City St George's Alumni Reception in New Delhi

Educated at Cambridge and UCL, Professor John joined City in 2020. She was previously Hildred Carlile Chair of English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she held various leadership roles. Before joining Royal Holloway, she was Professor of English at the University of Liverpool.

Professor John is an internationally recognised Dickensian, much of her work focusing on the relationship between Dickens’s work and the popular cultural contexts of the Victorian and post-Victorian periods, but she is also interested in questions of popular culture more generally.

She is academic advisor to the Dickens Museum, has advised the Museum of London, is a Fellow of Gladstone’s Library and twice a Trustee of the Dickens Society of America.

Professor John has been the recipient of individual and team teaching awards and has taught abroad by invitation, as well as giving numerous international keynote research lectures. She is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the English Association, a strategic reviewer and member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College.

Both her research and her professional practice are informed by a belief in dialogue between academia and the world beyond, for example, through the media, schools, cultural institutions, and cultural policy bodies.

Professor Spicer is originally from Aotearoa/New Zealand. He began his studies at the University of Otago and holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne in Australia. Prior to joining City, he was a Professor of Organization Studies at the University of Warwick.

He has been a visiting professor at London Business School, the Kellogg School at Northwestern, McGill University, Lund University, University of St Gallen and the University of Sydney.

Professor Spicer is known for his research on wellbeing, organizational politics, organisational culture, employee identity, new organizational forms, workspace and leadership. His work looks at a wide range of settings including knowledge intensive firms, financial institutions, government departments, seaports, universities, libraries, media organizations, and social movements.

Professor Roy holds a PhD in Computing from the University of Plymouth (UK) and BEng and MEng degrees in Production Engineering from Jadavpur University in India.

He started his career as an engineer at Tata Motors; pioneered research in Through-life Engineering Services (TES) with Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems, Bombardier Transportation, the Ministry of Defence and Babcock International; and established an internationally known TES Centre. Professor Roy's cost engineering and obsolescence research has transformed contemporary understanding of the engineering effort required to design, make and support high-value products, resulting in tools used by BAE Systems, Airbus, the Ministry of Defence, Rolls-Royce, and Ford Motor Company.

He is a Founding Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier Applied Soft Computing journal and a Fellow of the CIRP (International Academy for Production Engineers), the Institute of Engineering Designers (IED), and the Higher Education Academy (HEA).

Professor Roy has advocated creative thinking in higher education and has started several new initiatives over the last twenty years. An initiative was to set up a new Centre for Competitive Creative Design (C4D), this is around £5.5m investment from HEFCE, Cranfield University, UAL and EEDA. The Centre aims to embed design thinking across enterprises to improve their creativity and make them more competitive. This is an initiative to link design with science, technology and management.

Meet the speakers

He is currently serving as Managing Director of FITT, IIT Delhi. The Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT) at IIT Delhi nurtures innovation by bridging academia and industry, facilitating technology transfer, and supporting startups. It enables research commercialization and industry partnerships to drive advancements across multiple sectors. 

Between 2019-24 he was holding the dual charge of CEO of SIIC and AIIDE at IIT - Kanpur. He was responsible and managing the India’s largest tech-incubator in the country today with over 300+ incubated startups. IIT Kanpur was ranked #1 in innovation in 2023 in NIRF ranking. He was given additional charge as CEO of C3iHub, IIT Kanpur (Cybersecurity and Cybersecurity of Physical-Systems Innovation Hub) between 2021-22. C3iHub is setup through generous INR170cr grant (USD $24m) from Govt of India to setup India leading center for cybersecurity for critical infrastructure.

In 2018, he is appointed as Vice Chairman, Mahaashmita Livelihood Rural Accelerator Program (MILAP), Govt of Maharashtra – a program in collaboration with MSRLM and FICCI. In 2014, Indian Prime Minister urged Indian diaspora to return to the country to serve the motherland. Dr Agarwal responded to the call and returned from UK to join Govt of Andhra Pradesh as Chief Executive Officer, Andhra Pradesh Innovation Society (CEO, APIS) to kickstart the statewide innovation agenda between 2015-2017. He was involved in developing large scale innovation projects such as cyber security innovation park, rural innovation labs, incubation centers, startup ecosystem, setup startup fund to name a few. He is instrumental in forging important national and international relationships for the Andhra Pradesh state.

He is also the founder of Entrepreneur Café – a global movement spread in 110 cities and six continents, connecting over 45,000 entrepreneurs. Dr Agarwal has founded businesses and advised firms on strategic matters in last 20 years of his career. He has worked with global multinationals like Cadbury's, FIC and Zensar (RPG Group). He has lectured at leading universities like Virginia Tech Polytechnic & State University, University of Bradford and University of Cambridge. His articles, interviews and work has been extensively covered in international media including Harvard Business Review Blog, Forbes, CNN Money, BBC Radio, The New York Times and Economic Times.

