The following people are part of the Selection Committee that will choose the participants of the 2026 Young Königswinter Conference. The full list of committee members will be published shortly. To get an idea in the meantime, you can have a look at last years’ selection committee here.
Dr Shachi Amdekar
Dr Shachi Amdekar is a development economist and Chartered Manager by background, and an alumnus of the Young Koenigswinter Conference. She currently heads up a team working on foreign policy issues at the UK Cabinet Office. She has held a range of trade and foreign policy roles across the UK Civil Service in London and Berlin, focusing on international trade negotiations and strategy, economic security, and multilateral engagement and G7/G20 negotiations – including a secondment to the Bundeskanzleramt to support Germany’s G7 Presidency in 2022.
Before joining the Civil Service, she worked in private equity and education consulting focused on high-growth markets. She completed her MPhil and PhD in Development Economics at Queens’ College, Cambridge, where her research examined the evolution of UK–India trade and technology transfer across global supply chains.
In a voluntary capacity, she serves as Chair of Governors at Ark Globe Academy in London.
Dr Birgit Bujard
Dr Birgit Bujard is a political scientist and Executive Manager of the Department of Political Science at the University of Cologne. Her research focuses on British politics and EU-UK relations.
She is also Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Turkey and European Union studies (CETEUS) and member of the Team Europe Direct, the speakers pool of the European Commission.
Since 2018 she is on the board of the Young Königswinter Alumni Association (YKWA e.V.), first as Deputy Chair and now as Chair. She attended the Young Königswinter Conference in 2011.
Joe Dancey
Joe Dancey is a corporate communications leader with experience in strategic communications, policy delivery, government relations, and senior stakeholder engagement.
With long-standing interest in UK-German relations and international affairs, Joe participated at the Young Königswinter Conference whilst serving as special adviser to Baroness Valerie Amos, then Leader of Britain’s House of Lords.
Following government, he worked in a private secretary role to Lord Sebastian Coe as Chair of the London 2012 Olympic Organising Committee. Subsequently, Joe has directed commercially focused UK and international campaigns as a communications and government relations consultant.
After Britain’s general election in 2024, as UK Labour’s Executive Director of Policy and Communications, Joe held responsibility for the party’s international department leading visits to the Federal Chancellery, high-level political conferences and roundtables on policy and election strategy.
He has addressed events in Berlin, Brussels, Oxford and London as part of his commitment to building long-term relationships between parties, policy leaders and civil society across the UK, Germany and European Union.
Martina Heber
Martina Heber is a banking professional with more than 20 years of experience across the financial sector. Throughout her career, she has held roles in Hamburg, Munich and Berlin, building deep expertise in financial regulation, governance and risk management. She currently serves as Compliance & AML Manager and Deputy Money Laundering Officer at a German capital management company, where she focuses on anti-money laundering, regulatory compliance and investor due diligence across complex fund structures and assets.
Prior to her current role, Martina spent seven years at the Association of German Banks (Bundesverband deutscher Banken), where she worked as Head of Office to the CEO at the intersection of finance, policy, and regulation, supporting senior leadership and engaging closely with political and supervisory stakeholders. Her career reflects a consistent focus on strengthening financial integrity frameworks within an increasingly international regulatory environment.
Martina is an alumna of the Young Königswinter Conference (2018) and remains committed to fostering constructive dialogue and cooperation between Germany and the United Kingdom, particularly in the areas of financial regulation, governance and economic policy.
John Kampfner
John Kampfner has had a long career in public life spanning global affairs, politics and culture. He is the author of seven books and is working on his eighth.
He began his journalistic career with the Telegraph, first in East Berlin where he reported on the fall of the Wall and German unification, then in Moscow during the collapse of Soviet Communism. He went on to work for the FT and BBC covering UK politics. As Editor of the New Statesman from 2005 to 2008, he took the magazine to 30-year circulation highs.
He writes regular columns for the Guardian, Foreign Policy, Politico and Der Spiegel. He is a regular contributor on broadcast media. He has a weekly Substack column, in which he analyses the state of Germany and the world.
