Old Testament (2013). He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Catholic University of America, Oxford University, Harvard University and Trinity College (Dublin).
John Barton
John Barton has been the Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford (until his retirement in 2014). He is priest in the Church of England and fellow of the British Academy. His book A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths (2019) was shortlisted for the 2020 Wolfson History Prize and won the 2019 Duff Cooper Prize. It was adapted for radio and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2020. Other books include: What is the Bible? (1991), Understanding Old Testament Ethics (2003), The Word: On Translations of the Bible (2022).
Walter Moberly
Walter Moberly has been Professor of Theology and Biblical Interpretation at Durham University (until his retirement in 2022). He is priest in the Church of England. He is known for his creative, accessible, and provocative writing, always concerned with the continuing relevance of the biblical text today. Some of his books include: The God of the Old Testament: Encountering the Divine in Christian Scripture (2020). The Bible in a Disenchanted Age: The Enduring Possibility of Christian Faith (2018) and Old Testament Theology: Reading the Hebrew Bible as Christian Scripture (2013).
Sunday 30 March 10 -11 AM
Dr Alec Pembleton
Dr Alec Pembleton is a Psychiatrist and Systemic Therapist with an interest in how people connect with each other and how he can contribute to fostering better relationships.
Alec trained in Liverpool, gaining experience working with drug users and families where a young person was experiencing psychosis. This experience sparked his interest in the role of families as resources for people in distress, leading him to train in Family Systemic Therapy while completing his higher training in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
His current interest in loneliness explores both cultural shifts and the narratives surrounding loneliness, as well as the changing personal experience of loneliness, including moments of solitude and the lessons they can offer individuals.
Dr Giovanna Moretto
Dr Giovanna Moretto has been a Clinical Psychologist since 2006. She has worked for the Child Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) for 15 years. She is now working as a principal psychologist for CAMHS in Cheshire. She is a qualified Interpersonal therapy (IPT-A) therapist and supervisor and evidence-based intervention for moderate and severe depression in adolescence. She is intensively involved in supporting young people presenting various severe mental health problems. Her special interests are depression, trauma and psychogenic movement disorders in young people.
Dr Martin O’Sullivan
Dr Martin O’Sullivan is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist since 1999. He has worked as a Consultant at Guy's Hospital, in London, Mater Hospital in Dublin and in Northland, New Zealand during that period. He is now working as a Hospital-based Paediatric Liaison Psychiatrist in Dublin. Currently, his team deal with a large number of crisis episodes of care annually.
Gisele Mendonca
Gisele Mendonca has been a Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist since 2006. She has worked for various Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) for 15 years. For the past 8 years, Gisele has worked in her private practice, helping children of all ages and their families to understand and overcome their emotional difficulties. She also works for OXPIP (Oxford Parent Infant Project), a charity organisation which offers intensive therapeutic help to parents and infants, from conception to two years. She is a training teacher and supervisor.
Sunday 30 March 12 - 01 PM
Lord John Bird
John Bird MBE is a social entrepreneur, best known as the founder of The Big Issue, a magazine sold by homeless street vendors and edited by professional journalists. Born in Notting Hill, London, to a poor Irish family, he became homeless at age five, lived in an orphanage, and was in and out of prison during his teenage years.
In 1991, he launched The Big Issue with Gordon Roddick. The magazine grew from a local London publication to a global initiative.
In 2001, Bird co-founded The Big Issue Invest to provide financing for businesses focused on social change. In 1995, he was awarded an MBE for services to homeless people and, in 2006, received the Beacon Fellowship Prize for his work raising awareness about homelessness. Bird also served as a Social Enterprise Ambassador, promoting social entrepreneurship across the UK.
Prof Valetina Rotondi
Prof. Valentina Rotondi is a Professor at the Department of Business Economics, Health, and Social Care at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Italian Switzerland (SUPSI), an associate researcher at the University of Oxford, and a research fellow at the Swiss School of Public Health and Milan Center for Neurosciences (NEUROMI).
With training in behavioral and applied economics, she focuses on gender inequalities, demography, and development. Her research explores the effects of digital technologies on health, well-being, and female empowerment, as well as the impacts of unexpected events on demographic and behavioral attitudes.
Prof. Rotondi holds a Ph.D. in Economics (2016) from the Catholic University of Milan and teaches "unusual data analysis" at SUPSI. She is also a director of the Certificate of Advanced Studies in "Integral Economics" at the University of Fribourg and SUPSI.
She is a member of the scientific committee of "The Economy of Francesco" and the "School of Civil Economy" .
Sunday 30 March 2.30 - 4 PM
Gregory Halpern
Gregory was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1977. He is known for a distinctive style of documentary photography that is rooted in both the real and the sublime. This approach has led him to photograph, among other things, life in post-industrial towns of the American Rust Belt, the people and places of Los Angeles, and the uniquely unifying experience of a total solar eclipse. Of his practice, he says, “What’s interesting to me about the world is its chaos and contradictions, the way opposites can be so beautiful in relation to each other.”
Though Halpern says he is primarily motivated by the desire to “create” rather than “document,” his work is powerfully affecting in its reflection of the world around us. A study of working conditions for service employees at Harvard, created while he was a student there, resulted in a successful bid for a living wage and was published as a book, Harvard Works Because We Do (2003). ZZYZX, his fantastical book of photographs of Los Angeles published by MACK in 2016, is now in its fourth edition. King, Queen, Knave, published by MACK in 2024, brings together two decades of work from his hometown of Buffalo.
Halpern became a Magnum Photos nominee in 2018, an associate member two years later, and a full member in 2023. He has published eight monographs, is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his photographs are in major public and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He teaches photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Luca Fiore
Luca Fiore (Milan, 1978) is a journalist, critic and independent curator. He writes about photography for Il Foglio, Domani, Il Giornale dell’arte and Aperture. He is in the Faculty of the Master of Photography at IUAV in Venice. He curated exhibitions by Mario Cresci, Antonio Rovaldi, Jürgen Nefzger, Gus Powell and Curran Hatleberg. He participated in Giovanni Frangi’s project L’intervista (Magonza, 2021), a volume collecting eleven interviews with the painter based in Milan. He also edited Stupidity Exercise Manual (Skira, 2022), an artist’s book by Andrea Bianconi. In 2019 he co-curated with Borys Filonenko the exhibition Aeneas Passes On. Ukranian Contest at the Yermilov Centre in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
