At HowTheLightGetsIn we bring you the planet's greatest minds.
HowTheLightGetsIn gathers them together in an unrivalled line-up of debates and talks - and HowTheLightGetsIn Global 2020 is set to top them all.
Check out our latest additions - from nobel prize winners, to renowned environmental campaigners, and leading politicians.
Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel-prize winning economist. His many globally influential positions have included Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank and Chairman of President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers.
Currently a Professor at Columbia, Joseph has been named by Time magazine as one of the "100 most influential people" and has been named one of Foreign Policy's "100 leading intellectuals" on three separate occasions. Joseph's recent work focuses on income distribution, risk and globalization. He has authored numerous books, the most recent of which, People, Power, and Profits, warns of the dangers of free market fundamentalism and argues that a reformed capitalism could bring prosperity to all.
"His work goes on challenging us all to rethink our ideas, he will always be a controversialist wherever he goes" Time magazine
Nancy Fraser is a critical theorist, feminist, and professor of philosophy at The New School in New York City. Widely known for her critique of identity politics and her philosophical work on the concept of justice, Nancy is also a staunch critic of contemporary liberal feminism, which she terms “the handmaiden of capitalism”, and its abandonment of social justice issues. Nancy argues that the narrow focus of identity politics has aided widening the gap between the rich and poor, particularly with regard to liberal feminism.
Nancy is the recipient of a huge array of awards, including the American Philosophical Association’s 2010 Alfred Schutz Prize and the Doctor Honoris Causa from the National University of Cordoba. Her most recent book, A Crisis of Capitalism, comes out in October this year.
"Nancy Fraser is one of the most creative social philosophers and critical theorists of her generation.” Cornel West
Daniel Dennett is a world-renowned philosopher and cognitive scientist. He is a major contributor to the understanding of the conceptual foundations of evolutionary biology. In Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Daniel argues that the “universal acid” of evolutionary explanation extends well beyond biology to re-conceptualize culture and science itself. He has also put forward the ground-breaking and uncompromising theory of computationalism to explain human consciousness.
Alongside Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, Daniel is well known for being one of the “four horse-men of new atheism” who dedicated themselves to actively countering religion in every form. He is currently the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University
“Perhaps America’s most widely read and debated living philosopher” New York Times
“What one generation finds ridiculous, the next accepts; and the third shudders when it looks back on what the first did.” Peter Singer
Peter Singer is undoubtedly one of the world's foremost public philosophers and the most prominent figure in contemporary ethics. Peter first garnered attention from the public with his book Animal Liberation, a key early writing in the environmental movement.
In addition to animal ethics, Peter’s writing covers topics including the responsibilities of first world citizens in the form of altruism, affluence and morality, as well as contemporary ethical questions around abortion, euthanasia, and infanticide. He is a founder of both the Animals Australia and The Life You Can Save, and has been a key figure in the Effective Altruism movement - an initiative that uses evidence and careful analysis to find the very best way for individuals to do good. He has received multiple accolades for his work including Australian Humanist of the Year and nomination as one of Australia's ten most influential public intellectuals.
“Singer is almost certainly the best-known and most widely read of all contemporary philosophers" Helga Kuhse
“If democracy is to be rebuilt … it is necessary not just for the public to learn to trust their politicians, but for the politicians to learn to trust the public.”
Rory Stewart was the UK Secretary of State for International Development where he doubled the U.K.’s investment in international climate and environment. Prior to that, Rory served in a variety of roles including Minister of the environment, Minister of State responsible for development policy in the Middle East and Asia and UK policy in Africa, as Minister of State for Justice, and as Chair of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee. Earlier in his career, he served briefly as an infantry officer and then as a diplomat for the UK government in Indonesia, the Balkans and Iraq. He founded and ran the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in Afghanistan and was the Director of the Carr Centre and the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Rory has also written four books: The Places in Between, Occupational Hazards or The Prince of the Marshes, Can Intervention Work?; and The Marches. Rory is now a Senior Fellow at the Jackson Institute, Yale University. He focuses on contemporary politics in crisis and on international development and intervention in fragile and conflict-affected states.
"Stewart seems to be living one of the more extraordinary lives on record." New York Times
“Artists don’t make objects. Artists make mythologies” Anish Kapoor
Anish Kapoor is one of the most widely celebrated artists working today. He is perhaps most famous for his public sculptures that include Cloud Gate (2004) in Chicago, Orbit (2012) at the London Olympic Park and Ark Nova (2013) in Japan, architecturally scaled works that are both adventures in form and feats of engineering.