His most recent book, ‘In Search of Berlin’, was published in 2023. He has made many programmes for BBC TV and radio, including a two-parter called ‘The Ugly War’ on the Israel-Palestine conflict in 2002, for which he was awarded Film of the Year and Journalist of the Year.
He is the Vice-Chairman of the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft and Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. In 2021, he set up the UK in the World programme at Chatham House, becoming its first director. He ran the free expression organisation, Index on Censorship, between 2008 and 2011; he subsequently advised Google on these issues. He was on the Council of King’s College London between 2012 and 2015 and Chair of the Clore Social Leadership programme from 2015 to 2018.
For eight years, from 2008 to 2016, he was founder Chair of Turner Contemporary, establishing one of the UK’s most successful art galleries. He was the founder of the Creative Industries Federation. He is now Chair of the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration in London.
Mari Mittelhaus
Mari Mittelhaus is the Executive Director and a board member of the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft e.V. (DBG), where she has worked since 2018. The DBG is a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental and politically independent registered association. Its aim is to promote German-British relations in all areas of public and cultural interest.
Mari is responsible for organising the DBG’s four Königswinter Conferences, as well as a public lecture programme, administering the membership base and the network of German-British Associations in Germany. As a graduate of Humboldt University’s Master in British Studies, fostering German-British relations has been important for her for a long time. Having lived in the UK and the US, building bridges between societies through exchange and culture is both a professional and a personal passion of hers. Mari has an interdisciplinary background in business, event management and English politics, law, literature and culture.
She has organised the Young Königswinter Conference for 8 years and also sits on the board of the Young Königswinter Alumni Organisation.
Anja Richter
Anja joined the Ditchley Foundation as Head of Ditchley Germany in February 2025 where she leads on Germany and wider Europe activities and networks. She previously set up and managed the Hanns Seidel Foundation’s London office (2019-2024) and ran inter-parliamentary exchange programmes with Africa and the Americas at the British Group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in the UK Parliament (2014-18). Further work experiences include Westminster Briefing/Dods Parliamentary Communications (2012-13); Canadian Embassy, Berlin (2011); German Federal Foreign Office, Berlin (2010). Anja holds an MSc in International Relations (London School of Economics and Political Science), a BA in Social and Cultural Sciences (European University Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder) and is fluent in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese beyond her native German.
Michael Sturrock
Michael Sturrock works across politics, policy, communications and technology.
After leading Angus Robertson’s Scottish Parliament election campaign, Michael joined his team as Head of Communications and Outreach. Robertson is MSP for Edinburgh Central and Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture.
Previously, Michael worked in data, technology and AI policy as Head of Public Affairs for a trade association representing more than 800 organisations across Brussels, Westminster and Holyrood.
Alongside this, he is active in the charity sector through his work with Epilepsy Scotland, often speaking about his own experience of living with epilepsy alongside fundraising.
Reflecting his combined interest in technology and neurological health, Michael is also the incoming President of Tech Tour’s 2026 Brain and Mental Health Investor Summit, part of Europe’s longest-running tech investor platform, where leading startups tackling neurological conditions pitch to investors worth around €35 billion in capital.
Michael attended Königswinter in 2024 and has remained an active member of the alumni network since, including helping to organise a conference in Scotland in summer 2025.
Simon Thomson
Simon is an award-winning former BBC journalist, correspondent and filmmaker who now works in external communications. He is currently Director of Campaigns for the UK-based organisation Taxpayers Against Poverty. He was Strategic Communications Manager at FareShare, a national charity fighting food waste, and was Head of Media for a net-zero industry body and for the People’s Vote Campaign, which campaigned against Brexit.
Simon is a long-standing YKW alumnus and has organised conferences in the UK, Germany and Turkey. He is also a co-founder of the charity Bridge ID, which supports British and German integration and European co-operation.
Simon has twice stood as a UK Labour parliamentary candidate and has lost twice, so is planning a book on how not to win elections.
