Thank you for an incredible HowTheLightGetsIn London 2026! See you in Hay!
HowTheLightGetsIn brings together voices from across philosophy, science, politics, and the arts to explore the questions that define our times. With thought-provoking conversations and fresh perspectives, the festival invites new ways of understanding the world around us.
Explore London's line-up below.
"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 known 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
Cathy Newman is the first female main presenter of Channel 4 News. She spent over a decade in Fleet Street, latterly with the Financial Times. Since joining Channel 4 News in 2006 she has broadcast a string of scoops, including allegations of violent abuse against the British barrister John Smyth, sexual harassment allegations against the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Rennard, and an investigation into a British sex offender, Simon Harris, which saw him jailed for 17 years.
She was also the only broadcast journalist to travel with Angelina Jolie and the foreign secretary William Hague to the Congo as part of a campaign against sexual violence.
“Consciousness is the way information feels when it’s being processed in certain complex ways.”
Max Tegmark is a Swedish‑American MIT physicist and cosmologist, president and co‑founder of the Future of Life Institute, and bestselling author of Our Mathematical Universe and Life 3.0. He is celebrated for championing the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, proposing that reality isn’t merely described by math—it is math itself.
Tegmark also pioneered the notion of consciousness as a state of matter, framing subjective experience in terms of information theory.
"All of us...should ask ourselves what can we do now to improve the chances of reaping the benefits of future AI and avoiding the risks...Tegmark's thought-provoking book will help you join it" — Stephen Hawking
"We have to believe that things can be better, or we give up."
Alastair Campbell is one of the most important voices in modern British politics. Best known for his role as chief spokesman and strategist under Tony Blair, Campbell now works predominantly as a writer and broadcaster, remaining a leading thinker on the centre-left.
Campbell is co-host of the award-winning podcast The Rest is Politics alongside Rory Stewart. He has also recently written But What Can I Do?, in which he explores why politics has gone wrong, and suggests what each of us can do to overthrow a broken political system and make one that works for everyone.
"A loyal, brave and audacious man" — Neil Kinnock
"Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense."
Awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on black holes, Roger Penrose is a world-renowned mathematician and physicist. In recent years, he has investigated the relationship between physics and the mind, famously arguing that quantum mechanics plays an essential role in solving the mysteries of human consciousness.
Penrose has made numerous appearances on media such as BBC, Closer to Truth, and The Joe Rogan Experience. In 1994, he was knighted for his services to science.
"He is one of the very few people I've met in my life who, without reservation, I call a genius" — Lee Smolin
"I'm literally a communist, you idiot."
Ash Sarkar is a senior editor at Novara Media, best known for her media appearances throughout the UK political landscape and her strongly held libertarian communist views. She was closely associated with the media commentary around Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party and has since become a fierce defender of Palestine and critic of neoliberal politics around the world.
Alongside her work at Novara, Ash teaches at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. She is also a regular contributor to The Guardian and The Independent, as well as being a frequent panellist on BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze. Her recent book, Minority Rule, criticises identity politics and argues that the left needs to reengage with the working class. In 2023, she was ranked 45th on the New Statesman's Left Power List.
"One of the boldest and most exciting thinkers of her generation." — Naomi Klein
"Push on, but smile inwardly at the madness."
Martha Fiennes is an award-winning film director, writer, and producer, best known for her films Onegin and Chromophobia. Her directorial debut was lavished with praise, including winning the London Film Critic's Choice Newcomer of the Year and the Tokyo International Film Festival award for Best Director.
She has since pivoted to AI generated art, exploring the boundaries of technology and aesthetics. Her work, Yugen, featured the actor Salma Hayek Pinault and opened at the Venice Film Festival. It was later exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery, Christies' New York and the Science Museum.
"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.
"In politics, the people I most despise are those who have no values."
Diane Abbott is a British politician and a Member of Parliament for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since first being elected in 1987. She served in the Shadow Cabinet of Jeremy Corbyn as Shadow Home Secretary from 2016 to 2020 and is an advisor to the Privy Council. She was the first black woman elected to parliament and is the longest-serving black MP.
At the general election held on 4 July 2024, Abbott retained her seat as Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington and became Mother of the House as the longest continuously serving female MP.
"Diane is a fearless trailblazer whose record of breaking down barriers, overcoming obstacles and fighting injustice is truly inspirational." — Dawn Butler MP
"Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language."
Terry Eagleton is a Marxist literary critic and public intellectual currently serving as a Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University. He has published over 40 books and is best known for Literary Theory: An Introduction, which has sold three-quarters of a million copies. He has also held academic posts at the University of Oxford, Manchester, Cornell, Melbourne, Trinity College Dublin and Yale.
He is a leading critic of postmodernism. He has argued that cultural theory has devalued objectivity and ethics and robbed people of the language to resist oppression. His most recent book, Modernism: A Literature in Crisis, charts the history, success and demise of modernist ideas and how modernism came to promote one of the most productive periods since the Renaissance.
"An icon of theoretical rectitude and earthy leftism." — Guardian
“Great powers care only for survival.”
Joining live from Chicago, John Mearsheimer is one of the most influential and provocative political theorists of our time. A former U.S. Air Force officer turned academic, he is best known for crafting the theory of offensive realism, which argues that great powers are doomed to compete for dominance in an anarchic world.
Currently the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, Mearsheimer has shaped generations of thinkers with works such as The Tragedy of Great Power Politics and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Fearless in his critiques, from NATO expansion to U.S. policy in Ukraine, his arguments cut against the grain of liberal optimism, demanding a colder, more clear-eyed look at global affairs.
“A theorist of power who refuses to flinch.” — Foreign Affairs
"Unnoticed by most political scientists, a form of undemocratic liberalism has taken root in North America and Western Europe."
Yascha Mounk is a political scientist and public intellectual known for his analysis of the threats to liberal democracy. A Professor at Johns Hopkins and founder of the online magazine Persuasion, he argues that identity-based ideologies can undermine democratic norms and social cohesion.
In books like The People vs. Democracy, The Great Experiment, and The Identity Trap, Mounk explores how populism and identity politics endanger free speech and democratic institutions. His work has shaped international debate and is widely regarded as essential reading on the future of democracy.
“Mounk is among the first to sound the alarm about authoritarian populism on both the right and left.” — Democracy Paradox
"We have known for a long time that antidepressants are not very different from a placebo."
Joanna Moncrieff is Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College London and a consultant psychiatrist with the NHS. She challenges the common view that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance fixed by medication. In 2022, she led a key study questioning the serotonin theory that underpins much psychiatric treatment.
Moncrieff argues that antidepressants provide only limited benefits, mostly due to placebo effects, while ignoring the complex social and psychological causes of mental illness. Through her books—The Myth of the Chemical Cure, The Bitterest Pill, and Chemically Imbalanced—she exposes the scientific flaws and commercial forces shaping psychiatric care. Her work calls for a more critical, holistic approach to mental health beyond drug treatments.
"[Moncrieff] explains both the scientific flaws and the deliberate manipulations underlying much of today's psychiatric ideology and treatment." — Gabor Maté
"The history of ideas since 1789 is an endless record of mass murder in the name of the people."
Curtis Yarvin, described as "The Philosopher Behind J.D. Vance," argues that democracy is a failed experiment and should be replaced by monarchy. A software engineer turned political theorist, Yarvin has grown his online following through his trenchant critiques of liberalism and the myth of inevitable progress.
Yarvin has profoundly influenced American politics, counting among his readers Steve Bannon, Peter Thiel, and Vice-President J.D. Vance. In January, he attended Trump's inaugural gala as "an informal guest of honor" due to his "outsize[d] influence over the Trumpian right."
"There's this guy, Curtis Yarvin. Who's written about some of these things...I think that what Trump should do, like if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people." — J.D. Vance
"I am unable ... to adopt a belief simply because of its political or existential convenience."
Alex O’Connor is a YouTuber, public speaker, writer, and host of the Within Reason Podcast. He first began posting videos to his YouTube channel "CosmicSkeptic" before taking his degree in philosophy and theology at St John's College, Oxford. He has since grown his following to over 1.5 million subscribers with his rigorous yet accessible philosophy videos.
O’Connor has appeared on television programmes such as Piers Morgan Uncensored, BBC Sunday Morning Live, and Channel 4 News. He has debated philosophy, religion, free speech, and more with leading thinkers like Slavoj Žižek, Richard Dawkins, and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
“Unusually penetrating” — Richard Dawkins
"The smartphone has become the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine for a wired generation."
