Catherine Fieschi is the director of Counterpoint. Prior to this, Catherine directed the think tank of the British Council and led the London-based think tank Demos (2005-2008). Trained as an academic, she taught Comparative Politics at the University of Nottingham and directed the Centre for the Study of European Governance. She has advised numerous governments, businesses and foundations on aspects of risk, strategy and policy. Catherine holds a PhD in Comparative Politics from McGill University. She is the author of In the Shadow of Democracy: Fascism, Populism and the French Fifth Republic (MUP) and of numerous pamphlets and articles on extremism, populism, citizenship and identity politics. Her analysis is intrinsically comparative and draws on a variety of social science disciplines as well interpretive approaches in order to reveal the hidden wiring and civil society dynamics that are too often absent from mainstream risk and political analyses.