In an article for the Guardian last month she discussed the impact between the attack on the World Trade Center and the anti-globalisation movement. She wrote: "A protest movement is defined not only by the causes it espouses, but by the way it chooses to be heard." She is concerned about the possible suppression of protests in the wake of the attacks and for the future of democracy.

Ms Hertz graduated from University College, London before undertaking an MBA at the University of Pennsylvania.

She then went to St Petersburg to help set up the city's stock exchange and help tutor Boris Yeltsin's advisers in market economics.

Returning to Britain she completed her PhD at Cambridge and in 1996 went to the Middle East to head a team of 40 researchers developing the role that the private sector might play in the peace process.

Ms Hertz's book The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy was published earlier this year and the accompanying Channel 4 film, The End of Politics, was broadcast as part of the channel's general election coverage.