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“History is a record of crimes and follies—but also of resistance."
Joining HowTheLightGetsIn 2026 via Zoom from New York, Cornel West, described by Bernie Sanders as "one of the most important philosophers of our time," has long challenged the moral and political complacency of American society. His landmark work Race Matters solidified his position as one of America's leading public intellectuals, and he has since gone on to publish dozens of books on politics and philosophy. In 2024, West extended his critique of power into the political arena, running for president to demand a more just, accountable, and humane democracy.
He holds the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair in Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary and is Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, having also taught at Harvard, Yale, and the University of Paris. West’s influence extends far beyond academia: through lectures, media, and activism, he relentlessly calls for a society rooted in truth, justice, and the courage to resist oppression.
"Cornel West is not simply a lucid African-American guide equal to the complexities of real multiculturalism, but also an authentic teacher of hope and reason. " — Edward Said
"The Labour Party is dead."
Zarah Sultana is the co-founder of the currently unnamed Your Party, former Labour MP and current MP for Coventry South. She was first elected to Parliament in 2019 and was appointed to a shadow government position under Jeremy Corbyn in the Department of International Development. She was re-elected as a Labour MP in 2024, however the ship was removed after she voted to end the two child benefit cap.
Since leaving the Labour Party, Zarah has become a key leader of the UK socialist left. The new Your Party had an initial sign-up of 750,000, the largest in UK political history on a platform of democratic socialism, arms embargos on Israel and support for the working class. Zarah is one of the youngest members of Parliament joining when she was 25 and has since gone on to re-write the political left.
"Zarah is a powerful advocate for peace, justice and socialism." — Jeremy Corbyn
'"Humans think they are free, conscious beings, when in truth they are deluded animals."
One of Britain’s most provocative thinkers, John Gray is a political philosopher famous for dismantling liberalism and exposing the illusions of human progress. Former Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, Gray has challenged orthodoxy across the political spectrum with a body of work that ranges from critiques of Enlightenment rationalism to meditations on the limits of secular humanism.
He is the bestselling author of Straw Dogs, The Silence of Animals, and Seven Types of Atheism as well as a frequent contributor to The Guardian, New Statesman, and The Times Literary Supplement. Gray’s sharp insights and contrarian stance continue to shape contemporary debates on ethics, politics, and the future of humanity.
"One of the most important thinkers alive." — The Times
“See you, either in Hell, or in Communism.”
Slavoj Žižek infamously said “Humanity is OK, but 99% of people are boring idiots”—Žižek himself is certainly neither boring nor an idiot. Žižek is arguably the most provocative philosopher of our times. Foreign Policy named Žižek a Top 100 Global Thinker "for giving voice to an era of absurdity." With never a dull moment, Žižek breathes new life into Marxism, Hegel, psychoanalysis, philosophy, politics, film and culture.
Žižek is the author of more than 50 books, including most recently Zero Point He is a senior researcher at the University of Ljubljana's Department of Philosophy.
“There is something inexplicably touching about all Žižek's mischievous bombast” — The Guardian
"On social media, the important thing is to show your tribe that you have the right morals."
Kathleen Stock is a British philosopher and writer. A former professor at the University of Sussex, Stock rose to prominence in 2021 for her critcism of transgender movements. That year, she resigned from her university post and entered the public discourse as a central figure in the debate over sex, gender, and truth.
Stock is the author of Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism. Her upcoming book is Do Not Go Gentle: The Case Against Assisted Death. She has written for The Times, UnHerd, and The Spectator, and is regularly featured in discussions on academic freedom and women's rights.
"A fearless woman" — The Daily Telegraph
'“There can be no reconciliation without a reorganization of power.”
Mahmood Mamdani, father of mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and one of the most influential theorists of colonialism and political violence, has spent his career challenging the narratives through which nations explain themselves. Hailed as a pioneering thinker of global politics, he has transformed debates on race, citizenship, and the afterlives of empire by insisting that modern crises cannot be separated from their historical foundations.