Outside of work, Simon enjoys playing football and is co-organiser of the Berlin-based group Mixed Lazy and Lazy Footy.
The following people are part of the Selection Committee that will choose the participants of the 2026 Young Königswinter Conference. The full list of committee members will be published shortly. To get an idea in the meantime, you can have a look at last years’ selection committee here.
Dr Shachi Amdekar is a development economist and Chartered Manager by background, and an alumnus of the Young Koenigswinter Conference. She currently heads up a team working on foreign policy issues at the UK Cabinet Office. She has held a range of trade and foreign policy roles across the UK Civil Service in London and Berlin, focusing on international trade negotiations and strategy, economic security, and multilateral engagement and G7/G20 negotiations – including a secondment to the Bundeskanzleramt to support Germany’s G7 Presidency in 2022.
Before joining the Civil Service, she worked in private equity and education consulting focused on high-growth markets. She completed her MPhil and PhD in Development Economics at Queens’ College, Cambridge, where her research examined the evolution of UK–India trade and technology transfer across global supply chains.
In a voluntary capacity, she serves as Chair of Governors at Ark Globe Academy in London.
Dr Birgit Bujard is a political scientist and Executive Manager of the Department of Political Science at the University of Cologne. Her research focuses on British politics and EU-UK relations.
She is also Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Turkey and European Union studies (CETEUS) and member of the Team Europe Direct, the speakers pool of the European Commission.
Since 2018 she is on the board of the Young Königswinter Alumni Association (YKWA e.V.), first as Deputy Chair and now as Chair. She attended the Young Königswinter Conference in 2011.
Joe Dancey is a corporate communications leader with experience in strategic communications, policy delivery, government relations, and senior stakeholder engagement.
With long-standing interest in UK-German relations and international affairs, Joe participated at the Young Königswinter Conference whilst serving as special adviser to Baroness Valerie Amos, then Leader of Britain’s House of Lords.
Following government, he worked in a private secretary role to Lord Sebastian Coe as Chair of the London 2012 Olympic Organising Committee. Subsequently, Joe has directed commercially focused UK and international campaigns as a communications and government relations consultant.
After Britain’s general election in 2024, as UK Labour’s Executive Director of Policy and Communications, Joe held responsibility for the party’s international department leading visits to the Federal Chancellery, high-level political conferences and roundtables on policy and election strategy.
He has addressed events in Berlin, Brussels, Oxford and London as part of his commitment to building long-term relationships between parties, policy leaders and civil society across the UK, Germany and European Union.
Martina Heber is a banking professional with more than 20 years of experience across the financial sector. Throughout her career, she has held roles in Hamburg, Munich and Berlin, building deep expertise in financial regulation, governance and risk management. She currently serves as Compliance & AML Manager and Deputy Money Laundering Officer at a German capital management company, where she focuses on anti-money laundering, regulatory compliance and investor due diligence across complex fund structures and assets.
Prior to her current role, Martina spent seven years at the Association of German Banks (Bundesverband deutscher Banken), where she worked as Head of Office to the CEO at the intersection of finance, policy, and regulation, supporting senior leadership and engaging closely with political and supervisory stakeholders. Her career reflects a consistent focus on strengthening financial integrity frameworks within an increasingly international regulatory environment.
Martina is an alumna of the Young Königswinter Conference (2018) and remains committed to fostering constructive dialogue and cooperation between Germany and the United Kingdom, particularly in the areas of financial regulation, governance and economic policy.
John Kampfner has had a long career in public life spanning global affairs, politics and culture. He is the author of seven books and is working on his eighth.
He began his journalistic career with the Telegraph, first in East Berlin where he reported on the fall of the Wall and German unification, then in Moscow during the collapse of Soviet Communism. He went on to work for the FT and BBC covering UK politics. As Editor of the New Statesman from 2005 to 2008, he took the magazine to 30-year circulation highs.
He writes regular columns for the Guardian, Foreign Policy, Politico and Der Spiegel. He is a regular contributor on broadcast media. He has a weekly Substack column, in which he analyses the state of Germany and the world.
