Dr Steven Hadley is an award-winning cultural policy scholar currently based at De Montfort University, Leicester. His research asks how discourses are constructed and articulated within the context of enabling democratic access to culture. He is the author of Audience Development and Cultural Policy (2021) as well as numerous academic publications and is Editor of several Routledge books including Cultural Leadership in Practice and Audience Data and Research. He is Co-Editor in Chief of Cultural Trends and sits on the Steering Committee of the Cultural Research Network and the Editorial Board of Arts and the Market. He has given invited talks at the National Portrait Gallery, London, the European Parliament in Brussels, the Ministries of Culture in both Paris and Santiago de Chile, and on numerous global media platforms. Steven has worked in over thirty countries internationally and is an Associate Consultant with Counterculture (UK), The Audience Agency (UK) and the Danish Centre for Art & Interculture (Denmark).
Dr Ben Walmsley is Dean of Cultural Engagement at the University of Leeds (UK) and Associate Director for Policy at the Centre for Cultural Value, which he established as the inaugural Director in 2019. Prior to his academic career, Ben worked as an arts manager for ten years, most recently as Producer at the National Theatre of Scotland. Ben is an Expert Advisor for the UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and recently led a national research project investigating the impacts of Covid-19 on the UK’s cultural sector. Ben has published widely in the fields of arts marketing, arts management, cultural policy, leadership and value. He is currently leading a scoping project to establish a national cultural data  observatory in the UK.
Anne Torreggiani founded Audience Agency, a non-profit dedicated to R&D in the cultural sector in 2011, and has seen it grow into an organisation employing over 50 people with hundreds of clients in the UK and across the world. She is an an adviser and facilitator specialising in audience research and strategy, trends and patterns of public engagement with particular interests in audience insight, cultural democracy and innovation. She is author of various guides and publications on these subjects and campaigns for change in policy and practice towards an audience-centred approach and better use of data and other evidence. She is Associate Director of the Centre for Cultural Value, a research centre funded by the AHRC and based at the University of Leeds. She is an experienced trustee – currently of Europeana - and a regular speaker in the UK and internationally.
Dr Dea Vidović is a Senior research assistant in the Department for Culture and Communication of the Institute for Development and International Relations. She graduated in Comparative Literature and Indology from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Zagreb, where, in 2012, she obtained her PhD with a doctoral dissertation in the cultural policies field. From 2012 to 2024, she was the Kultura Nova Foundation Director, and previously, she worked as an editor, journalist, and manager in the public and non-profit sectors in the field of culture. Her research interests include cultural governance and management, local cultural development, cultural democracy, participatory democracy, participatory governance, working conditions and fair practices in culture, international cultural cooperation, networking, mobility, sustainability, the triple transition (digital, social, ecological), decolonization and decanonization of culture, cultural climate justice, the role of civil society in culture,
transformative philanthropy, future studies, and systemic changes.
Dr Ana Žuvela is a researcher at the Department of Culture and Communications at the Institute for Development and International Relations. Ana graduated from Birmingham City University (Birmingham Conservatoire) as a concert pianist and furthered her education at the University College Dublin with MA studies in cultural policy and arts management. She gained her PhD at the University of Zadar with a dissertation on decentralisation and participatory governance practices in Croatia. Ana's professional trajectory is paved with engagements on numerous research projects and cooperations with the supra-national, national and local actors, from the European Parliament, UN, and UNESCO to Foundation Kultura nova, Croatian Ministry of Culture and Media, as well as a line of local administrations in Croatia and abroad. Her research interests encompass socially and environmentally responsible cultural policies, new approaches to the democratisation of cultural policy, devolution of power in cultural policy and new models of cultural governance. She is a member of the ENCATC's Governing Board, ENCATC's The European Journal of Cultural Management and Policy Advisory Board, and the Zagreb Philarmonic Orchestra's Governing Board.