Kapoor has received a plethora of prestigious awards. He represented Britain at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990 with Void Field (1989), for which he was awarded the Premio Duemila for Best Young Artist and went on to win the Turner Prize in 1991. He has received honorary fellowships from the University of Wolverhampton, the Royal Institute of British Architecture, an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford and the Padma Bhushan by the Indian government - India's third-highest civilian award. In 2013 he was awarded a Knighthood for services to the visual arts.
Kapoor took part in the Unilever Commission for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, creating Marsyas (2002), an immense PVC skin that stretched through the hall. Its voids and protrusions summoned up deep-felt metaphysical polarities of presence and absence, concealment and revelation, integral themes throughout Kapoor's work.
Solo exhibitions of his work have been held across the globe, including a 2009 solo exhibition at the Royal Academy - as the first living British artist to take over the gallery - which became the most successful exhibition ever by a living artist held in London. Kapoor currently has solo exhibitions at Houghton Hall in Norfolk and an upcoming solo exhibition at Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.
Bianca Jagger has committed her life to defending human rights, civil liberties, peace, social justice and environmental protection throughout the world. She campaigns to end violence against women and girls, to abolish capital punishment and advocates for the rights of indigenous peoples and future generations.
She is Founder, President and Chief Executive of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation (BJHRF), which she established in 2005 to be a force for change and a voice for the most vulnerable.
Born in Managua, Nicaragua in 1950 Bianca Jagger left her native country to study political science in Paris with a scholarship from the French Government. She is Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador, a Member of the Executive Director’s Leadership Council for Amnesty International USA, IUCN Bonn Challenge Ambassador, and Senior Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).
Bianca Jagger is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including The Right Livelihood Award (2004) also known as the ‘alternative Nobel prize.’
Vandana Shiva is an internationally renowned environmentalist and feminist activist, and a highly influential figure of the anti-globalization movement. In 1993, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, regarded as an "Alternative Nobel Prize".
With an academic background in physics and philosophy, Vandana is the co-founder and figurehead of Navdanya, an Indian NGO that promotes biodiversity, organic farming, and seed saving. She is also one of the leaders of the International Forum on Globalization, which focuses on the myriad consequences of globalisation and explores alternative visions.
Vandana has published over 20 books dealing with ecology and feminism. Her books include Soil, Not Oil, Ecofeminism, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development, and Earth Democracy. In her most recent book, published this year, Reclaiming the Commons: Biodiversity, Indigenous Knowledge, and the Rights of Mother Earth, Vandana details the struggle to defend biodiversity and indigenous ways of living, in the realms of science, law, politics and culture.
"Vandana Shiva has a take-no-prisoners smile. But watch out for her teeth." Time Magazine
“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
Claudia de Rham is an award-winning Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London. Claudia is recognised for her revitilisation of and research into massive gravity theory, a radical theory that posits, contra to Einstein's theory of general relativity, that the graviton has a nonzero mass, thereby explaining the expansion of the universe without the need for dark energy. For this work, she won the Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists earlier this year, as well as the Cambridge Adams Prize in 2018.
On top of her ground-breaking research and teaching, Claudia has found the time to train as a pilot and made it through several stages of the European Space Agency’s astronaut selection process.
"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, The Guardian
Michael Sandel teaches political philosophy at Harvard University. He has been described as “the most relevant living philosopher,” a “rock-star moralist,” (Newsweek) and “the most famous teacher of philosophy in the world.” (The New Republic)
His new book, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?, explains the rancor and polarization that afflict our civic life, and points the way to a new politics of the common good.
Michael’s previous books, What Money Can’t Buy and Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? were international best sellers and have been translated into 27 languages. His legendary course “Justice” was the first Harvard course to be made freely available online and has been viewed by tens of millions. His BBC series “The Public Philosopher” explores the contest of ideas lying behind the headlines with participants from around the world.
""currently the most effective communicator of ideas in English” The Guardian
George Mpanga, better known as George the Poet, is an award winning podcaster, spoken word artist and cultural critic. George first gained prominence as part of a new generation of spoken word artists challenging the traditionalism of poetry recital.