He holds the Herbert Lehman Chair at Columbia University and is the author of Citizen and Subject, When Victims Become Killers, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, and Neither Settler Nor Native. He has received numerous awards and recognitions, including being listed as one of the "Top 20 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy (US) and Prospect (UK) magazine in 2008. In 2021, he was nominated Among ‘The World’s Top 50 Thinkers’ by Prospect Magazine, UK.
"Demonstrates how a broad rethinking of political issues becomes possible when Western ideals and practices are examined from the vantage point of Asia and Africa." — Pankaj Mishra, New York Review of Books
'"A society is not a market. It is a political community."
Michael Ignatieff is a leading public intellectual who preceded Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney as Leader of Canada's Liberal Party. Rising to prominence through his reporting on ethnic nationalism in the 1990s, Ignatieff became one of the central interpreters of the post–Cold War world, chronicling the dilemmas of intervention, human rights, and the fragile architecture of liberal order.
The bestselling author of Blood and Belonging, The Needs of Strangers, Virtual War, and the political memoir Fire and Ashes, he has taught at Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard’s Kennedy School, where his lectures on political ethics shaped a generation of policymakers. As Rector and President of the Central European University, he became a global symbol of the fight for academic freedom, leading the institution through its forced exile from Budapest during a period of rising authoritarianism in Europe.
"An extraordinary meditation on loss and mortality, drawing on all of Michael Ignatieff's powers as a philosopher, a historian, a politician, and a man." — Rory Stewart, author of The Places in Between
"Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about."
Cory Doctorow is a Canadian-British author, journalist, and digital rights activist whose work has shaped modern debates on technology, monopoly power, and the open internet. He has served as European Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group, making him one of the most influential advocates for online civil liberties in both Europe and North America.
He is also the editor of Pluralistic and the author of recent nonfiction works such as Enshittification and Picks and Shovels, in which he examines how digital platforms extract value, how monopolies are maintained, and how creators and users can reclaim power over their data and attention.
"Cory Doctorow doesn’t just write about the future—I think he lives there." — Kelly Link
“That’s what science does. At the end there’s a result based on maths and logic. If one is equal to one, we can all agree on that. Maths don’t lie.”
Claudia de Rham is a Swiss theoretical physicist working at the interface of gravity, cosmology and particle physics. She is based at Imperial College London. Professor de Rham is well known for her groundbreaking research into the theory of massive gravity, a radical theory that contends the graviton has a nonzero mass, thereby explaining the expansion of the universe without the need for dark energy.
She was one of the UK finalists in the Physical Sciences and Engineering category of the Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists in 2018 for revitalizing the theory of massive gravity, and won the award in 2020.
"De Rham has pioneered a radical theory that could hold the key to why the universe is expanding faster and faster and explain the nature of dark energy." — Hannah Devlin
"To be a human being is not just about materialism or the material world. That’s what I’m trying to stimulate."
Martha Fiennes is an award-winning film director, writer, and producer, best known for her debut-feature film Onegin (1999) and follow-up Chromophobia (2005). As a director, she garnered acclaim for her ability to transpose complex emotional and aesthetic moods onto screen, winning the London Film Critic's Choice Newcomer of the Year and the Tokyo International Film Festival award for Best Director. Fiennes used her cinematic experience to explore the radical fusion of film, painting, code and chance, developing a bespoke digital platform, SLOimage, to create ever-evolving moving images that never repeat.
Today she continues to push the edge of visual arts: her generative moving-image work Yugen, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2018 and has since screened at major venues, including the Serpentine Gallery in London.
"Fiennes'...first feature film claimed a place...in this country's cultural pantheon." — Telegraph
“It’s a freight train. It’s heading straight for the Labour Party and the Conservatives too, and it’s already here."