Anna Lembke is a groundbreaking psychiatrist and addiction medicine expert. She is Professor and Medical Director of Addiction Medicine at Stanford University. Alongside shaping individual lives in her clinical practice, Lembke has featured on the hit Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, and has testified before various committees in the United States House of Representatives and Senate.
Lembke gained national recognition with her 2016 book, Drug Dealer, MD, which examined the role of medical professionals in the opioid crisis. Her more recent bestselling book, Dopamine Nation, argues that too much pleasure in the short term causes pain in the long term.
"Lembke is a whiz on why we get hooked on things - and how we can enjoy pleasurable things in healthier doses." — The Guardian
"If an AI is a conscious being, forcing it to serve us would be akin to slavery."
Susan Schneider is an American philosopher and cognitive scientist, known for her work on the nature of consciousness, artificial intelligence, and the future of mind. She is the founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University and holds the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation.
Schneider is best known for her exploration of post-biological intelligence and the philosophical implications of machine consciousness. In her widely discussed book Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, she examines whether machines could ever truly possess consciousness, and whether humans should merge with them.
“Schneider makes a vivid and compelling case ... brimming with useful tools for thinking about the mind and its future." — David Chalmers
"The Holy Grail is...trying to understand a theory of quantum gravity."
Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski is a pioneering theoretical physicist reshaping our understanding of space, time, and gravity. A first-generation Cuban-American from Chicago, she built and flew her own plane solo at 14, graduated from MIT with a perfect 5.0 GPA, and earned her PhD from Harvard, where her early work on the spin memory effect was later cited by Stephen Hawking. She has received job offers from NASA and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, and was named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 list twice.
Now a faculty member at the Perimeter Institute and Deputy Director of the Simons Collaboration on Celestial Holography, Pasterski leads efforts to encode the universe as a hologram, a bold step toward uniting quantum theory with general relativity.
"Her potential is off the charts." — Allen Haggerty, MIT
"The problem with liberalism is not that it has failed, but that it has succeeded according to its own logic."
Sohrab Ahmari is an influential writer, editor, and cultural critic who challenges the limits of liberalism and exposes the spiritual costs of modernity. Once an atheist, now a Catholic convert, he draws on tradition, theology, and political theory to confront orthodoxies on both left and right.
As co-founder of Compact magazine and author of Tyranny, Inc., Ahmari examines how corporate, cultural, and ideological power shape the modern soul—and what it truly means to live freely amid constraints.
"A fearless critic of liberalism’s limitations." — The New Yorker
"We live in a country afflicted by a senile and selfish capitalist system."
Neil Kinnock is a British political figure whose career has spanned parliament, party leadership, and the European stage. Elected MP for Bedwellty in 1970 and later becoming Labour Party leader from 1983 to 1992, he undertook the monumental task of modernising the party after its crushing electoral defeat, battling internal factionalism, confronting Militant entryism, and laying the groundwork for the eventual rise of New Labour.
After stepping down as leader, he served as Vice-President of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004 and later as Chair of the British Council, remaining a passionate advocate for European cooperation, education, and public service.
"Neil Kinnock saved the Labour Party. Without him, there would have been no Blair, no 1997 landslide." — Peter Mandelson
“Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out.”
One of Britain's leading broadcast journalists, Michael Buerk, has reported for BBC TV News since 1973. Named “Television Journalist of the Year” by the Royal Television Society in 1984, Buerk is most notably known for his coverage of the Ethiopian famine alongside cameraman Mohamed Amin, which led directly to a multi-billion dollar relief effort, saving over a million lives. His honors include RTS Television Journalist of the Year, a BAFTA, and the George Polk Award, testifying to a legacy of globally impactful journalism.
In more recent years, Buerk has remained a sharp and sometimes controversial voice, hosting BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze since 1990. He has also presented The Choice for Radio 4, a single interview programme about individual dilemmas.
"The most important journalist of the post-war period" — The Guardian
“The fake outrage of academic philosophy amazes me.”
Tommy J. Curry is the Personal Chair of Africana Philosophy and Black Male Studies at the University of Edinburgh, renowned for his critical scholarship on the intersection of race, gender, and power. He was awarded the prestigious American Book Award for his groundbreaking book The Man Not, which dismantles prevailing narratives by arguing that Black masculinity is not a mimicry of white patriarchy but a unique and oppositional identity.
Curry’s work has been hailed by scholars as “required reading for all who work at the intersection of race and gender, especially in the current political milieu,” and he continues to challenge academic orthodoxy through his fierce public interventions, teaching, and edited volumes in Africana philosophy.
“Tommy Curry challenges the cozy consensus among self-conceived progressives in the humanities… required reading for anyone interested in understanding oppression or having unquestioned assumptions put to the test." —Charles W. Mills, Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center
“Every human being, in a way, is a philosopher. Because that's what it is to be human.”
Hilary Lawson is a philosopher, renowned critic of philosophical realism and editorial director of the Institute of Art and Ideas. His main work, Closure: A Story of Everything, has been described as ‘the first non-realist metaphysics’.
His early work made the case that twentieth-century philosophy was centrally concerned with the paradoxes of self-reference. Closure can be seen as an attempt to resolve these paradoxes and at the same time to provide an account of language that does require reference to an external reality. In doing so it outlines a metaphysics that abandons the traditional relationship between language and the world in favour of a vocabulary of closure and openness. The theory has dramatic consequences for how we understand ourselves and the world, and the role of both science and religion.
“Lawson shows himself to be a latter-day 'metaphysician' on the grand scale ... a quite astonishing achievement.” — Alan Montefiore, University of Oxford
“I want a society in which we don’t throw things and people away with quite the abandon we do, especially people."
Sheila Jasanoff is one of the most influential scholars in Science and Technology Studies, dismantling the myth that science and technology operate above politics and values. As Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Harvard Kennedy School, she has spent decades showing that every scientific advance is entwined with human choices, cultural assumptions, and political power.
In landmark works such as The Ethics of Invention, Designs on Nature, and Can Science Make Sense of Life?, Jasanoff introduced the concept of “co-production” to explain how knowledge and social order evolve together. From biotechnology to climate governance, her research insists that innovation must be democratically steered, not left to the market or the lab alone.
“One of the most important thinkers we have on the relationship between science, technology, and democracy.” — American Scientist
"Death is a malfunction of the human experience."
Zoltan Istvan is a transhumanist, futurist, entrepreneur, and former US Presidential candidate. With his bestselling book The Transhumanist Wager, and speeches at institutions like the World Bank, World Economic Forum, and the UK Parliament, Zoltan Istvan has spearheaded the effort to transform transhumanism into a thriving worldwide phenomenon. He is often cited as a global leader of the radical science movement.
Zoltan is the founder of the Transhumanist Party, the author of the Transhumanist Bill of Rights, and a frequently interviewed expert on AI and genetic editing. Zoltan has a degree in Philosophy and Religion from Columbia University and a master's degree in Practical Ethics from the University of Oxford.
"When we're all glowing, immortal orbs, we'll probably have Zoltan Istvan to thank." — Playboy
"Scientists and others sometimes deride philosophy on the basis of very little, if any, evidence of what it is like."
James Ladyman is a pioneering philosopher renowned for combining rigorous natural science with deep metaphysical inquiry. A leader in philosophy of science and physics, he champions ontic structural realism, the view that reality is fundamentally relational, and defends a naturalised metaphysics that aligns with our best scientific understanding, challenging inherited intuitions that mislead us about the nature of the universe.
In Everything Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized, Ladyman argues that many common metaphysical assumptions—about objects, causation, or essence—are relics incompatible with modern science. Ladyman’s fusion of analytic clarity with scientific insight reshapes how we think about reality—revealing a cosmos that is stranger and more beautiful than our unexamined instincts suggest.
"Every government today, as a matter of its basic legitimacy, has to pretend to respect human rights."
Kenneth Roth is an attorney, activist and author best known as the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch for nearly thirty years. In this role, he prosecuted the worst crimes humanity has committed in recent years. From the genocide in Rwanda to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, he has never feared holding the powerful to account and applying international law to those who feel they are above it. Indeed, HRW won the Nobel Peace Prize while he was the director for its efforts to ban anti-personnel mines.
He is currently a fellow of the Harvard Kennedy School and a lecturer at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs. His international affairs work has also led to him being denied entry to both Egypt and China. Most recently, he is the author of Righting Wrongs about his past in international affairs and how shame of all things, can be a powerful tool to hold autocrats to account.
"Godfather of human rights work." — New York Times
"There is no respect for the police anymore, they may as well not be there."