George was involved in the UK music scene from a young age, gaining local notoriety in the hip hop scene whilst still at school. After studying Politics, Psychology and Sociology at Cambridge, George decided to redirect his passion for verse to spoken word poetry, where he felt he could communicate more effectively with his audience. Having been an advocate for the arts throughout his career, George was elected in 2018 as a Member of the National Council of Arts Council England.
As well as using his poetry to address cultural and political issues, George has recently brought attention to his podcast ‘Have You Heard George's Podcast?‘. The podcast discusses diverse issues including Grenfell Tower, contemporary Ugandan Politics and the modern slave trade in a style that blends fiction, documentary and autobiography. In May last year the podcast won five British Podcast Awards, including podcast of the year, and was nominated across six categories.
“If you're in any way interested in the future of the world you've invested in, go see this inspirational man who seems to genuinely have the power to influence and bring people together” Edinburgh Fringe
“Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the source of her wonders.” - Simon Blackburn
Simon Blackburn is an academic philosopher known for his work on meta-ethics and his attempts to popularise philosophy to a wider audience. He has published over a dozen books on various philosophical issues both for public and academic audiences, and has appeared on shows such as Radio 4's The Moral Maze and PBS's Closer to Truth. He is known for proposing a meta-ethical view called 'quasi-realism' which proposes that ethical statements are projections of emotional attitudes as if they were real features of the world.
His latest book, On Truth (2018), examines various philosophical approaches to the concept of truth, in order to interrogate what it is, how we should think about it, and why it matters.
"Learned, astute, admirably sensible, and possesses an elegant and clear prose style." The Guardian
Lisa Nandy is the current Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs under Kier Starmer.
Lisa was born in Manchester and studied at Newcastle University and Birkbeck, University of London before working as a researcher at the homelessness charity Centrepoint from 2003 to 2005, and then as senior policy adviser at The Children's Society.
During her time in Parliament, Lisa has served on the front bench in a number of roles, including Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Shadow Children’s Minister and Shadow Minister for Civil Society. In 2016, Lisa resigned her position to co-chair Owen Smith's leadership challenge to Jeremy Corbyn, establishing herself as part of the soft left of the party. In 2020 Lisa stood as a candidate in the Labour leadership elections, coming third behind Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey.
Throughout her career, Lisa has been vocal about her support for the European Union, increased internationalism and the need to address inequality, with a wealth tax being one of the key features of her leadership bid.
Shashi Tharoor is the former Under-Secretary General of the United Nations. Following his long career at the UN, which included key responsibilities in peace-keeping after the Cold War, Shashi returned to India and was elected to Parliament in 2009. He is currently the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs in India and a third-term Lok Sabha MP.
On top of his parliamentary career, Shashi is a best-selling author of both novels and non-fiction. His classic The Great Indian Novel is now required reading on post-colonial literature courses around the world, and his An Era of Darkness has become a seminal examination of British imperial rule in India. Until 2013 Shashi was India's most-followed politician on Twitter, until being overtaken by Narendra Modi. He was the first Indian to reach 10,000 and 100,000 followers on the medium, and currently has 7.6 million followers.
"One of India’s most articulate liberals and a leading voice of those who reject the aggressively fundamentalist strains of Hindu nationalism.” Financial Times
“If you go down the rabbit hole, you find that whenever you ask for purpose you end up asking what the purpose of life is. And to that, not even scientists have an answer.” Sabine Hossenfelder
Sabine Hossenfelder is theoretical physicist who specialises in quantum gravity. She is a Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies where she leads the Analog Systems for Gravity Duals group. Sabine is also the author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, which explores the concept of elegance in fundamental physics and cosmology.
Sabine also manages to find time in her busy schedule to produce music videos and work as a freelance science writer, with her work published in Scientific American, New Scientist and Quanta Magazine. You can also find her ideas in her popular blog ‘Backreaction’.
“A physicist who is utterly fearless, completely honest, and quite funny.” Peter Woit, mathematical physicist
“The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco”
As the co-Director of Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford, John Ioannidis studies scientific research itself. John is a Professor of Medicine, of Health Research and of Biomedical Data Science at Stanford University, and is regarded as one of the world's leading contributors to evidence-based medicine, epidemiology, and clinical research.
John's 2005 paper "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" is the most downloaded paper in the Public Library of Science and is considered foundational to the field of metascience. In the paper, John demonstrates that most published research does not meet good scientific standards of evidence.