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman, is the founder of the Blue Labour movement, a “small-c conservative” strand of socialism that champions tradition, community, and civic association. A life peer in the UK’s House of Lords and Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at London Metropolitan University, Glasman is a rare figure on the British left: a political theorist who draws inspiration from Jewish socialism, Christian democracy, and the moral economy of guilds and trade unions. A longtime Labour member, he rose to prominence after 2008 by arguing that the post-1945 welfare state lost touch with the working-class culture it claimed to serve.
More recently, Glasman has unsettled mainstream Labour voices by aligning with populist movements that cut across conventional left-right lines. At the 2024 Postliberalism Conference, he hailed Donald Trump’s re-election as “world historical,” praising what he saw as a multi-ethnic working-class revolt against liberal elites.
“One of the two or three most brilliant analysts of British politics, a very original thinker" — John Gray
“Truth makes love possible; love makes truth bearable.”
Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, is a highly acclaimed theologian, writer and pastor. In addition to his 10-year post as Archbishop, Williams is an esteemed academic. He has been a lecturer at Cambridge University and the Lady Margaret Chair of Divinity at Oxford University.
He is one of the world’s leading thinkers on issues such as theology, spirituality, philosophy, and religious aesthetics, and is the author of several best-selling books, including Being Human: Bodies, Minds, Persons and Candles in the Dark: Faith, Hope and Love in a Time of Pandemic.
“Rowan Williams’ most striking characteristics are his humanity and his fine intellect.” ― Baroness Helena Kennedy KC
"The 21st century will be the Asian century."
Kishore Mahbubani is a Singaporean diplomat, scholar, and global thinker who has spent his career urging the West to see the world through non-Western eyes. A former President of the United Nations Security Council and Singapore's former Ambassador to the UN, Mahbubani is among Asia's most influential voices on geopolitics and the shifting balance of global power.
Mahbubani has shaped the intellectual debate on what he calls "the great convergence"—the historic return of Asia to the global center stage. His books, including Has the West Lost It? and The Asian 21st Century, have been translated worldwide and taught in universities from Beijing to Boston.
“There is no more thoughtful observer of Asia, the United States, and their interaction than Kishore Mahbubani.” — Larry Summers
"We are fascinated with creating machines built in our image."
Federico Faggin is an Italian-American physicist, engineer and entrepreneur whose work helped ignite the digital revolution. Trained in solid-state physics and device engineering, he became a defining force in the early days of microelectronics. At Intel in the 1970s, Faggin led the design of the world’s first commercial microprocessor.
Faggin’s pioneering contributions span MOS technology, microprocessor architecture, and the very concept of programmable computing. After Intel, he co-founded multiple companies, driving advances in microcontrollers and touch-sensor technology that now sit quietly beneath the heartbeat of modern devices. He has received numerous honors, including the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, in recognition of his foundational role in shaping the computational world.
"Electronic technology would not have developed as it did, were it not for the achievements...Dr. Federico Faggin." — Kyoto Prize
'“Philosophy's greatest task is to enlarge our sense of possibility.”
Susan Neiman is a philosopher pressing for a renewed commitment to Enlightenment morality, politics, and metaphysics—a defense of universalism in an age that often distrusts it. Director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam and an American thinker shaped by the Civil Rights era, she treats philosophy not as an academic relic but as a living force for intellectual and political action. Her most recent book, Left Is Not Woke, challenges the moral frameworks that have overtaken much of the contemporary left, arguing that solidarity cannot survive without shared principles.
Born and raised in Atlanta, Neiman left high school to join activists working for peace and justice before studying philosophy at Harvard, where she earned her Ph.D. in 1986. Since 2000 she has led the Einstein Forum, producing a body of work—nine books translated into 15 languages—that ranges from the problem of evil to the possibilities of moral progress, and has earned awards from PEN, the Association of American Publishers, and the American Academy of Religion.
"Susan Neiman relates hard truths from which others shrink." — The Guardian
"The West has often been more multicultural than it realised."
Jessica Frazier is a philosopher based at the University of Oxford who works on Indian Philosophy and the European tradition of phenomenology. She is the Founder and Managing Editor of the Journal of Hindu Studies. Dr. Frazier is also a frequent consultant for the BBC and speaker on In Our Time.