Annunziata Rees-Mogg is a journalist and former politician. As a journalist she has been a leader writer for The Daily Telegraph, deputy editor of MoneyWeek, and editor of the European Journal. An ardent eurosceptic, she was elected as a Brexit Party MEP for the East Midlands in 2019, but later rejoined the Conservative Party, which she had first joined at the age of five.
Today, Annunziata serves as Head of Communications for the think‑tank Popular Conservatism (or PopCon) which is ideologically on the right wing of the Conservative Party. She continues to write and comment on European politics, finance, and culture as a freelance journalist, recently appearing on GB News, Talk TV and on the Jeremy Vine show where she defended Israel's actions in Gaza.
“She’s younger than I am but I am very influenced by her, therefore it’s odd that we should be in different parties, to some extent uncomfortable for us both' — Jacob Rees-Mogg when Annunziata joined the Brexit Party
"We have a world to win."
Aaron Bastani is the co-founder of Novara Media, praised by The Guardian as “the slickest of the guerrilla news and opinion operations” in Britain. Since 2011, Novara has grown into a major platform for the new left, with Bastani regularly appearing on Newsnight and his videos reaching hundreds of thousands.
In Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto, Bastani argues that advances in technology could usher in an era of abundance, where automation frees people from work and resources are shared widely. He champions Universal Basic Income and reduced working hours as essential steps toward a society where luxury and comfort are accessible to all, challenging traditional capitalist norms and inspiring debates across the political spectrum.
"Bastani’s fully automated luxury communist manifesto is essential reading" — Theory, Culture and Society
"Every aspect of our brain and body can be predicted from our environment."
Karl Friston, Professor of Imaging Neuroscience at University College London and Principal Research Fellow at the Wellcome Trust, stands at the forefront of modern neuroscience. A former President of the International Organization for Human Brain Mapping and an elected Fellow of the Royal Society, Friston’s groundbreaking work has earned him prestigious honors like the Minerva Golden Brain Award, Collège de France Medal, and Glass Brain Award.
As the mastermind behind the revolutionary "free energy principle," Friston has reshaped how we understand the brain’s inner workings, showing how it constantly predicts and updates its model of the world to minimize surprise. His theory offers profound insights into the very nature of life itself. Friston's work has been invaluable to the scientific community, making him one of the most highly cited living scientists in the world.
"One of the world's leading neuroscientists [who] has developed a theory of how the brain works that also has implications for the origin and nature of life" — Sean Carroll
"The geometry, the content, and the fate of the universe are all intricately linked."
Priyamvada Natarajan is an award-winning theoretical astrophysicist known for her work in mapping dark matter and dark energy and gravitational lensing. She is an an astronomy and physics professor at Yale University, and the author of the bestseller Mapping the Heavens – The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos.
Natarajan was included on the TIME100 list of most influential people in the world in 2024 and was the 2025 recipient of the Dannie Heineman Prize in Astrophysics awarded by the American Astronomical Society and the American Institute of Physics
“A strikingly lucid account of the expansion, not just of the universe, but of the way we have tried to understand it." — New York Times
“Quite soon, as we move from genes to the proteins that they code for, and then on to the interactions between these proteins, the problems become seriously complicated.”
Denis Noble is a world-renowned biologist and Professor Emeritus and co-Director of Computational Physiology at Oxford University. Noble was one of the pioneers of Systems Biology and developed the first viable mathematical model of the working heart in 1960.
Noble has published over 350 articles in academic journals, including Nature, Science, PNA and the Journal of Physiology. His books include the first popular science book on the subject, The Music of Life, which has been translated into 12 languages.
"His conversational style gives readers the feeling they are with him sharing in an active process of discovery." - Eric Werner, Science
"I don't know why we think it's unfeminist to sexualize yourself in the public eye."
Farha Khalidi is a feminist cultural commentator, TikToker, and OnlyFans model known for her bold, unapologetic voice. With 1.7 million followers on TikTok, she challenges male-dominated power structures and advocates fiercely for women’s rights — from supporting legal abortion to championing women’s suffrage.
Farha gained wider recognition with appearances on shows like Piers Morgan Uncensored, where she defended Lorde’s provocative album cover, sparking conversations about feminism and self-expression.
“…philosophy can harbor hopes for tyranny, but it can also pave the way toward reform and revolution.”
One of the most influential political philosophers of her generation, Seyla Benhabib is known for her groundbreaking work on democracy, human rights, and the ethics of migration and global justice. Benhabib’s work redefines what it means to belong in an age of borders and pluralism. Drawing on Kant and Habermas, she reimagines global relations as an ongoing democratic negotiation that transcends borders, with profound consequences for migrants and refugees.
Benhabib is the author of several books, including The Rights of Others, Another Cosmopolitanism, and Exile, Statelessness and Migration. In 2009, she was awarded the Ernst Bloch Prize, one of Germany’s most distinguished philosophical honors given every three years, for her work on “the contradictions of a globalized world.” Amid ongoing global debates about nation-states, citizenship, and belonging, Benhabib’s philosophy could not be more relevant.
“Outstanding services to critical theory, political philosophy and democracy research” — Theodor W. Adorno Prize
'Rachel Maclean is a former UK minister, Conservative peer, and Member of the House of Lords. She currently serves as Director of Strategy to the Leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch. She previously served as Minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government, Department for Transport and Home Office.
In December 2024, Maclean was appointed to join the House of Lords as a life peer as part of the 2024 Political Peerages. She was created Baroness Maclean of Redditch, of Hanbury in the County of Worcestershire on 5 February 2025.
"The question of technology is one of the most important questions in all of philosophy because we, as human beings, live with technology and live on its terms."
Babette Babich is a philosopher and historian of ideas whose work spans Nietzsche, Heidegger, aesthetics, and the philosophy of science. She is Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University and the editor of the journal New Nietzsche Studies.
Educated in both the analytic and continental traditions, Babich has written extensively on figures like Adorno, Anders, and Foucault, challenging the boundaries between art, science, and philosophy. Her latest book Günther Anders’ Philosophy of Technology explores the philosophy of isolation. Written durng Covid-19, the study of "home-working" became more important than ever.
"[Babich] succeeds in penetrating the cloud of suspicion, incomprehension, and distrust that for contemporary readers surrounds Nietzsche's writing" — New Nietzsche Studies
"Science is paramount, but presents no challenge to a creed that rests on faith-based belief.”
Joseph Silk is a cosmologist and astrophysicist whose groundbreaking work on the early universe, dark matter, and galaxy formation has shaped our understanding of the universe. Currently the Savilian Professor of Astronomy Emeritus at the University of Oxford, he also holds appointments at Johns Hopkins University and the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris.
Silk is also the author of several influential books on cosmology, including The Big Bang and The Infinite Cosmos and has received multiple top-tier honours including The Bakerian Medal, The Balzan Prize and The Gruber Prize in Cosmology, often dubbed "the Nobel of Cosmology."
"[Silk] knows his stuff and it shows." — New Scientist
"At the crucial junctures—the moments of decision-making and agenda-setting—we make sure that there’s an openness to citizens."
Dedicated to reimagining democracy as a system that truly empowers people, Hélène Landemore is a political philosopher and Professor at Yale University. As founder of Yale’s Citizens’ Assemblies research program and a Distinguished Research Fellow at Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI, she blends deep theoretical insight with practical innovation.
Landemore challenges traditional electoral democracy by arguing for a more inclusive, deliberative model—one that better captures collective intelligence and democratic reason. Her work, including advising OpenAI’s Democratic Inputs to AI program, explores how democratic institutions can become more stable, representative, and capable of addressing today’s complex political and technological challenges.
"Hélène Landemore argues for a vision of democracy that is more faithful to popular rule, more likely to tap into democratic reason, and more stable and durable than electoral democracy." — Erica Yu, Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics
"We are at the beginning of history. We have a responsibility not to mess things up."
Anders Sandberg is a Swedish researcher, futurist, and transhumanist renowned for his work on human enhancement and future technologies. He served as a senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute and the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford.
Sandberg's research encompasses societal and ethical implications of emerging technologies, cognitive enhancement, and existential risks. He co-authored the influential paper "Dissolving the Fermi Paradox," suggesting a high likelihood that humanity is alone in the observable universe. A prominent voice in public debates on neuroscience and ethics, Sandberg advocates responsible technological advancement to secure a prosperous future.
"He might just be the most interesting academic at Oxford" — Robert Wiblin and Keiran Harris."
“The key to the survival of liberty in the modern world is the embrace of multiple identities.”
Timothy Garton Ash is a leading British historian, political writer, and one of Europe’s most compelling chroniclers of modern transformation. He is Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
Known for his vivid reportage and sharp historical insight, Garton Ash has authored acclaimed works including The File, The Magic Lantern, and Free Speech, blending memoir, analysis, and frontline observation. His most recent book, Homelands: A Personal History of Europe, won the Lionel Gelber Prize in 2024 and cements his place as a leading voice on Europe’s postwar evolution.
