Find out more about the speakers
HE Hélène Tréheux-Duchêne
Hélène Tréheux-Duchêne has been France’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom since 2022. After graduating from the Institute of Political Science, the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, she became a diplomat and was posted in Brussels at the Permanent Representation of France to the EU, but also in Geneva at the Permanent Representation of France to the UN. She has held positions in Paris, where she was notably Director of Strategic, Security and Disarmament Affairs (2013-2016) and Director-General of Administration and Modernization at the French Foreign Ministry (2019-2022). From 2016 to 2019, she was also Permanent Representative of France to the North Atlantic Council.
Karol Beffa
Karol Beffa is a former student of the École normale supérieure and the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Paris, where he was awarded eight First Prizes. An agrégé, he holds a doctorate and is accredited to supervise doctoral research. Since 2004, he has been a Senior Lecturer in musicology at the École normale supérieure. A pianist and composer, he was appointed to the Chair of Artistic Creation at the Collège de France for the 2012–2013 academic year. He has received major distinctions including the Victoires de la musique classique in 2013 and 2018 and the SACEM Grand Prize for Symphonic Music in 2017. An author of around twenty books, his recent publications include Ravel (Équateurs, 2025) and Erik Satie: A Musician with a Fantastical Pen (Flammarion, 2025). He has also appeared on screen as an actor, featuring in 2023 in Sonia Buchman’s Crush and Jean-Claude Monod’s Un jour fille.
Anissia Morel
Anissia Morel is director of the Institut français du Royaume-Uni & Counsellor for Culture and Cooperation at the French Embassy to the UK. She entered the French civil service in 2008 through the École Nationale d’Administration. She joined the Conseil d’État, France’s Supreme Court for Administrative Affairs, gaining extensive experience of judicial review (2010–2015). In parallel, she was regularly consulted as a legal adviser to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry for Culture. In 2015, Anissia was seconded to the UK Foreign Office as Senior Policy Planner covering Strategic Affairs, Russia, and Eastern Europe (2015–2017). She took up the post of Legal and Political Adviser at the French Embassy to the UK (2018–2022) before serving the French Foreign Secretary as UN, G7 and global affairs adviser. Anissia returned to the Conseil d’État in 2023 covering constitutional and home affairs.
Alice Renavand
Alice Renavand is a French ballerina and former Danseuse Étoile of the Paris Opera Ballet. Trained at the Saint-Cloud Conservatoire and the Paris Opera Ballet School, she joined the company in 1997, was promoted première danseuse in 2012 and étoile in 2013; since her farewell performance in Béjart’s Boléro in 2023, she has continued to appear on international stages, including the opening ceremony of the 2023 Rugby World Cup alongside actor Jean Dujardin.
Benoit Swan Pouffer
Benoit Swan Pouffer is the Artistic Director of Rambert, one of the world’s leading independent dance company in the United Kingdom, and an internationally renowned dance artist and company leader. Born and trained in Paris, he moved to New York where he spent seven years as a principal dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. He went on to become the Artistic Director of Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, a post he held for 10 years. His tenure at the helm of the company was described by The New York Times as “a New York success story”, gaining wide acclaim for introducing a new generation of international choreographers to US audiences, being the first there to commission work from artists including Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Alexander Ekman, Crystal Pite and Hofesh Shechter.
Sanjoy Roy
Sanjoy Roy has been writing on dance for The Guardian since 2002, and is editor of Springback Magazine, a development project for dance writers across Europe. He has contributed to many other dance publications internationally, and is the author of Work/World, a book of essays on the work of Belgian choreographer Ann Van den Broek. He keeps an archive of his work at sanjoyroy.net.
Pierre-Antoine Denis
Pierre-Antoine Denis has been a journalist and reporter at the BBC since 2018, after completing an MA in International Journalism at City, University of London. After several years as a reporter and presenter for the BBC World Service, he joined the BBC News Channel in 2023. He now works there as an editor and is often the first point of contact when it comes to telling stories about France. Pierre-Antoine covers a wide range of topics, but his real passion is football, and he provides live commentary on major European and Premier League matches.