Her research explores key philosophical themes across cultures, from Indian classical theories of Being to twentieth-century phenomenology. Her work on Hindu ideas translates them into global terms, so that we can all think in new ways about issues that shape our society: the nature of a good life, justice and human rights, metaphysics, and the goals of community.
"Frazier has done a great job of offering us new ways of considering the relationship between ultimate reality and human desire." — David Haberman
'"The tussle between men and women is a culture war as old as humanity itself."
Mary Harrington is an author and contributing editor for UnHerd. She also runs her own weekly Substack named "Reactionary Feminist," a term she coined. She frequently writes on political and cultural topics such as the side effects of globalization and criticisms of identity politics.
Her debut novel Feminism Against Progress tackles women's rights in the biotech age, arguing that progress has now stopped benefiting the majority of women. She argues we are pursuing a freedom from our embodied selves and replacing our relationships with individual desires, resulting in porn addiction and hook-up culture, plastic surgery and gender reassignent treatments, low birth rates and an epidemic of loneliness.
"Harrington has an original mind, a gift for polemic [...] this is an exhilarating read." — The New Statesman on Feminism Against Progress
"All I hear from our elected representatives is calls to loosen the fiscal rules, impose a wealth tax, tax the rich, cut waste, cut welfare, cut taxes. Not a hint of seriousness to be found."
Paul Johnson is a leading economic voice in the UK. He is currently the Provost of Queen's College, Cambridge, and was formerly the Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, where he became a prominent economic commentator whose analysis has influenced government policy. He is also a columnist for The Times and a visiting professor of Economics at University College London.
He was Director of the IFS between 2011 and 2025, analysing and commenting on the economics of figures from David Cameron to Rachel Reeves. He has long criticised the UK's inability to invest and grow the economy, attributing the current economic challenges to this original sin. He is the author of Follow the Money.
"One of the most influential figures in Westminster politics" — The Guardian
"I have uncancelled myself."
David Starkey is a British historian, author, and broadcaster, best known for his work on Tudor history and the British monarchy. His early career was in academia as a lecturer in International History at the LSE before he went on to pursue a career in television and radio. His work has appeared on Channel 4 and the BBC Moral Maze, among other media.
He is known for his outspoken views on British politics and culture; his convictions have put him at the centre of contemporary British cultural issues. He is also the bestselling author of many books including Henry: Model of a Tyrant and Magna Carta: The True Story Behind the Charter.
"Starkey turns even the more bureaucratic elements of history-making into a series of cliffhangers." — The Independent
'"Empathy is a skill like any other human skill."
One of Britain’s most influential psychologists, Simon Baron-Cohen is renowned for his pioneering research on autism, empathy, and the cognitive differences between individuals. Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Cambridge, Baron-Cohen has challenged conventional views of the human mind with a body of work that spans theories of mind, systemizing-empathizing, and the biological basis of social cognition.
He is the author of The Essential Difference, Mindblindness, Zero Degrees of Empathy, and The Pattern Seekers, as well as a frequent contributor to The Guardian, Scientific American, and academic journals worldwide. Baron-Cohen’s rigorous research and thought-provoking theories continue to shape contemporary debates on neurodiversity, education, and the nature of human cognition.
"Simon Baron-Cohen has given us some of the most sophisticated research on the nature and origin of sex differences in cognition." — Steven Pinker
"Human minds have invented not one cognitive universe, but 7,000."
Lera Boroditsky is a cognitive scientist and linguist whose research has transformed our understanding of how language shapes thought. Her groundbreaking studies in linguistic relativity demonstrate that the structure of a language can influence how speakers perceive time, space, causality, and even morality—revealing the profound ways culture and cognition intertwine.