"One of Britain's leading public intellectuals." — The Spectator
"And so I joined the government. In hindsight this was a mistake, and I’ve learned from it. Politics is about compromise, but not always."
Johnny Mercer is a former Veterans Minister, Conservative MP and British Army Captain who served three tours of duty in Afghanistan. After the military, he entered politics to act as a voice for veterans and the armed forces in Parliament. he used his time in office to aid veterans in their access to healthcare, mental health support and housing, as well as fighting the criminal prosecution of soldiers in Iraq and Northern Ireland.
After percieved failings by Boris Johnson over veterans Johnny resigned on principle from his role as Parliamentary Secretary of State for Defence, People and Veterans. He was later re-appointed to the role as Minister for Veterans, which was then a cabinet position. After being removed by Liz Truss he was reappointed to the role again by Rishi Sunak.
"He doesn’t always play by the rules of the political class, but that may be precisely why so many people listen when he speaks." — Andrew Marr
"We cannot defeat climate change without trade. And we cannot sustain trade without addressing climate change."
James Bacchus is a professor of Global Affairs and Director of the Global Economic and Environmental Opportunity Centre at the University of Central Florida. With a long and storied career in Congress and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), his most recent work argues that we need global democracy in order to have true, sustainable development.
James was elected to the House of Representatives in 1991, where he served before becoming a trade negotiator for the US. He later went on to be the founding judge and twice chairman of the Appellate Body of the WTO, the highest tribunal of world trade, where he judged more trade disputes than anyone else in the world. He has since served on the leadership council for the US's chapter to the Paris Climate Accords, has written several books, among many more positions and accolades.
“A rare voice of principled pragmatism—deeply versed in trade law yet consistently focused on the human and environmental stakes of the global system.” — Financial Times
"Women were told that exploiting their beauty is dishonest."
Catherine Hakim is a social scientist best known for developing preference theory and her work on erotic capital and the sex-deficit theory, with a focus on women’s employment and gender issues. She is currently a Professorial Research Fellow at the London think tank Civitas and is writing a book called Sexual Politics.
She has held senior research roles at the London School of Economics, the Centre for Policy Research in London, and the WZB social science institute in Berlin, as well as working in British central government. Dr Hakim has published over 100 papers and numerous books, and regularly appears on Sky News, BBC Daily Politics, and Woman’s Hour.
“Her scorn for the way the sexual revolution has undermined women’s sexual power by devaluing it, and how ideals of free love have been more sexually enslaving to women — not less — is clearly and convincingly argued" — Sarah Vine, The Times
“Europe must stop seeing itself as a payer and start acting as a player on the global stage.”
Nathalie Tocci is one of Europe’s most influential and thoughtful strategists on international affairs, known for her pivotal role in shaping European foreign policy and advancing a nuanced approach to diplomacy, security, and global cooperation. She currently serves as the director of the Instituto Affari Internazionali. Prior to this, she was an advisor to Federica Mogherini at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and continued to assist Mogherini when she became the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission.
Prior to her role in the EU, Tocci worked as a research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies and as a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute. She writes regularly in the press, notably for Politico, where she has a column about European foreign policy, integration, and how Europe can respond to Trump.
“Nathalie’s clarity of thought and deep understanding of both global power dynamics and European values made her an invaluable advisor during a crucial time for EU foreign policy.” — Federica Mogherini, former EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.
“The most important lesson from history is that technological transitions have always been accompanied by social and political disruption—unless we invest in inclusive growth.”
Carl Benedikt Frey is the Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI and Work at the Oxford Internet Institute and the director of the Future of Work Programme at the Oxford Martin School. He is most famous for a 2013 study that found 47% of jobs were at risk of automation. The article was cited over 17,000 times and was used by the Bank of England, World Bank, and Obama's economic advisors. His broader academic work has been featured in over 100 publications and has been cited over 22,500 times.
Before his current role at Oxford, Carl was an Economics Associate of Nuffield College and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. He was also a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council, as well as a member of the Bretton Woods Committee. He is the author of The Technology Trap which went on to win Princeton University's Richard A Lester Prize for the most significant contribution to labour economics. More recently he has authored How Progress Ends.
“Carl Benedikt Frey is one of the most important voices today in understanding how automation shapes labor markets—and what we can do about it.” — Martin Wolf
“The market under capitalism is different because you don’t just choose to participate in it—you have to take part in it to survive."
Bhaskar Sunkara launched the magazine Jacobin while still a student in college. The publication quickly became one of the most prominent socialist magazines in the world, bridging the academic left and the activist base with accessible, sharp-edged commentary. Under Sunkara's leadership, Jacobin helped shape the intellectual infrastructure of the Bernie Sanders base of 2016 and 2020.
Sunkara is currently the president of The Nation, the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. He is a former vice-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America and the author of The Socialist Manifesto.
"If you’re at all curious about America’s growing leftist movement, you’re bound to stumble onto Bhaskar Sunkara’s work." — NBC
"When like-minded people argue, all they do is provide each other with new reasons supporting already held beliefs."
Anthropologist Dan Sperber has reshaped how we understand human reason—not as a tool for truth seeking, but as an adaptation for persuasion. Sperber contends that what passes for rationality is in fact motivated cognition, selected over thousands of years of evolution for its power to win over others.
Sperber is the author of several books, including The Enigma of Reason. His conclusions challenge long-held and deeply entrenched Enlightenment assumptions about the mind, rationality, and culture.
"Original and provocative...likely to have a big impact on our understanding of ourselves" — Steven Pinker
"Modern medicine has certainly preferred dealing with my various conditions as individual diagnoses. But me? I think all the diagnoses boil down to anxiety."
Sarah Wilson is a multi-New York Times and Amazon bestselling author, social philosopher, international keynote speaker, minimalist and philanthropist. She edited Cosmopolitan magazine Australia at 29, founded the global I Quit Sugar movement, hosted the most-watched TV series in the nation’s history – Masterchef Australia – and wrote the bestseller First, We Make the Beast Beautiful.
Her most recent book, This One Wild and Precious Life, won the US Gold Nautilus Prize, and she has ranked in the top 200 most influential authors in the world (two years in a row).
"Sarah Wilson is a force of nature. She has taken her pain and grief about our sick and troubled world and alchemised it into action." — Elizabeth Gilbert author of Eat Pray Love
"No one looking at the vast extent of the universe and the completely random location of homo sapiens within it could seriously maintain it was intentionally created for us.”
One of the world's foremost philosophers of physics, Tim Maudlin is Professor of Philosophy at NYU and Founder and Director of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics. He is a member of the "Foundational Questions Institute" of the Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.
The influence of Maudlin's research in the foundations of physics, metaphysics, and logic cannot be overstated. He has reinvigorated our understanding of quantum mechanics as pointing to the counterintuitive idea of non-locality, what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance." Maudlin warns that we should be wary of physical theories that contradict our direct impression of reality, especially when it comes to the nature of time.
“To make his case, he’s had to reinvent geometry.” — Wired
“You are what you do; your happiness is what you attend to, so focus on what makes you and those you care about truly happy.”
Paul Dolan is a British behavioural scientist and the Professor of Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics. His research and writing focus on how pleasure and purpose weave together in everyday life, arguing that happiness lies in what we do and attend to, not the grand narratives we tell ourselves.
Dolan is the author of three widely acclaimed books: Happiness by Design, Happy Ever After, and Beliefism. He combines rigorous academic analysis with accessible advice grounded in behavioral science. In interviews and public appearances, he emphasizes breaking free from cultural "narrative traps", such as the assumptions that marriage or wealth guarantee happiness, to prioritize lived experience instead. His work has informed UK and US public policy through collaboration with the Office for National Statistics and the UK Behavioural Insights Team.
“This man knows the secret to happiness: the small stuff.” — Wired UK
"If we are going to live in a democracy, the bulk of power needs to be with the people. And whoever has the data has the power."
Carissa Véliz is a leading philosopher of the digital age, reshaping how we think about autonomy, technology, and the invisible data architectures that govern our lives. An acclaimed ethicist, author, and professor at the University of Oxford, she is a vital voice calling for privacy to be recognized not as a luxury, but as a fundamental human right. Her groundbreaking book Privacy Is Power has become a manifesto against surveillance capitalism, arguing that personal data is not a commodity to be exploited, but an extension of ourselves.