He has been a prominent opponent of prolonged lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“A Prophet of Scientific Rigor” Wired
“You have to be a terrible monster to write.” ~ Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín is a novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and poet. Currently a Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University, Colm has won innumerable awards for his fiction and is also a renowned literary critic. The fourth of five children, Colm was born in Enniscorthy in Ireland. In boarding school, he became a voracious reader, and he went on to graduate from University College Dublin. Immediately after college, he moved to Barcelona and taught English for three years before returning to Ireland to begin a career in journalism.
His most recent book, Mad, Bad, Dangerous To Know, explores the fathers of Ireland's greatest writers, Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce.
“Tóibín's success comes down to the power of his writing: an almost unfaultable combination of artful restraint and wonderfully observed detail” Mary Beard, New York Times
P.J. O’Rourke is America’s leading political satirist. He is a best-selling author covering topics as diverse as politics and cars, and Parliament of Whores and Give War a Chance both reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. P.J. is the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and is a regular correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, The American Spectator, and The Weekly Standard.
Many of P.J’s essays recount that during his student days he was a leftist, anti-war hippie, but that in the 1970s his political views underwent a volte-face. He emerged as a political rooted in libertarian conservatism. He lives in rural New England, as far away from the things he writes about as he can get.
“The rightwinger it's OK for lefties to like” The Guardian
“After decades of capitalist realism, it would be possible to imagine a world based on cooperation rather than competition"
Grace Blakeley is a British author who writes about economic policy. A former research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, she is currently a staff writer at the New Statesman. Grace holds a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and a Masters in African Studies, both from Oxford University, and makes regular appearances on national television commenting on economic and political matters.
Her first book, Stolen: How To Save the World from Financialisation, argues that the recovery from the 2007-8 credit crunch mainly benefited the 1%, and that a shift to democratic socialism is urgently needed to resolve mounting inequality and the domination of finance capital.
"One of the most inspiring, thought provoking and insightful voices on the left" Owen Jones
“I started philosophy looking for answers. But along the way I came to prize exploring the questions.”
Kwame Anthony Appiah British-Ghanaian philosopher, cultural theorist, and novelist Kwame Anthony Appiah is a Professor of Philosophy at NYU Department of Philosophy and NYU's School of Law. Kwame's research interests include moral theory, the philosophy of language and mind, and African intellectual history.
Kwame has authored over a dozen books of philosophy, three works of fiction and regularly contributes to journals. His books have received multiple awards for their contributions to social philosophy and cultural pluralism. Kwame has also frequently appeared in television and film to discuss his ideas, and has been awarded several honours for life time achievement, including being named a top global thinker by Foreign Policy magazine and receiving the National Humanities Medal at a ceremony at the White House
“We need more thinkers as wise as Appiah” New York Times
"Understanding how DNA makes us who we are will teach us to be more tolerant of each other."
Robert Plomin is the world's leading expert on genetics. In 1995, Robert began the Twins Early Development Study which has followed 10,000 pairs of UK twins from infancy through to early adulthood. He is the author of the best-selling textbook in the field as well as a dozen other books. His most recent book is Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are which describes how the DNA revolution is transforming science, society and the way we think about ourselves. Robert argues that genetic factors play a large role in determining psychological traits such as intelligence.
Robert has been awarded too many awards to list, including the William James Fellow Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Society for Intelligence Research.
Shazia Mirza is a multi-award winning stand-up comedian, actress, and writer. She is best known for her The Kardashians Made Me Do It.
Shazia began performing stand up comedy whilst pursuing a career as a teacher and quickly garnered attention for her provocative style. In 2007, she presented F*** Off, I'm a Hairy Woman on BBC Three, a documentary about body image and contrasting stereotypes surrounding women's body hair. She has subsequently performed at some of the biggest festivals in the world including Glastonbury and The Edinburgh Festival. Shazia has made guest appearances on several shows, including The Jonathan Ross Show, Loose Women and The Late Late Show. She also recently appeared on Celebrity Bear Gryll’s Island.
As well as stand-up and television, Shazia frequently writes for publications including The Guardian, FT Magazine, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman in which she has a fortnightly column.
“The bravest thing you’ll see on a comedy stage this year” The Times
Eileen Myles is a writer of poetry, plays, fiction, non-fiction and theatre pieces and has been a leading voice in progressive gender politics for the last 30 years.