His most recent book, ‘In Search of Berlin’, was published in 2023. He has made many programmes for BBC TV and radio, including a two-parter called ‘The Ugly War’ on the Israel-Palestine conflict in 2002, for which he was awarded Film of the Year and Journalist of the Year.
He is the Vice-Chairman of the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft and Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. In 2021, he set up the UK in the World programme at Chatham House, becoming its first director. He ran the free expression organisation, Index on Censorship, between 2008 and 2011; he subsequently advised Google on these issues. He was on the Council of King’s College London between 2012 and 2015 and Chair of the Clore Social Leadership programme from 2015 to 2018.
For eight years, from 2008 to 2016, he was founder Chair of Turner Contemporary, establishing one of the UK’s most successful art galleries. He was the founder of the Creative Industries Federation. He is now Chair of the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration in London.
Mari Mittelhaus is the Executive Director and a board member of the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft e.V. (DBG), where she has worked since 2018. The DBG is a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental and politically independent registered association. Its aim is to promote German-British relations in all areas of public and cultural interest.
Mari is responsible for organising the DBG’s four Königswinter Conferences, as well as a public lecture programme, administering the membership base and the network of German-British Associations in Germany. As a graduate of Humboldt University’s Master in British Studies, fostering German-British relations has been important for her for a long time. Having lived in the UK and the US, building bridges between societies through exchange and culture is both a professional and a personal passion of hers. Mari has an interdisciplinary background in business, event management and English politics, law, literature and culture.
She has organised the Young Königswinter Conference for 8 years and also sits on the board of the Young Königswinter Alumni Organisation.
Anja joined the Ditchley Foundation as Head of Ditchley Germany in February 2025 where she leads on Germany and wider Europe activities and networks. She previously set up and managed the Hanns Seidel Foundation’s London office (2019-2024) and ran inter-parliamentary exchange programmes with Africa and the Americas at the British Group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in the UK Parliament (2014-18). Further work experiences include Westminster Briefing/Dods Parliamentary Communications (2012-13); Canadian Embassy, Berlin (2011); German Federal Foreign Office, Berlin (2010). Anja holds an MSc in International Relations (London School of Economics and Political Science), a BA in Social and Cultural Sciences (European University Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder) and is fluent in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese beyond her native German.
Michael Sturrock works across politics, policy, communications and technology.
After leading Angus Robertson’s Scottish Parliament election campaign, Michael joined his team as Head of Communications and Outreach. Robertson is MSP for Edinburgh Central and Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture.
Previously, Michael worked in data, technology and AI policy as Head of Public Affairs for a trade association representing more than 800 organisations across Brussels, Westminster and Holyrood.
Alongside this, he is active in the charity sector through his work with Epilepsy Scotland, often speaking about his own experience of living with epilepsy alongside fundraising.
Reflecting his combined interest in technology and neurological health, Michael is also the incoming President of Tech Tour’s 2026 Brain and Mental Health Investor Summit, part of Europe’s longest-running tech investor platform, where leading startups tackling neurological conditions pitch to investors worth around €35 billion in capital.
Michael attended Königswinter in 2024 and has remained an active member of the alumni network since, including helping to organise a conference in Scotland in summer 2025.
Simon is an award-winning former BBC journalist, correspondent and filmmaker who now works in external communications. He is currently Director of Campaigns for the UK-based organisation Taxpayers Against Poverty. He was Strategic Communications Manager at FareShare, a national charity fighting food waste, and was Head of Media for a net-zero industry body and for the People’s Vote Campaign, which campaigned against Brexit.
Simon is a long-standing YKW alumnus and has organised conferences in the UK, Germany and Turkey. He is also a co-founder of the charity Bridge ID, which supports British and German integration and European co-operation.
Simon has twice stood as a UK Labour parliamentary candidate and has lost twice, so is planning a book on how not to win elections.
Outside of work, Simon enjoys playing football and is co-organiser of the Berlin-based group Mixed Lazy and Lazy Footy.