There will be three special Coventry Conversations, all focussing on the recent General Election, each of them taking place at 1pm in the Ellen Terry building, University of Coventry. They are as follows:

Tuesday 11 May
Rob Hopkin, BBC General Election Director

Rob Hopkin was the director at the Television Centre One responsible for the election night coverage including the virtual Jeremy Vine sequences and the huge and complicated sets. He was on air almost continually from 10pm on Thursday night until 6pm on Friday afternoon.

This is his fourth General Election for the BBC. He also directs Question Time each week and has directed the One O’clock, Six O’clock and Ten O’clock News programmes.

See his backstage tour of the Election Night.

Wednesday 12 May
Dr. Roger Mortimore, Mori Pollsters

Dr Roger Mortimore is Ipsos MORIs Head of Political and Electoral Research. Having worked for MORI since completing his DPhil at Oxford University in 1993, he has been extensively involved with MORIs opinion polling at each of the last four general elections, in particular with the highly successful exit polls. He has written or co written six published books on General Elections.

Since 2003 Dr. Mortimore has been Journals Review Editor of the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, and is also a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion, and Parties and the Journal of Political Marketing and of the Advisory Panel for the Centre for Public Communication Research at the University of Bournemouth.

Friday 14 May
Trevor Beattie, Labour Party Advertising Adviser, BMB Advertising

Trevor Beattie is a partner of Beattie McGuinness Bungay (BMB) and is an advertising executive responsible for a number of high profile and often controversial advertising campaigns most notably the "fcuk" campaign for French Connection and "Hello Boys" for Wonderbra. A friend of Peter Mandelson, and a supporter of New Labour, he has managed campaigns for the Labour Party.

In 2010 Trevor tried to win back the account from the Labour Party by spending over 12,000 of his own money fighting the Conservative Party in Wolverhampton. In 2002 he was listed by Marketing magazine as the 9th Most Influential Person in Media and in 2003 was voted IPA Best of the Best Awards Creative Director of the Year.