Dr Agarwal has served on many international think tanks and hold leadership positions in global organizations such as QuestionBox and WBAF. Between 2006 -13 he served as high-level-advisor to United Nations Global Alliance on ICT & Development (UNGAID). He was the International Advisory Board Member at World-Entrepreneurship-Forum (WEF) and Open Mind Foundation. He was the first Asian to be elected as Co-Chair of prestigious Internet Society Advisory Council (ISOC-AC) for 2008-10.  Between 2017-19, he was the Hon Fellow of IC2 Institute, University of Texas at Austin. He is recipient of ‘Excellence in Promoting Innovation in Governance” by Govt of Rajasthan, India.

He has travelled extensively around the world and worked with global institutions, corporations and multinationals. He has published over 70 research papers, conference publications, editorials and articles in leading publications. Dr Nikhil Agarwal has earned his MPhil (University of Cambridge) and PhD (University of Edinburgh) in United Kingdom.

Ketan is on a purpose journey to enable 100 M jobs and 1 B smiles, …because when someone gets a job, it’s a very big thing-one is able to take care of their family, have respect in society, say 100th day of waiting for work - one doesn’t become a criminal & so many more reasons. He deeply believes that getting a job is far more than just employment—it’s about dignity, stability, and hope. For Ketan, every job created is a life uplifted, a smile added to the world. Under his leadership, Talocity has helped over 7,00,000 aspirants uncover their potential & align it with relevant opportunities across multiple clients.

He holds an MBA from Bayes Business School (formerly Cass Business School) and brings over two decades of experience in HR tech, hiring, training, consulting & banking.

Ketan is passionate about fitness and spiritual growth. He was awarded Mr. Fit at Delhi Gymkhana Club for 2014–2015 adn won Gold Medal in the 3 km Freedom Run in 2025. He believes that clarity emerges only when write our thoughts on paper. He is writing a book titled ‘Empty your thoughts’ and also leads a unique management program—"Confusion, Leadership & Life"—which blends leadership insights with spiritual clarity, business insights & introspection.

Her publications include an edited collection titled “Reporting the Middle East: the Practice of News in the 21st Century” (IB Tauris 2017) and an edited collection with Dina Matar titled “Narrating Conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, Image and Communication Practices in Palestine and Lebanon” (IB Tauris 2013) and a monograph titled “Channels of Resistance: Liberation Propaganda Hezbollah and the Media“ (IB Tauris, 2011). She has published widely on Journalism and Politics in the Arab region. She is co-editor of Bloomsbury-IB Tauris book series on “Political Communication and Media Practices in the Middle East and North Africa”. She is co-editor of Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication. She has formerly served as associate editor of the internationally renowned top ranking academic journal Journalism Practice.

Dr Harb has more than 11 years’ experience as a journalist in her native country Lebanon working for Lebanese and international media organisations. She started as a news reporter and distinguished herself in particular in the coverage of war operations in the battlefield of South Lebanon. She was then co-producer and presenter of a popular socio-political programme (Khamseh Ala Sabaah, 5/7) before becoming one of the main news anchors at Tele Liban (the public service TV in Lebanon). At New TV she was appointed to a news anchor-editor post and hosted the main daily political show (Al Hadath). At Future TV (Pan Arab satellite channel) she produced and presented her own socio-political program (Ala Madar Assaa) while assigned as satellite news editor. She also produced several political and social documentaries for Lebanese TV stations and completed reporting assignments for BBC Arabic service (radio), CNN world report and Dutch TV. She hosted live coverage of distinguished political events inside and outside Lebanon. She contributed regularly to the Lebanese national daily Assafir. She contributes to Aljazeera English online opinion section and other Arab publications.
Dr Harb was trained in Holland and the UK and has a BA in Journalism from the Lebanese University, a Diploma in Broadcasting News and an MA and PhD in Journalism Studies and Political Communications from Cardiff University.

Dr Harb has been appointed board member of the UK Press Recognition Panel in September 2022. She previously served as member to the UK broadcast regulator Ofcom content board between December 2015 and December 2018. She is board member/trustee of Marie Colvin Journalists Network and served as board member/trustee of Dart Centre Europe for Journalism and Trauma as board member/trustee of Ethical Journalism Network (EJN) between.

She has worked closely with Thomson Foundation UK since 2007. She conducted media and journalism training in the UK and other parts of the world including Egypt, Malta, Spain, Armenia, Ukraine, Brussels, Kuwait, Lebanon, Tunisia, Portugal, Jordan and UAE. She has led workshops with senior Journalists from across the Caribbean and Asia Pacific in collaboration with Public Media Alliance and Ethical Journalism Network. She has also done media consultancy work for International Media Support (IMS), UN Women (Libya) International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ) and International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Dr Harb has been commended by City University London Vice Chancellor's Awards 2014 in recognition of Excellence in International Engagement.

She was finalist for UK Asian Women of Achievement 2018 Award.

She was named Stanford University Humanities Centre International Fellow for 2014.