Véliz’s work addresses digital profiling, informed consent, algorithmic bias, and the ethical design of technology. As a senior fellow at the Institute for Ethics in AI, she advises policymakers on how to ensure innovation respects human dignity. Her writing, featured in The Guardian, Wired, and The New York Times, offers clear, urgent insights into the moral challenges shaping our digital future.
“An essential guide to one of the most pressing modern issues.” — Hannah Fry
"Anyone who tells you that he or she knows how life started on the sere Earth some 3.45 billion years ago is a fool or a knave."
Stuart Kauffman is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher, renowned for pioneering work on the origins of life, self-organisation, and biological complexity. He is currently emeritus professor of biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and affiliate faculty at the Institute for Systems Biology. He has a number of awards including a MacArthur Fellowship and a Wiener Medal.
His research challenges purely reductionist explanations of the emergence of life and highlights creativity and spontaneous order as fundamental to biological and evolutionary processes. He is the author of influential books including The Origins of Orde, At Home in the Univers, and A World Beyond Physics: The Emergence and Evolution of Life.
"Kauffman is doing wonderful work, and he's certainly put the cat among the pigeons for old fashioned neo-Darwinism" — Niles Eldredge, American Museum of Natural History
"When Galileo invented the telescope, people didn't want to look through it...people [still] refuse to look at certain theories."
Professor Ivette Fuentes is a leading quantum physicist reshaping how we think about gravity, time, and quantum information. At the frontier of theoretical physics, Fuentes is best known for her groundbreaking work on quantum technologies designed to probe the nature of spacetime itself—where quantum mechanics and general relativity intersect.
Fuentes' work has been featured in New Scientist and brought to wider audiences through her participation in the BBC series Magic Numbers with Hannah Fry. She is also a close collaborator of Roger Penrose.
"I lost count of how many pioneering ideas [Ivette has given] with actual practical consequences in the near term" — Curt Jaimungal
"The state is too big, taxes are too high, and government spends far too much of your money badly."
Mark Littlewood is an economist, politician and former director of the Institute of Economic Affairs. He is a regular fixture of UK political media defending free market and laissez-faire approaches to managing the economy.
Littlewood began his career with the Liberal Democrats, where he was the Head of Media. During the coalition government, he then became the director of Liberal Vision, a classical liberal group within the Liberal Democrats, before taking up his role at the IEA. He was listed as the 38th most influential person on the British right in 2018.
"Mark Littlewood has transformed the Institute of Economic Affairs from a dusty old relic into the most influential think tank in British politics.” — The Guardian
Christoph Schuringa is a fierce critic of the apolitical self-image of analytic philosophy. As Associate Professor at Northeastern University London and editor of Hegel Bulletin, he interrogates how analytic philosophy, despite its claims to timeless rigor, functions as a sociopolitical ideology rather than a neutral intellectual tradition.
In A Social History of Analytic Philosophy: How Politics Has Shaped an Apolitical Philosophy (2025), Schuringa traces how the discipline arose under specific political pressures—including McCarthyism—and argues that its dominance today upholds liberal elites by framing complex debates through a narrow, depoliticised lens. His scholarship reshapes our understanding of philosophy’s power: it’s not just abstract ideas but institutional forces born of history, class, and struggle.
"Schuringa’s book is unputdownable – applied to it, this term is not a cliché but a simple description of its effect on a reader.” — Slavoj Žižek
"The main thing to remember when you are studying philosophy is that it is not a spectator sport."
Nigel Warburton is a British philosopher and writer who champions making philosophy accessible and relevant to everyday life. He co-hosts the hit podcast Philosophy Bites (47M+ downloads) and argues that philosophy belongs in public debate, not just the classroom.
A prolific author and columnist, he writes regularly for The New European, Aeon, and The Guardian, and is known for clear, engaging introductions to big ideas—especially in his bestselling book Philosophy: The Basics. He is also senior editor at Aeon.co and philosophy editor at Five Books.
“One of the most-read popular philosophers of our time.”— Julian Baggini
Anne McElvoy is the Executive Editor and Head of Podcasting at POLITICO and host of the award-winning The Economist Asks podcast. She has been deputy editor of The Spectator, associate editor of The Independent, executive editor of the Evening Standard, and Executive Editor for Strategy at The Economist.
She is the author of The Saddled Cow: East Germany's Life And Legacy, and co-authored Markus Wolf's best-selling memoir Man Without A Face: The Autobiography Of Communism's Greatest Spymaster.
"As remarkable as India’s growth story is, it doesn’t wash away the fact that poverty has become richer institutions’ problem.”
Avantika Chilkoti is a sharp, internationally respected global business correspondent at The Economist, bringing depth and empathy to complex economic stories. Based in London and a Kennedy Scholar alumni of Harvard and Cambridge she covers philanthropy, development, and corporate influence across emerging markets.
Formerly a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times in Mumbai and Jakarta, Chilkoti has reported on crises, growth, and inequality from Asia to Africa. She hosted the acclaimed podcast The Modi Raj, which investigated Narendra Modi’s global influence by mixing investigative journalism with cultural introspection. Her writing appears in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and 1843 Magazine, weaving hard data with human stories to challenge elite economic narratives.
“Avantika Chilkoti writes with flair and authority—rare in global business journalism.” — The Economist
"But it’s fallibilism, not relativism, that gives us pause by reminding us we may be wrong."
Timothy Williamson is a pre-eminent analytic philosopher and leading authority in logic, language, and metaphysics. He served as the Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford from 2000 to 2023 and is currently a Senior Research and Teaching Fellow at New College, Oxford.
A Fellow of the British Academy and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Williamson has published several foundational books, including Knowledge and Its Limits, Vagueness, and The Philosophy of Philosophy. His "knowledge-first" epistemology rejected the orthodox view of knowledge in philosophy, instead arguing that knowledge is a foundational concept which cannot be broken down further.
"One of the world's leading philosophers" — Jason Stanley
"The future is made by the things we imagine today."
Güneş Taylor is an award-winning geneticist and pioneer of public engagement in her field. She is a training fellow at the Francis Crick Institute where her research predominantly focuses on the genetic formation of ovaries and testes. Both "an incredible science communicator" and a scientist herself, she has become a distinguished HowtheLightGetsIn host, sharing the stage with Slavoj Žižek, Richard Dawkins, Yuval Noah Harari, and more.
Güneş has debated the implications of genome editing on the Guardian's podcast Science Weekly, the UK's longest-running science podcast. In 2018, Güneş was awarded the Crick Public Engagement Prize for her efforts in the public communication of science.
"Güneş has performed a significant service to disseminating the work within her field." — Anastasia de Waal
"I predict we will abolish suffering throughout the living world."
David Pearce is a British philosopher best known for his advocacy of the abolitionist project, the ethical vision of using advanced science and technology to eliminate suffering in all sentient life. A co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association (now Humanity+), Pearce is the author of The Hedonistic Imperative (1995), a manifesto that argues for the use of genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and neuroscience to replace the biological substrates of pain with gradients of intelligent bliss.
Pearce explores themes at the intersection of ethics, technology, and consciousness, promoting what he calls “paradise engineering,” a future in which compassion is built into our biology. His work has influenced bioethicists, transhumanists, and consciousness researchers alike.
“Faith shapes reason as much as reason shapes faith.”
Carmody Grey is a Catholic theologian and philosopher whose work probes the moral foundations of science, ecology, and human identity. A lecturer at Durham University and advisor to institutions from the Vatican to the UN, she challenges both secular and religious orthodoxies with uncommon depth.
With roots in biology and theology, Grey argues that spiritual traditions are not relics of the past but vital resources for confronting the crises of modernity, from climate collapse to technological overreach.
“A voice of rare clarity in a fractured moral landscape.” — The Tablet
"Preaching dogma in the name of science is a dagger at the heart of society."
Àlex Gómez-Marín is a physicist, neuroscientist, and critic of transhumanism, which he describes as “false religion” dressed in techno-scientific rhetoric. Trained in theoretical physics (PhD) and systems neuroscience, he is a professor at the Institute of Neurosciences in Alicante, Spain, and director of the Pari Center in Tuscany, Italy, where he explores the nature of consciousness, the edges of human experience, and the limitations of mainstream science.
Formerly a research fellow at the EMBL Center for Genomic Regulation and at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon, Gómez-Marín has gained international attention for his interdisciplinary approach to mind and meaning. His work seeks an alternative to the “unholy trinity” of mechanistic-materialist-reductionist neuroscience by integrating insights from philosophy of science, phenomenology, and wisdom traditions.
"If Christianity is the truth, then all the philosophy written about it is false.”
