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Visiting Fellows
The UK Resilience Academy (UKRA) exists to build a more resilient nation by strengthening the capability, capacity, and connections of those working across the resilience system.
To deliver on this mission, the Academy seeks to bridge professional practice and academic insight through strategic partnerships, thought leadership, and innovation in learning and development.
In pursuit of this, we have created the Visiting Associate of Practice role. These individuals will contribute their expertise to the UKRA’s teaching, research, and professional programmes. Enabling collaboration with the Academy on targeted initiatives that advance learning, innovation, and impact.
These individuals will bring real-world professional experience into the UKRA’s learning and research ecosystem. Enhance the practical relevance and impact of UKRA programmes, ensuring they address real challenges faced by practitioners and policymakers.
Let us introduce our visiting fellows….
Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson
Currently Chair of Sport Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh Awards. Board member of UK Sport, British Institute of Human Rights and Foundation of Light.
Paralympic athlete competing at 5 Games, winning 11 gold, 4 silver and 1 bronze medal.
Elevated to the House of Lords in 2010 as a Crossbench Peer taking the title Baroness Grey-Thompson of Eaglescliffe in the County of Durham.
Previously sat on the board of TfL, London Legacy Development Corporation, the BBC, UK Sport (also current), and Chair ukactive.
Currently working in sport, physical activity, and disability rights.
Sir Charlie Stickland KCB OBE
Sir Charlie Stickland served 38 years in the UK Armed Forces. His last appointment was as the Chief of Joint Operations (CJO) responsible for all UK global operations.
He led UK’s support to Ukraine and our operational engagement with NATO, whilst concurrently orchestrating the national response to tensions in the Middle East, shaping the UK’s approach to the Indo Asia Pacific region and commanding national crisis response operations.
He is passionate about people and inclusive leadership and is a dynamic advocate for the exploitation of technology to create competitive advantage.
Roles prior to this included Assistant Chief of Defence Staff for Operations in the Ministry of Defence with a particular focus on Counter Terrorism and UK Resilience operations; the Commandant General Royal Marines; Commander EU NAVFOR commanding the fascinating Op ATALANTA Horn of Africa Counter Piracy mission; and Commander 3 Commando Brigade.
Sir Charlie now operates as a Senior Board Advisor focussed on the nexus of defence, security and resilience; geopolitics; and exploitation of technology. He mentors on the UK and Australian Higher Command & Staff Colleges; he is a senior research fellow for RAND and has the privilege of Chairing the Disaster Response Charity REACT.
Kelly Beaver MBE
Kelly Beaver MBE is Chief Executive of Ipsos in the UK and Ireland, one of the largest and most innovative research organisations in the UK. With over 2,000 specialist research, operational, and advisory employees across 12 offices, Ipsos delivers reliable information and true understanding of Society, Markets and People.
In addition to her role in Ipsos she also holds several honorary positions external to Ipsos in academia at Oxford University and Kings College as well as various charities.
Kelly is a regular commentator in the national press and broadcast media on public and business leader opinion, societal and consumer trends. This spans across a range of topics including trust, gender equality, employee engagement, leadership, and many others.
She was awarded an MBE in June 2022 as part of the Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to academia, research and the COVID-19 response, and was named in Female FTSE Board Report - 100 Women to Watch 2022.
Mike Adamson
Mike Adamson is an experienced CEO, board member and leadership coach with extensive global and national systems leadership experience across not-for-profit, public and private sectors. He has established and led strategic collaborations to enhance impact and has in-depth knowledge of UK and international not-for-profit and public sectors.
He was Chief Executive of the British Red Cross for nine years until November 2023, the country’s leading voluntary crisis response organisation, and part of the worldwide Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. During his tenure, he oversaw the response to many emergencies both in the UK and overseas, including the Grenfell Tower fire, Covid and Ukraine.
Mike helped pioneer new forms of collaboration across sectors to meet some of the nation’s big challenges including emergencies, refugees and health. He co-chaired the Voluntary & Community Sector Emergency Partnership and was a trustee of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) amongst other non-executive roles. He led a review of the learning for the future from the response to the Ukraine crisis for the Global Board of the International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies.
