Team
Asher Jesper-Mir, founded in 2020, is led by Rebecca Asher and Emily Jesper Mir. Together they have a combined expertise in public engagement, knowledge exchange and research culture change.
Rebecca and Emily met at Sense about Science, a charity that champions evidence in public life, where they worked closely together as Deputy Director and Partnerships Director. Together they led the organisation’s public engagement, knowledge exchange and research culture programmes. This included the annual Evidence Week in the UK Parliament, the Voice of Young Science research culture programme in partnership with 20 universities and publishers, and public engagement and knowledge exchange projects with numerous higher education institutions and learned and professional societies. They remain associates at the charity. Alongside AJM, Rebecca and Emily are job share partners at the Wellcome Trust, leading engagement and partnership projects on health data and AI.
Rebecca Asher started her career at Westminster before moving on to senior editorial roles at ITV and the BBC, overseeing coverage from politics programmes to Woman's Hour. She then wrote two non-fiction books for Penguin Random House before joining Sense about Science as Deputy Director. She is a Learning Associate for Capabilities in Academic Policy Engagement (CAPE) and a member of the judging panels for the Royal Statistical Society’s Statistical Excellence in Journalism awards, the UK Medical Journalism Association awards and Falling Walls Engage awards, Berlin.
Emily Jesper-Mir designs and delivers specialist training for early and mid career researchers in public, patient, policy and media engagement and peer review and research culture. Before her move into public engagement, she was a managing editor in academic publishing in women’s health. Over the course of her career, she has built up senior contacts among researchers, journalists, policy makers and charity sector leaders. She sits on the advisory board for the Campbell Collaboration and was formerly on the Scientific Advisory Group for the British Dietetics Association. She was a jury member at the Falling Walls engagement conference in Berlin in 2022.
AJM has an excellent network of highly experienced freelance trainers, facilitators, policy and comms professionals and designers that we draw on to deliver specific elements of our projects as needed. We also work in close collaboration with higher education consultancy Sealey Associates.