Genia Schönbaumsfeld is a radical voice in contemporary philosophy of religion, unafraid to confront the conceptual illusions that shape modern secular and religious discourse. A philosophy professor at Southampton and one of the world's leading experts on Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, Schönbaumsfeld dismantles the idea that belief in God can be treated like a scientific hypothesis. For Schönbaumsfeld, faith is not about empirical claims but a “passionate commitment” that reshapes how we live and judge life itself.
In Wittgenstein on Religious Belief, The Illusion of Doubt, A Confusion of the Spheres, and her ongoing European Research Council project The Ethics of Doubt, she argues that many contemporary debates, from conspiracy theory to militant atheism, misunderstand the nature of belief, confusing language with metaphysics. Her work urges us to question the assumptions behind what we call “truth” and “evidence,” reminding us that some forms of meaning can’t be captured by observation alone.
“A sharply argued contribution to the philosophical effort to understand religious language.” — Review of Metaphysics, on A Confusion of the Spheres
"It is clear that life is tough for many men and young boys, and many of our boys in schools are far from privileged."
Nick Fletcher is a former Tory MP and was the first and only Conservative MP ever to be elected to the Don Valley constituency.
He is known for his opinions on gender equality, trans issues and immigration. During an international men's day debate in parliament, Fletcher argued that "female replacements" in shows like Doctor Who were robbing boys of good role models, leaving only gangsters like the Krays and Peaky Blinders' Tommy Shelby. "Is there any wonder we are seeing so many young men committing crime?" he asked.
“Dragging people’s names into a culture war for cheap points is not leadership. It’s desperation." drag performer Dame Ida responding to a post by Nick Fletcher criticising a local Pride event.
"History shows that attempts to create utopias through violence results in failure or produces societies more dystopian in nature."
Andy Owen is a writer and former intelligence officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He writes on the ethics and philosophy of war, and regularly writes on geo-politics for several media publications in the US and UK including the Spectator, The Critic and Psyche.
He is the author of All Soldiers Run Away: Alano’s War — The Story of a British Deserter as well as Land of the Blind, a fictionalised memoir telling the story of the intelligence war in Afganistan.
"Owen's message carries a simple truth: Everyone has his or her breaking point." - Toronto Star
“Every generation thinks the world is ending, but maybe we are right.”
Elizabeth Oldfield is a writer, speaker, and cultural commentator who served for a decade as Director of Theos, the UK’s leading religion and society think tank. She is the author of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times, and her writing has appeared in Prospect Magazine, The Times, Unherd, and the Financial Times, among other publications.
Since 2017, she has hosted The Sacred, a critically acclaimed podcast where she interviews everyone from renowned journalists and academics to playwrights and politicians about the deepest values that they hold dear.
“Luminous in a manner that a medieval anchorite might have appreciated, while simultaneously wise in the ways of coping with a pram on a crowded bus.” — Tom Holland
“It is only rather recently that science has begun to make peace with its magical roots.”
Philip Ball is a renowned British science writer and former editor of Nature, celebrated for uncovering the poetic wonder within hard science. In over thirty books—including Critical Mass (Royal Society Winton Prize), Beyond Weird (Physics World Book of the Year), and How Life Works—he explores how science is deeply entwined with culture, politics, and imagination.
From snowflakes and biology to quantum oddities, Ball reveals hidden patterns in nature and challenges the myth of pure objectivity. His work shows how physics sheds light on society, while Beyond Weird invites us to embrace quantum’s counterintuitive logic. Winner of the Royal Society’s Wilkins–Bernal–Medawar Medal, Ball makes science urgent, beautiful, and socially relevant.
“The most cerebral of the UK’s professional science writers.” — Brian Clegg
"There are many ways in which such Eurocentric assumptions are embedded in the way basic ideas are approached in economics, like financial inclusion, debt crises, women’s empowerment, or labour productivity."
Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven is a political economist unafraid to take on the orthodoxies of her discipline. A Senior Lecturer in International Development at King’s College London, Kvangraven brings together development economics, global political economy, and economic history to challenge the Eurocentric assumptions underpinning mainstream economic thinking. A key advocate for rethinking ‘dependency theory’ as a vital research program, her work reframes global inequality not as an anomaly in the system, but as its inherent logic.
Co-author of Decolonising Economics – An Introduction, and a founding editor of Developing Economics, a platform that makes heterodox and radical scholarship accessible to wider audiences. With initiatives like Diversifying and Decolonising Economics and her podcast Hierarchies of Development, Kvangraven is reshaping the academic landscape and who gets to define economic expertise.
"The search for facts about justice that transcend power is subversive. It is no accident that Socrates was sentenced to death..."
Naomi Goulder is a Professor of Higher Education and Philosophy at Northeastern University London. She was a general editor, with AC Grayling and Andrew Pyle, of the Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy and has written on topics from the philosophy of action and morality to love and aesthetics. She is currently working on a book on experience and transformation.
“Language is not primarily about representing the world. It’s about managing social interaction.”
Nick Enfield is a professor of linguistics, renowned for his work on how language helps construct our reality. Challenging the dominant narrative that language is a transparent window into the world, Enfield’s book Language vs. Reality shows how language frames our perspectives and shapes how we relate to one another. According to Enfield, language is far better for persuasion than for objectively capturing facts.
In addition to his theoretical work, Enfield has conducted linguistics field work in mainland Southeast Asia, especially Laos. His popular writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Scientific American Mind, among other outlets.
“I am happy that Nick Enfield is a linguist because there are very few scientists in the world who can match him for insights into the cultural and social nature of human language." Daniel L. Everett, Trustee Professor of Cognitive Sciences, Bentley University
“A lot of beliefs that are fundamental to who we are … are influenced by things that appear to be arbitrary and irrelevant to the truth of the matter.”
Miriam Schoenfield is a leading epistemologist and Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. Her groundbreaking work probes how our foundational beliefs—about politics, identity, and fact—often arise from circumstances beyond our conscious control.
In her award-winning essay “Meditations on Beliefs Formed Arbitrarily”, and her influential article “Deferring to Doubt”, Schoenfield argues that recognition of epistemic arbitrariness calls for a calibrated skepticism—a disciplined openness to questioning even deeply held convictions. Her research spans higher-order evidence, permissivism, and belief rationality, challenging traditional epistemic norms with formal rigor and philosophical poise.
“Her accuracy-first approach to epistemology is reshaping debates on rational belief formation.” — Philosophy & Phenomenological Research
"[O]ur cosmological models have taken on creation-myth status.”
Phil Halper is a fearless science communicator and Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, known for challenging the orthodoxy of modern cosmology. In his writing and his popular YouTube series Before the Big Bang, Halper argues that the dominant Big Bang model has become less a scientific theory and more a secular creation myth, invoking the language of singularity and genesis in ways that mirror religious cosmologies.
As co-author of Battle of the Big Bang: The New Tales of Our Cosmic Origins, he explores alternative theories of the universe’s beginnings, from bouncing cosmologies to cyclical time, arguing that these alternatives are too often dismissed not on empirical grounds but because they threaten a cosmological narrative that science has grown attached to.
"In many books, early-universe cosmology is presented as established. Afshordi and Halper show nothing could be further from the truth!" — Robert Brandenberger, McGill University
"Capitalism...leads to the unevenly distributed ruination of the worker and non-human nature."
Kai Heron is a political organiser, trade unionist, and Lecturer in Political Ecology at Lancaster University. He is the co-editor of the De Gruyter Degrowth Handbook and has published widely on the politics of green energy in New Statesman, Sidecar, and Jacobin, among other media.
He is the co-director of the progressive policy platform Abundance. His most recent book, co-authored with Keir Milburn and Bertie Russell, is Radical Abundance: How to Win a Green Democratic Future.
"...exposes the gross inefficiency of modern capitalism and shows precisely how we can begin to build societies that guarantee a good life for all." — Grace Blakely
“If we do not interrogate the structures of power, we risk reproducing them in our attempts to dismantle them.”
Minna Salami is a writer, social critic, and thought leader who fuses feminism, philosophy, and political thought into bold, accessible ideas. A Full Member of the Club of Rome and an Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop fellow, she focuses on making complex theories both engaging and transformative—whether in books, talks, or creative projects.
She is the author of Can Feminism Be African? and Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone, translated into multiple languages, and co‑author of The Power Book. Her writing appears in The Guardian, The Financial Times, Project Syndicate, and The Philosopher, exploring feminism, democracy, metamodernism, and cultural criticism. She has delivered talks from TEDx and the Oxford Union to the European Commission, Yale, and NASA’s Singularity University.