He served as Interim Director of the Global Commission recently established by former UK Prime Minister Theresa May to reverse the continued growth in modern slavery & trafficking
Mike is an Honorary Visiting Professor at Bayes Business School, Centre for Charity Effectiveness (part of City St Georges University). He is also Chair, St Mungo’s, a leading homelessness charity
In June 2021, Mike was awarded a CBE honour for services to the humanitarian sector and the Red Cross Movement.
Prof. Rowena Hill MBE
Rowena Hill MBE is a Professor of Resilience, Emergencies and Disaster Science at Nottingham Trent University. Her work builds opportunities to translate evidence and research on risk, resilience and wellbeing, into policy and practice. Her work focusses on applying evidence to inform policy and practice at the individual, group, organisation and societal level.
Her aim is to provide an evidence base to inform policy and practice in disaster and emergency contexts. This includes focusing on communities, responders and the resilience structures through which threats and risks are identified, prepared, mitigated, managed, recovered and adapted to. Broadly, her projects consider how the UK can increase societal resilience to societal wide risks (such as the pandemic, impacts of climate change and civil protection). This work uses evidence on group behaviours, communication and public narratives of risk, and psychological and social health of communities and responding organisations.
The work she does spans across organisations, sectors, and governance structures. She is currently the embedded scientist supporting the Climate Security National Foresight Group. Rowena is the Chair of the national Academic Collaboration, Evaluation and Research Group aligned to the National Fire Chiefs Council, and is Climate Resilience and Civil Contingencies lead for the NTU Police Academic Centre of Excellence. She is a Visiting Fellow at the Durham Institute of Research, Development, and Invention, and she has been an ESRC Policy Fellow to MHCLG (formerly DLUCH) on Climate Change. She has worked with a number of government departments at national level, as well as the Senedd. These have been to deliver one off projects, as a member of expert round tables, to deliver expert challenges, or to contribute to longer term workstreams and portfolios.
From March 2020 to February 2021, she was the embedded scientist on secondment to the C19 National Foresight Group set up in response to the pandemic. Within this secondment, she led multiple teams who delivered over 60 reports to provide evidence-based quality research findings for decision-making of policy makers and leaders across the UK, for which she was awarded an MBE in 2024 for Public Service.
Elisabeth Braw
Elisabeth Braw is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, focusing on geopolitics and the globalised economy as well as greyzone and hybrid threats. She’s also a columnist with Foreign Policy and Politico Europe and the author of the award-winning Goodbye Globalization: The Return of a Divided World (Yale University Press).
Her latest book, Undersea War, will be published by John Murray Press and Basic Books in October 2026. She’s also the author of God’s Spies, about the Stasi’s church division (2019) and The Defender’s Dilemma: Identifying and Deterring Gray-Zone Aggression (2022).
She is a member of M&C Saatchi World Services’ advisory council, a member of GALLOS Technologies’ advisory board, an adviser to Willis Towers Watson’s research arm and a member of the UK National Preparedness Commission.
In addition, she is a regular op-ed contributor to the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Times (of London).
Deborah Haynes
Deborah is the Security and Defence Editor at Sky News. She covers stories at home and across the world, including threats to the UK and attempts to rebuild Britain’s hollowed armed forces and wider national resilience as well as reporting on Russia’s war in Ukraine and conflict in the Middle East.
Deborah also wrote and narrated Sky News’s critically acclaimed The Wargame podcast series that simulated what might happened if Russia attacked the UK.
In addition, she wrote and narrated Into The Grey Zone, a podcast series that brought to life the reality of hostile attacks under the threshold of conventional armed conflict.
Prior to joining Sky, Deborah was Defence Editor and before that Iraq Correspondent at The Times. She covered wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, as well as focusing on armed forces issues in the UK.
She won the Amnesty International award for National Newspaper Human Rights Reporting in 2008 for a series on the plight of Iraqi interpreters working for UK forces in Iraq.
This series also won Deborah the inaugural Bevins Prize for investigative journalism in 2008.
Before joining The Times, Deborah worked for the Reuters news agency after six years at AFP in Tokyo, Geneva, Baghdad and London.