Boroditsky’s work has been featured in Nature, Scientific American, and The New York Times, and she has delivered lectures worldwide on the intersection of language, culture, and cognition. Named one of 25 visionaries changing the world by the Utne Reader, Boroditsky continues to challenge assumptions about the universality of human thought.
“One of the first to show truly convincing effects of language on cognitive processes" — Dan Slobin, Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley
'“Without feeling, knowledge becomes stale. Without reason, it becomes indelicate.”
Minna Salami is a writer and social critic whose work challenges the dominance of Western ways of knowing and argues for a more embodied, plural and sensuous approach to truth. Through her feminist and decolonial perspective, she rethinks how power operates in knowledge production and how we might imagine new forms of global understanding.
Author of Sensuous Knowledge and Can Feminism Be African?, Salami weaves philosophy, culture and political thought into an accessible yet radical critique of contemporary life. A Fellow of the Club of Rome and an Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop fellow, she has written for The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Philosopher and Project Syndicate, and speaks internationally at institutions including Yale, the European Commission and the Cambridge and Oxford Unions.
"In a world obsessed with metrics and fixes, Salami reminds us that African feminism can also be about resistance and world-building." — Brittle Paper
"Our project of civilization has been successful on scales we could not have imagined when we began it ten millennia ago. But with that success has come consequences that will last for centuries."
Adam Frank is an American astrophysicist, writer, and public intellectual who serves as Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester. His scientific work probes the birth and death of stars: his research group developed advanced supercomputer tools to simulate how stars form and how they end their lives/
Frank is also a widely read cultural commentator on science. He co-founded the NPR blog Cosmos and Culture and now writes for the Big Think blog. His books, including Light of the Stars and The Blind Spot, explore what our cosmic discoveries might teach us about our future on Earth, the fragility of civilization, and the deep questions linking science, life, and human meaning.
"Adam Frank ably picks up where Carl Sagan left off." Andrew Revkin
'“Every aspect of our brain and body can be predicted from our environment.”
Karl J. Friston is a neuroscientist whose work has revolutionized how we understand the brain. As Professor of Imaging Neuroscience at University College London and winner of the Glass Brain Award, he built many of the foundational tools that allow researchers to map and interpret neural activity with precision.
His groundbreaking free energy principle proposes that all living beings attempt to model the world in such a way as to minimize the amount of surprise in experience—a framework that unifies perception, action, learning, and self-organization. As one of the most highly-cited neuroscientists now living, his ideas have reshaped neuroscience, influenced theories in biology and physics, and inspired new approaches in artificial intelligence.
“The genius neuroscientist who might hold the key to true AI.” — WIERD
'"The brain is highly structured, but it is also extremely flexible. It's not a blank slate, but it isn't written in stone, either."
Alison Gopnik is a cognitive scientist, philosopher, and bestselling author whose research has reshaped our understanding of how humans learn and think. A professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Gopnik is celebrated for showing that children are not just little adults, but intuitive scientists exploring the world with remarkable curiosity and creativity. More recently, Gopnik has marshalled her groundbreaking research to offer original insight into debates over whether AI is truly intelligent.
Her books, including The Scientist in the Crib and The Gardener and the Carpenter, have influenced psychologists, educators, and policymakers worldwide. Gopnik's work has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic.
"...[A] fascinating story of how we become the grown-ups that we are.” — Anthony Gottleib, the New York Times
"Unlike the theological hell, the hell of physics, quantum mechanics, is willing to offer us some precious gifts for those things we abandon."
Avshalom Elitzur is an Israeli physicist and philosopher widely regarded as a singular intellectual force in the foundations of reality. Having left school at 16 to work as a laboratory technician, he went on to present an unpublished paper on quantum mechanics at Temple University—an intervention that led to an invitation to Tel Aviv University to pursue doctoral research.
Today, Elitzur is a senior lecturer at the Israeli Institute for Advanced Research, where he works at the intersection of physics and philosophy. His pioneering thought experiment—the Elitzur–Vaidman interaction-free measurement—reshaped debates on the role of the observer in quantum theory and inspired Roger Penrose in Shadows of the Mind.