“A powerful and necessary voice in contemporary feminism.” — The Guardian
"About 20 or 30 years ago, if someone had talked about nuclear energy as an environmentally friendly, clean technology, they probably would have been laughed out of the room.” — M. V. Ramana
M. V. Ramana is a physicist and one of the world’s foremost critics of nuclear power. As Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the University of British Columbia, he argues that nuclear energy is costly, risky, and no solution to climate change.
Author of The Power of Promise and Nuclear Is Not the Solution, Ramana combines technical expertise with political analysis to expose the hidden dangers of the nuclear industry. His research challenges the myths of “green” atomic power and highlights its ties to weapons proliferation and environmental injustice.
“Ramana presents a devastatingly convincing case against the dangerous distractions of nuclear energy.” — review of Nuclear Is Not the Solution
“Debt is memory."
Ben Chu is a British journalist and commentator renowned for making complex economic ideas urgently intelligible. A former economics editor at The Independent and now a senior figure at BBC Newsnight, Chu has long challenged the austerity consensus with clarity and conviction.
His book Chinese Whispers dismantles Western myths about China’s rise, blending personal history with geopolitical insight. Whether unpacking the 2008 crash or exposing the social cost of fiscal orthodoxy, Chu’s work is grounded in a deep moral concern for how economic narratives shape everyday lives.
“A rare voice of lucidity in a fog of numbers.” - The Guardian
"The question is not any longer about bringing
environmental issues into the domain of politics as has been the case until now but rather about how to bring the political into the environment."
Erik Swyngedouw is professor of geography at the University of Manchester in the School of Environment, Education and Development and a member of the Manchester Urban Institute.
Swyngedouw has long been a leading figure in critical geography. He has written extensively on political economy, urban governance, and the transformation of water infrastructures, with fieldwork spanning Europe and Latin America. He is known for challenging consensus views on technocratic urban planning and for emphasizing how struggles over resources like water reveal deeper democratic deficits in contemporary governance.
“The dream of a breezy summer’s day powering our modern world is just that — a dream.”
Tim Gregory is a nuclear scientist and fierce advocate for atomic power as the backbone of a sustainable future. As a nuclear chemist at the UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory, he moves beyond lab walls to make passionate, data-rich arguments in his book Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World.
In Going Nuclear, Gregory dismantles myths about nuclear fear, waste, and cost — arguing that hesitance toward nuclear energy is often rooted in cultural “radiophobia” rather than reasoned assessment. He frames nuclear not merely as a component of net zero but as a moral imperative to support global prosperity and energy equity. His message is clear: clean energy without nuclear is neither feasible nor fair to developing nations.
“A master class in nuclear science, technology, economics and history.” — Wall Street Journal review
"We think there are five senses and they work independently, but in fact, taste relies heavily on smell, and our sensory experience is richly interwoven.”
Barry C. Smith is a British philosopher and director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study. Co-founder of the Centre for the Study of the Senses, he bridges philosophy, neuroscience, and culinary culture to show how our sensory lives shape knowledge of mind and language.
In works such as Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine and numerous essays in Nature and Food Quality and Preference, Smith reveals how flavor, smell, and touch challenge traditional boundaries between mind and matter. A frequent BBC presenter (The Mysteries of the Brain, The Uncommon Senses), he champions multisensory philosophy and public scholarship—urging us to rediscover the philosophical significance in everyday sensations.
“Smith’s work restores wonder to the senses and wisdom to the philosopher’s palate.” — Philosophy Now
"I have come to love the rawness of life out in the country. It speaks to those who are willing to listen to it. And this, I have found, transcends race."
Kiran Sidhu is an evocative and honest writer known for blending personal insight with lyrical storytelling. Her work often explores themes of grief, identity, cultural heritage, and nature. Sidhu's ability to find universal truths in deeply personal moments, connecting rural landscapes with emotional terrain, has resulted in her writing some of the most read articles of the last few years.
She regularly writes for Prospect magazine about rural life and the philosophical implications of this change in her life. She also writes for the I Paper, Guardian, Times and Telegraph. Her most popular article was turned into a documentary that she produced, titled 'Heart Valley', which went on to win a BAFTA. She is most recently the author of her memoir, 'I Can Hear the Cuckoo'.
'A beautiful and poetic meditation on loss, nature, and what matters in life.' — Nigel Warburton on 'I Can Hear the Cuckoo'
Philosopher of the Countryside
“We are real in an unreal reality, which we’re told is really real and that we’re actually unreal.”
Joanna Kavenna is a daring novelist and essayist who dismantles the illusions of modern life by fusing philosophical insight with literary imagination. Named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists in 2013 and elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2024, she forges narratives that challenge our understanding of reality, identity, and technology.
Her major works include The Ice Museum (a gripping travel memoir), The Birth of Love (an epic exploration of childbirth and belief), A Field Guide to Reality (a surreal map of existential crisis), and Zed: a dystopian satire of surveillance, algorithmic control, and corporate prediction. Zed was hailed as “a delirious satire about the corrosive effects of technology” by The Guardian, and shows a predictive regime’s fragile grip unravelling in unexpected human acts of freedom.
“A brilliantly unpredictable novelist: whatever you think she might do next, she doesn’t.” — The Guardian
"A city is first and foremost a social reactor. It works like a star, attracting people and accelerating social interaction and social outputs."
Luis Bettencourt is a leading voice in the emerging field of urban science, known for pioneering a multidisciplinary approach to understanding cities as complex systems. His work brings together biology, sociology, network theory, and data science to explore how cities evolve and impact human life.
At the University of Chicago, Bettencourt leads the Urban Science Laboratory, where he is spearheading new methods and evidence-based frameworks to inform equitable and sustainable urban development in the 21st century. He is also an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and an active contributor to global conversations on complex systems, emergent engineering, and civic innovation.
"If it is there, if it is a story, we put it out there."
Roger Hearing is a veteran journalist and broadcaster. Over a 35-year career with the BBC and Bloomberg, he has covered wars, elections, coups and revolutions across the globe – including the UN intervention in Somalia and the Rwandan genocide.
From 1999 to 2010, he presented The World Today and News Hour for the BBC World Service, along with the World Tonight on BBC Radio 4. He now co-hosts the podcast The Why? Curve with Phil Dobbie.
"An excellent thoughtful broadcaster and a rock solid journalist." ― Ian D. Richardson, Ex-editor BBC World Service
“I was once asked if I was an environmentalist. I said yes, but not the kind that wants to live in a tent.”
Isabel Hilton is a fearless, globe-trotting journalist and environmental advocate known for challenging simplistic narratives about China, climate, and global power. Based in London, she is the founder of China Dialogue, a bilingual platform devoted to fostering environmental and cross-cultural dialogue.
Hilton’s career spans decades of front-line reporting—from Latin America to China and South Asia—across elite publications including The New Yorker, The Guardian, the Financial Times, El País, and Prospect, where she is Contributing Editor. Her books, such as The Search for the Panchen Lama and Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar, meld investigative rigor with rich storytelling. A visiting professor at King’s College London and a senior associate at Chatham House, she was appointed OBE for her contributions to journalism and environmental awareness.
“One of the most fearless voices on climate and China today, her writing hums with urgency and empathy.” — Prospect Magazine
"Philosophers are the ultimate experts in a post-truth world."
Steve Fuller is a professor of sociology at the University of Warwick. He is the founder of the research program of social epistemology. It is the name of a quarterly journal he founded with Taylor & Francis in 1987, as well as the first of his twenty-five books.
Fuller is renowned for his work on the 'post-truth' condition, which inspired his 2018 book Post-Truth: Knowledge as a Power Game. His other books include Humanity 2.0, Kuhn vs Popper, and Back to the University's Future.
"Fuller is a tall and invariably animated figure." ― The Guardian
"What are almost never discussed are the consequences for society of determining who has the power to create money."
Dr Leah Downey is a political theorist, a junior research fellow at St. John’s College, Cambridge and a lecturer at Kings College London.
Her research looks at the relationship between democracy and macroeconomics. She has published research on the macroeconomics of the green transition, credit policy and macroeconomic stability and recently has focused on the interaction between legislatures and central banks. She is the author of Our Money: Monetary Policy as if Democracy Matters.
"What Leah points to in her work is that we infantalise legislatures by delegating the really important stuff to technocrats" — Mark Blyth, Brown University
"The ur-democracy within an English pub is something we should be massively proud of."
Gawain Towler is a British political strategist, journalist, and long-standing figure in the Eurosceptic movement. Best known for his work in party communications and media strategy, he currently serves on the governing board of Reform UK, following a five-year tenure as its director of communications during the Brexit era. He also founded CWC Strategy, a communications and strategy consultancy. As a writer and commentator, his work has appeared in The Telegraph, The Spectator, CapX, The Critic, and Spiked, where he examines politics, culture, and foreign affairs.
