Topic: Immigration

Jacob Funk Kirkegaard

Jacob Funk Kirkegaard has been nonresident senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) and resident senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) in the GMF's Brussels office since September 2020. He has been associated with the PIIE since 2002 and was resident senior fellow from 2013. Jacob is currently also a consultant with 22V Research, a private financial advisory firm in New York. Before joining the PIIE, he worked with the Danish Ministry of Defense, the United Nations in Iraq, and in the private financial sector. He is the author, coauthor or coeditor of Transatlantic Economic Challenges in an Era of Growing Multipolarity (2012), US Pension Reform: Lessons from Other Countries (2009), The Accelerating Decline in America’s High-Skilled Workforce: Implications for Immigration Policy (2007) and Transforming the European Economy (2004).

He is a graduate of the Danish Army's Special School of Intelligence and Linguistics with the rank of first lieutenant; the University of Aarhus in Aarhus, Denmark; the Columbia University in New York; and received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies. Jacob frequently appears in global media and his current research focuses on European economies and reform, Chinese long-term economic growth prospects, efficient decarbonization strategies, immigration, foreign direct investment trends and estimations, pension systems, demographics, offshoring, and the productivity impact of information technology.

Thom Brooks

Thom Brooks is an award-winning author, policy advisor and public speaker. He has written 9 books, over 150 articles and book chapters and edited 30 books. An immigration expert, he published the Jenny Jeger Prize winning Fabian Society pamphlet setting out a new immigration system for Labour described by POLITICO as the first major piece in area for over a decade.

The BBC has called him ‘the UK’s leading expert on the citizenship test’ and he successfully argued for the creation of an inquiry into the test by the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee. He serves on the Office for National Statistics’ Government Statistical Service Migration Group. Brooks is cited by the Electoral Commission in favour of rewording the EU Referendum to ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’.

His research on punishment is listed in the top 100 ‘Big Ideas for the Future’ in British universities. He is cited in ‘watershed’ Connecticut Supreme Court case of Santiago II ending capital punishment in his native state of Connecticut.

As Durham University’s longest serving Dean of the Law School, Brooks doubled the school’s size and and grew its profile recognised in House of Commons Early Day Motion 875. Brooks was the 112th President of the Society of Legal Scholars, the oldest and largest learned society for academic lawyers.

He is an executive committee member of the Fabian Society and British Institute for International and Comparative Law trustee. He lives in Co. Durham and a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and United States.