About Julie

Out and about in Cambridge

I have been a City Councillor for Newnham since 2003 and Executive Councillor for Arts and Recreation, with responsibility for sports, open spaces and arts in the City since 2006. Previously Secretary of Newnham Branch, I became Chair in July this year, taking a lead on campaigning in the ward.

Professionally, I am a Senior Lecturer in International Relations in the Politics and International Studies Department at Cambridge University and Fellow of Robinson College. I was Deputy Director of the Centre of International Studies for five years until last December when the Centre merged with the Politics Department to create POLIS. I direct studies in Politics, Psychology and Sociology at Robinson and am also a Graduate Tutor responsible for the pastoral care of over 60 sixty students, and for working with students and academic colleagues to run research days twice a year. I have been passionate about European politics ever since reading an article on European elections as an undergraduate, and have been able to use my languages (French and German) to do research and publish on a wide range of European issues, including: elections to the EU, institutional reform, EU enlargement, the UK's relations with the EU. I have recently been appointed as external examiner for the BA in European Studies at King's College London and am a member of the ESRC's First Grants panel, which disburses funds for young members of the profession.

From 1999 to 2003, I ran the European Programme at Chatham House, where I first worked in the mid-1990s and where I had my first significant publication: "Citizens' Europe: The European Elections and the Role of the European Parliament" ahead of the 1994 EP elections. I have served on various Lib Dem European groups, including the working group for the 2009 Euro manifesto.

At Chatham House, I gained experience of managing people, both paid staff and volunteers, in a small team rather similar to an MP's office. We ran high-level events for parliamentarians, civil servants and journalists from the UK and elsewhere, including Berlin, Paris and Lviv, as well as working with major companies, including Boeing and Accenture. Since programmes at Chatham House don't have core funding, I was responsible for finding money to cover staff and overhead costs as well as research, so understand the importance of fundraising and have a track record of securing funding, whether from high net worth individuals or companies.

I am an engaged and enthusiastic member of the Federal Policy Committee and have served on numerous policy working groups since the mid-1990s, including the Liberal Democrat Values group and the Better Governance group. In 2007/08 I chaired the Party's working group on Security, which dealt with internal and external security matters, as well as how to preserve our liberties at a time when they seem under threat from the government.

I have extensive media experience ranging from national and international radio and television broadcasting down to giving interviews to the Cambridge News and BBC Radio Cambridgeshire discussing issues within my Council portfolio such as swimming, parks and plants. In terms of television, I have appeared on a wide range of programmes, including BBC Breakfast, CNN, CBC and Sky, and was a panellist in the BBC's election night broadcast for the 1999 European Parliament elections. On radio, I have been on PM, The World Tonight, various programmes on BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Scotland, LBC (London) and National Public Radio (US) discussing national and international politics, as well as the Moral Maze at the time when the far right entered government in 2000. Most recently I appeared on the Today programme critiquing the Tories' anti-European response to Lisbon Treaty ratification. I have also given numerous interviews to international print media, including the Japanese paper Yomiuri Shimbun and Agence France Presse.

I was brought up in Crosby, where I first got involved in politics at the age of 12, campaigning at the historic by-election. Following a year volunteering at the Liverpool Council for Voluntary Service, I moved to Oxford at 19 to read PPE at Brasenose College, before an MPhil and DPhil in Politics at St. Antony's College, focusing on elections to the European Parliament, a theme on which I still write and comment in the media, as well as contributing to Lib Dem and ELDR manifestos. I was a Hanseatic Scholar in Hamburg from 1995 to 1997 and a visiting Professor at the Central European University in Budapest before taking up a teaching post in Cambridge in 1997. Outside of politics, I enjoy music, ballet and theatre as well as travel and spending time with family and friends.