Towler twice stood as a candidate for the European Parliament and has been a central figure in shaping the public face of Eurosceptic politics in Britain for more than two decades.
"The last great amateur in British politics" — The Spectator
“All the air power in the world was of little use when what they were really fighting was an ideology, not a conventional army.”
Christina Lamb is one of Britain’s leading foreign correspondents and a bestselling author, best known for her reporting on what war does to women. She is the chief foreign correspondent of The Sunday Times, where she has covered everything from wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria to repression and human rights abuses in Eritrea and Zimbabwe.
She has written ten books including Our Bodies, Their Battlefield and I Am Malala, co-written with Malala Yousafzai, which was named Popular Non-Fiction Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards 2013.
"...will make you weep, and then rage at the world's indifference.” Amal Clooney on Our Bodies, Their Battlefield
“Embedded finance isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a structural shift in how consumers interact with financial services, often without realizing it.”
Isabel Woodford is an independent journalist who writes for the Financial Times, the BBC, and other leading outlets, covering the intersection of tech, business, and money. She previously reported for Reuters and Sifted, where she spent several years covering European startups and VCs.
Danielle Sands is a philosopher, writer, and lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London, whose work spans literature, philosophy, and critical theory. With a rare ability to move between classic texts and contemporary culture, Sands explores how philosophy can shed light on modern moral and political landscapes.
Sands is best known for her work on continental philosophy, drawing on thinkers from Derrida to Spinoza to reframe how we understand belief in the age of disillusionment. She is the author of Animal Writing: Storytelling, Selfhood and the Limits of Empathy and, most recently, Writing Religion & Politics After Derrida.
"Bold, provocative and highly enjoyable." — Rosi Braidotti
“We think there are general principles governing alignment in any group of intelligent agents—whether ants, humans, or AI—where each agent maintains its identity while serving a shared whole.”
Adam Goldstein is a pioneering thinker blending philosophy, technology, and biology as Co-Founder, Chairman, and Head of Research at Softmax. At the helm of developing a new approach to AI alignment grounded in nature, what he and his partners call “organic alignment”. Goldstein challenges hierarchical, control-based modes of managing intelligent systems.
Previously known for co-founding Hipmunk and authoring essays like The Anxiety Algorithm, he now leads Softmax’s vision of AI built less as top-down tools and more as cooperative agents that organically align with human values and environmental norms. Drawing inspiration from ant colonies, cellular systems, and evolving natural networks, Softmax seeks to engineer AI that scales through coordinated diversity rather than imposed control.
“Men are assumed to be competent until proven otherwise, whereas a woman is assumed to be incompetent until she proves otherwise.”
Mary Ann Sieghart is a fearless journalist, author, and public intellectual committed to dismantling the invisible yet powerful bias she calls “the authority gap.” A former Assistant Editor at The Times and BBC presenter, Sieghart now leads The Authority Gap Consultancy and serves as Visiting Professor at King’s College London, challenging societal norms about gender, credibility, and leadership.
Her breakthrough book, The Authority Gap: Why Women Are Still Taken Less Seriously Than Men, and What We Can Do About It, combines rigorous research with real-world stories—including voices like Baroness Hale and Mary Beard—to expose how women remain under‑validated despite equal or superior expertise. Sieghart outlines practical solutions to close this gap within our lifetime. A prominent voice in media and policy, she has chaired the Social Market Foundation, judged the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and is a trustee of high-profile organizations.
“Deeply researched, profoundly thoughtful and a book very much for the here and now...” — Andrew Marr, on The Authority Gap
"We’re living in a culture governed by a permanent compulsion towards frenetic activity or fevered distraction."
Josh Cohen established himself as an academic in American literature and critical theory, before deciding to train as a psychoanalyst. His books combine these influences, exploring major contemporary issues like privacy, work, meritocracy and anger through the lenses of psychoanalysis, culture and personal experience.
He is the author of several books, including How to Read Freud, Not Working: Why We Have to Stop, and All the Rage: Why Anger Drives the World. He has also written pieces for The Guardian, The New Statesman, and Times Literary Supplement, among other publications.
"Cohen tells stories empathically and forensically." ― TLS
“It should be impossible to talk about climate and ecological crisis without talking about capitalism.”
Adrienne Buller is the Founder and Editor and Host of The BREAK—DOWN, a bold climate‑power media platform launched in partnership with Common Wealth. Her mission: expose how capitalism shapes ecological crisis and build democratic alternatives that transcend market logic.
Before this, Buller was Director of Research at Common Wealth, where she led pioneering investigations into asset‑manager capitalism, finance, and climate governance. She’s the author of The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism (winner of the Eric Zencey Prize in 2024) and co-author of Owning the Future: Power and Property in an Age of Crisis earthbound. In her writing, she dismantles the myth that market‑based “green” solutions can address the climate emergency without disrupting the power structures that created it
“Buller’s book will play an important role in a lineage of anti-capitalist green thought and theory, providing the evidence against green capitalism for philosophers, political scientists, and ecologists to come” — The Trouble
"I think it's ridiculous to dismiss philosophy because you are a proponent of science."
Jack Symes is a public philosopher, writer, and researcher at Durham University. He is best known as the producer of The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast, one of the UK's most popular higher education podcasts. Jack regularly appears on major public platforms, such as BBC Radio 4, The Joe Rogan Experience, Piers Morgan Uncensored, HowTheLightGetsIn, GB News, PoliticsJoe, BBC Two: Politics Live, The Spectator, and Glastonbury Festival.
Jack also hosts live shows, including An Evening With theatre events and panels at The Royal Institution.He is the author of four books, including Philosophers on God: Talking about Existence and Defeating the Evil-God Challenge: In Defence of God’s Goodness. Jack was awarded the BBC New Generation Thinker Prize in 2024.
"Jack Symes guides us charmingly and authoritatively, with a wit and freshness that enlivens without trivializing." — Stephen Fry
'"We never solve problems by denying our disruptive power. We solve problems by embracing that."
Jay Shapiro is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and podcaster. Director of Islam and the Future of Tolerance, a documentary based on the provocative dialogue between Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz, Shapiro consistently tackles complex themes in films such as Opposite Field, All Rise, and Metamorphosis.
From his blog, What Jay Thinks, to his Dilemma podcast, which includes co-hosted episodes with public intellectuals like Coleman Hughes, Shapiro brings a philosophical edge to everything he creates. Shapiro uses film, conversation, and criticism to ask hard questions about identity, values, and collective future, making him a uniquely relevant voice in today's discourse.
"For me, history and politics are two sides of the same coin."
Pam Cox is a British academic, councillor, and Labour politician whose career has bridged scholarship, public service, and community advocacy. Since May 2021 she has represented New Town and Christ Church on Colchester City Council, where she has championed the city’s culture and heritage, supported youth services and community gardens, and worked to build a more inclusive civic life. In November 2022 she was selected as Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Colchester, and at the 2024 general election became the constituency’s first female MP. Her parliamentary record includes voting to remove the winter fuel payment from older people, as well as supporting the Terminally Ill Adults Bill, which seeks to legalise assisted dying.
Alongside her political career, Cox has worked with police and councils to tackle anti-social behaviour and violence against women, helped design services for vulnerable mothers, and has co-authored several influential works, including Young Criminal Lives: Life Courses and Life Chances from 1850.
"The significance of the UK as a trading partner for the European Union should not be underestimated."
Greg Hands is a former Conservative Minister who most recently was the Minister of State for Trade Policy under Rishi Sunak. He has also held the offices of Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Chancellor, Chairman of the Conservative Party, and Minister for London.
Since leaving office, he has become an advisor to the EP group, the company that owns Royal Mail. Known for his disciplined approach and diplomatic instincts, he remains an influential voice on trade, finance, and the future of the centre-right in British politics.
"Madhyamaka denies the existence of anything that is independent, self-sufficient, or intrinsically existent.'
Jan Westerhoff is a professor of Buddhist philosophy at Oxford University. His research looks at the philosophical aspects of the religious traditions of ancient India. He focuses on the Madhyamaka school of Budhism and also on contemporary analytic philosophy (mainly on metaphysics).
His books such as Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka (2009), The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy (2018), and notably The Non-Existence of the Real World (2020) challenge widespread assumptions in Western metaphysics about substance, intrinsic nature, and the foundations of reality.
“Jan Westerhoff’s most recent monograph is a densely argued and highly systematic attempt to undermine a number of realist convictions.” — Sean M. Smith, review of The Non-Existence of the Real World, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
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