Eileen moved to New York City in 1974 where they rubbed shoulders with some of America's leading poets including Alice Notley, James Schuyler and Allen Ginsberg. From 1984 to 1986 Eileen was the artistic director of St. Mark's Poetry Project. Part performance piece, part serious campaign, in 1992 Eileen campaigned for presidency, sparking wider conversation about who could be considered the leader of the free world.
Eileen has published twenty volumes of poetry and fiction, and a collection of their non-fiction writings titled The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art. Eileen has received more awards than we have space to list, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers grant, four Lambda Book Awards, the Shelley Prize from the Poetry Society of America, and a poetry award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
“People have started using the word legend when talking about her life and work” New York Magazine
“Philosophy is a science” Timothy Williamson
Timothy Williamson is the Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford. His most eminent works include The Philosophy of Philosophy and Knowledge and its Limits. He has been a major contributor to the philosophical logic, philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics. His work in these areas is provocative and often game-changing.
Timothy is a Fellow of the British Society and has been the President of the Aristotelian Society. He is one of the most celebrated British philosophers of the contemporary era.
“Radical and challenging” Journal of Philosophy
"The enemies of free speech hunt in packs; its defenders need to band together too." Toby Young
Toby Young is a journalist, author, and founder and director of the Free Speech Union. While Toby is an outspoken commentator on issues such as freedom of expression, 'woke culture' and the press, his main passion has always been education. His books, including How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, are characterized by a self-deprecating and acerbic wit. His latest book, What Every Parent Needs To Know, was published in 2014, and he currently works as the London associate editor at Quillette.
"People should be judged by what they do with their lives, not by the worst of their bad jokes. And it might drive Toby’s critics mad, but he has done more for others in the last few years than most of his critics will do in a lifetime." Fraser Nelson
"It's not the politically correct who are judgemental - everybody's judgemental these days." Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is a respected pundit who writes regularly for the I, International Business Times, and New European. Describing herself as a "leftie liberal, anti-racist, feminist, Muslim, part-Pakistani", she is known for her interventions in UK immigration and multiculturalism policy.
Born in Kampala, Uganda into a Shia Muslim family, Yasmin moved to the UK to complete her studies at Oxford. She worked as a teacher before moving into journalism in the 1980s, and has since published a slew of acclaimed books about her unique experience as an insider/outsider in British culture. Her most recent book Ladies Who Punch tells the story of courageous women who have changed history and remoulded our culture.
"She burrows deep into the psyche of the multicultural nation." Yash Tandon
“We have so much to gain by working together, moving from a set of values grounded in economics to values that speak of lived experience.” Frances Morris
Frances has been a Tate curator since 1988 and was appointed the Tate Modern’s first female Director in 2016. In the four years she has been Director, she has been credited with changing how audiences respond to art of the last century. Frances’ first act as Director of the Tate Modern was the non-chronological hanging of the galleries permanent collection, a format that remains to this day. Her drive to diversify the 20th century canon has also shone light on three female artists - Bourgeois, Kusama and Martin - now considered giants of modern art, as well as brought renewed attention to non-Western traditions.
More recently, Frances has taken charge of shaping the future of the new Switch House extension which opened in late 2017. The extra space has given Frances the opportunity not only to continue re-examining the canon from a more diverse perspective, but also to challenge the primacy of painting; with large swathes of the building dedicated to sculpture and performance. Her recent efforts have seen the Tate Modern surpass the British Museum as the most popular tourist attraction in the UK, attracting 5.82 million visitors annually.
“A brilliant and imaginative curator...fiercely intelligent and very generous with it" Sir Nicholas Serota
"‘America’s overrated. America is a bandit, a gangster nation. America is run by War Criminals.’
Now the Merton P. Stoltz Professor at Brown University, Glenn Loury became the first black tenured professor of economics in the history of Harvard University in 1982. Glenn's vehement criticism of affirmative action along with his argument that African-Americans' own behaviour is responsible for their plight, and not white racism, led to him becoming a hero of the Reagan intellectual Right.
More recently, Glenn caused a stir by criticising the letter sent to thousands of students and staff by the president of Brown University in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. He argued that the letter "trafficked in the social-justice warriors’ pedantic language" and is "indoctrination, virtue-signaling, and the transparent currying of favor with our charges".