"A quantum foundations leader" — Perimeter Institute
'"Left and Right is over."
James Orr is a Cambridge philosopher and theologian spearheading a return to national conservatism. Admired by JD Vance—who once described Orr as his "British sherpa"—Orr has shaped the intellectual foundations of post-liberal politics on both sides of the Atlantic. In October 2025, Orr was appointed senior advisor to Reform UK by Nigel Farage.
His writing has appeared in The Spectator and The Daily Telegraph, among other publications. At the University of Cambridge, where Orr is Associate Professor of Religion, his research focuses on Husserl, Heidegger, and Kant.
“James Orr is dedicated to the mission we have at hand both in his heart and in his head." — Nigel Farage, Leader or Reform UK
"We are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that."
George Ellis is a South African cosmologist and philosopher of science renowned for bridging the gap between physics and metaphysics. Collaborator of Stephen Hawking on The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, Ellis later turned his attention to the limits of scientific reductionism—arguing that human consciousness, meaning, and morality cannot be explained by physics alone.
He has authored several books and more than 500 articles, including his 2016 book How Can Physics Underlie the Mind?, in which he calls for a major conceptual shift in biology and physics to grapple with the mysteries of consiousness. His research spans cosmology, complexity, and the philosophy of science, making him a leading voice in debates over the relationship between science and human values.
"...among a handful of the world’s leading relativistic cosmologists, including luminaries such as Stephen Hawking" — 2004 Templeton Prize Press Release
'"If we assume from the start that everything mental must be reducible to something physical, then we close the possibility of understanding the mind on its own terms"
Victoria Trumbull is a philosopher, researcher, and writer who challenges the dominance of reductive materialism in contemporary thought. Working across philosophical psychology, metaphysics, and the history of ideas, she seeks to recover a deeper, more expansive understanding of the human soul.
Her recent essays and public philosophy argue that memory is not stored in the brain but unfolds in time, offering a powerful alternative to prevailing neuroscience-led accounts of mind and bringing renewed attention to the interior dimensions of human experience.
"Ms Trumbull is doing something very different, finding in philosophers of the past—and in two very different ones—the resources to develop philosophy today in a promising new direction." — Professor John Marenbon
'“Greed is gross. Greed is vile. Greed sucks.”
Yasmin Alibhai‑Brown is a veteran journalist and author whose writing covers race, identity, migration, and multicultural Britain. Born in Kampala and relocating to the UK in 1972, she went on to become one of the first regular national‑newspaper columnists of colour in Britain, a founder of British Muslims for Secular Democracy, and a fierce advocate for inclusive public discourse.
Her books, No Place Like Home, Exotic England, and In Defence of Political Correctness probe how societies change and who gets left behind when they do. Across columns for The i, Evening Standard, The Guardian, and The Independent, she challenges institutional complacency and asks whether Britain’s promise of fairness survives in practice. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Alibhai‑Brown is celebrated for bringing moral clarity and cultural sensitivity to her uncompromising commentary.
“She burrows deep into the psyche of the multicultural nation.” — Yash Tandon.
"What is necessary is a radical transformation, following the bases of feminism, anti-racism and anti-fascism"
Rosi Braidotti, one of the most influential voices in posthuman and feminist philosophy, has spent decades dismantling the myths of individualism and human exceptionalism. A Distinguished University Professor Emerita at Utrecht University, she reimagines what it means to be human in an age of artificial intelligence, climate crisis, and blurred boundaries between species.
Her acclaimed Posthuman trilogy redefined 21st-century thought by integrating poststructuralist feminism with pressing political and ethical questions. Her writing moves fluidly between theory and personal reflection, challenging inherited dualisms of body and mind, nature and culture. Through this work, she has shaped contemporary debates across philosophy, gender studies, and environmental humanities, inspiring new ways of thinking that decentre the human.
"...a foremost posthumanist thinker. ” — Theory, Culture & Society
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