Executive Director

Ben holds a BA in History and American Studies and was previously a Campus Coordinator and Campus Director of The Pinsker Centre. He has been a firm advocate for intellectual tolerance on university campuses— having been elected as a delegate to the National Union of Students, and the World Union of Jewish Students. Ben was cited in Jewish News’s “twenty five under 25” list, where he was described as playing “an instrumental role in standing up to Antisemitism on campus.”

Director of Strategy

Mackenzie France graduated from the University of Cambridge in 2023 with a BA in History and Politics before joining the Pinsker Centre as Director of Strategy. He has participated in Fellowships in think tanks across the UK and US including as a Krauthammer Fellow at the Tikvah Fund, an Edington Fellow at the Prosperity Institute, and a Middle East History & Peace Fellow at Young Voices

Mackenzie writes regularly on international affairs, with a focus on countering international extremism, British foreign policy in the Middle East, and threats to Western security alliances.

Education & Partnerships Manager

Daniella Spoto is a final year undergraduate student at the University of Exeter reading Politics and International Relations. Before joining the Pinsker Centre as the Education and Partnerships Manager, she participated in the Pinsker Policy Fellowship programme. During the fellowship, her research focused on the weaponisation of sexual violence in Israel and Gaza.

Daniella is also the Co-founder of Women In Whitehall, a UK-based think tank breaking the barriers for women getting into politics and academia.

Senior Doctoral Fellow

Mariam Habib Matta is a PhD candidate in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge, supported by Gonville & Caius college’s Carter Studentship and a Harvey fellow. Her doctoral research focuses on the emerging phenomena she labels ‘Islamic Zionism’.

Using ethnography as her qualitative approach, she will be investigating the theology, lived experience, and ideology of ‘Muslim Zionists’.

She holds an MPhil specialising in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Cambridge, as a FAMES-Browne Cambridge Trust Scholar, with her dissertation focusing on the Coptic indigenous identity. She graduated with a first-class BSc Hons Politics degree from the LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science) as a Laidlaw Scholar. In her academic career Mariam has done extensive research on AI, Iran, Indigenous identities of the Middle East, antisemitism in the Middle East, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Coptic identity, extremism, and political Islam.