Of his many books, his most recent title is Race, Incarceration and American Values which argues that imprisoning a large segment of society should be unacceptable to all Americans. Glenn is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and holds a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Carnegie Scholarship. He has given the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Stanford as well as other prestigious lecture series at Princeton and Harvard.
"Glenn refuses to view the black experience exclusively through the lens of oppression" Shelby Steele
"Britain tolerates fascists because of the value placed on free speech" Myriam François
Myriam François is an Anglo-French writer and broadcaster. Myriam converted to Islam at the age of 21, convinced that the Qur'an represented "the culmination of all of [her] philosophical cogitation." She has written extensively on the place of Islam in the modern world and on European politics generally, for publications including The Guardian, Huffington post, New Statesman, and the Muslim lifestyle magazine Emel.
Myriam has a PhD in Oriental Studies from Oxford University and is a research associate at the centre for Islamic Studies at SOAS. In 2019, Myriam launched the website weneedtotalkaboutwhiteness.com, with a view to encouraging conversations about whiteness and its cultural impact.
“The facts of science are real enough... But the belief system that governs conventional scientific thinking is an act of faith.” Rupert Sheldrake
Rupert Sheldrake is a scientist, author, and parapsychology researcher. Best known for his 2012 book The Science Delusion and the contoversial, viral TED talk he gave which was banned by the organisation. He has taken issue with the New Atheism of many and has also challenged the idea that the laws of nature are fixed and unchanging.
"Sheldrake is an excellent scientist; the proper, imaginative kind that in an earlier age discovered continents and mirrored the world in sonnets." New Scientist
“Animal welfare/rights has been an abiding passion for me for about 20 years. It started when I truly understood just how much we human animals abuse and take for granted every other species on this planet.”
Peter Egan is a television, theatre and film actor who has been appearing on British TV for over 50 years, most recently known for his role as Marquess of Flintshire in Downton Abbey.
Peter began his career at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, before securing early roles in Cold Comfort Farm, Big Breadwinner Hog and The Love School. Since then Peter has gone on to feature in award-winning series including After Life, Unforgotten and Downton Abbey. Peter has also had multiple film roles, most notably in The Wedding Date, Chariots of Fire and Lillie. More recently Peter has turned his hand to directing, and his recent shows include Uncle Vanya for the Renaissance Theatre Company, A Midsummer Night's Dream at Mills College, San Francisco, as well as productions at the Lyric Hammersmith and London's Savoy Theatre.
Peter is an animal rights activist and vegan, whose recent change to veganism has had a profound impact on his life. Peter has since become an active patron for multiple animal rights charities including Change For Animals, Animals Asia Foundation and For Life On Earth.
Sunita Narain is a legendary environmentalist and political activist. She is director of the Centre for Science and Environment, director of the Society for Environmental Communications, and editor of Down To Earth magazine. Sunita began working with the Centre for Science and Environment in 1982 whilst still completing her studies at the University of Delhi. Her primary focus at the Centre is the relationship between environment and development, and creating a public consciousness around the need for sustainable development. She has also been a member of the Indian Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change and has been awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian honour.
Sunita has recently received international acclaim by being named on Time Magazine's list of 100 Most Influential People and featuring in Leonardo DiCaprio's 2016 documentary Before The Flood. She has also authored eleven books, the most recent of which Conflicts of Interest is a personal account of Sunita’s battles as part of the country's Green Movement
“Sunita Narain’s ideas have shaped some of the key debates of our time.” Time Magazine
Michael Howard was Leader of the Conservative Party in the early 2000s. Prior to his leadership, he earned the trust of Conservative leaders Margaret Thatcher and John Major, holding prestigious cabinet positions in their governments including Secretary of State for Employment, Secretary of State for the Environment and Home Secretary.
Michael was born in South Wales, the son of Hilda Kurshion and Bernard Hecht, a Romanian-born shopkeeper of Jewish descent who came to Britain in 1939. When he was six, the family name Hecht was anglicised to Howard. He studied at Peterhouse, Cambridge, was called to the Bar in 1964, and became a Queen’s Counsel in 1982. Michael is now Lord Howard of Lympne.
“A true scientist is bored by knowledge; it is the assault on ignorance that motivates him - the mysteries that previous discoveries have revealed.” Matt Ridley
Matt Ridley is a journalist, businessman and popular science writer, as well as a member of the House of Lords.
As a journalist Matt has regularly contributed to The Economist, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Wall Street Journal. His writing covers a range of topics from libertatianism and support for Brexit to his interest in the science of human nature and its normative implications. Matt has authored almost a dozen books on popular science and related topics to much critical acclaim. His most recent work How Innovation Works argues that innovation is a disorganized, bottom-up process rather than the work of genius individuals.
“Ridley can explain with equal verve difficult moral issues, philosophical quandaries and technical biochemistry; he distinguishes facts from opinions well, and he's not shy about offering either” Publishes Weekly
Graham Harman is a key figure in the field of speculative realism and his work grounded the development of object-oriented ontology. This philosophy puts objects at its centre, arguing that they exist independently of human perception or other objects. Of bananas, Graham writes, ‘A police officer eating a banana reduces this fruit to a present-at-hand profile of its elusive depth, as [does] a monkey eating the same banana...Banana-being is a genuine reality in the world.’
Graham is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and has written nearly 20 books which have been translated into twenty-one languages. This year he published Art and Objects in which he argues that aesthetics is the central discipline of philosophy. For his work in aesthetics, Art Review magazine named Graham ‘one of the most powerful personalities in the art world.’
Gauri Maulekhi is the Trustee of People For Animals – India’s largest animal welfare organization. She is also the Member Secretary of People For Animals Uttarakhand.
Since 1994, she has contributed to animal welfare in various capacities – policy reform, capacity building law enforcement authorities, public awareness as well as sheltering. Maulekhi was awarded the prestigious Nari Shakti Puraskar 2018 by the President of India, for her contribution to the field of animal welfare advocacy.
In 2018, she was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award in the field of animal welfare advocacy by Lucknow University. In 2018, she received the Outstanding Animal protection Award from the Humane Society International at Kansas City, USA. She is also a recipient of the Lush Prize 2017 in London for her contribution towards reducing unnecessary use of animals in laboratories.
"We are in a fight between the world that is and the world that should be. I will always amplify those voices of hope" Dawn Butler
Dawn Butler is a Labour MP who served Shadow Women & Equalities Secretary in Jeremy Corbyn's cabinet, and ran for Deputy Leadership last winter. Dawn was first selected as a Labour candidate in Brent South and retained the seat at the 2005 general election making her only the third black woman to become a British MP. She served in the Brown ministry as Minister for Young Citizens and Youth Engagement and has also served as the Shadow Minister for Diverse Communities. Dawn has been a long term supporter of Jeremy Corbyn and has been described as one of his 'closest allies'.
“The central idea of libertarianism is that people should be permitted to run their own lives as they wish” David D. Friedman
David D. Friedman is one of the most renowned anarcho-capitalist theorists in the world. Son of Nobel Prize winning economist and father of modern economics, Milton Friedman, David has set out his own unique economic theory.
His book, The Machinery of Freedom, is the go-to text for those interested in anarcho-capitalism, and it makes up one of the most reputable defences of setting capitalism completely free. As well as being an economic pioneer, David is also a physicist, legal scholar and fantasy fiction writer.
“In the pursuit of a “gender just” and “equal” society, misogynistic phraseology in political, social or legal parlance cannot be allowed, entertained or nurtured.” Indira Jaising
Indira Jaising is a human rights lawyer who is well-known for her legal activism. She has fought in and won a number of high-profile cases in India and from the beginning of her legal career, she has focused on the protection of human rights and the rights of women. In 2009, Indira became the first woman to be appointed Additional Solicitor General of India and in 2018, she was ranked 20th in the list of 50 Greatest Leaders of the World by Fortune magazine.
Indira regularly argues in the Indian Supreme Court, and is one of the most fierce defenders of women’s rights and environmental standard in the world.
“Indira Jaising is a woman who anyone would think more than twice before messing with” The Week
“Life without hope is hopelessly difficult but at the end hope can so easily make fools of us all.”
Henry Marsh is one of the UK's leading neurosurgeons, and a pioneer of neurosurgical advances in Ukraine. After reading Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford, Henry went on to graduate with Honours in Medicine from the Royal Free Medical School.
Henry is perhaps best known for his 2014 memoir Do No Harm, which was met with enormous acclaim. In it, Henry offers insight into the life of a neurosurgeon, and describes the agonising weight of having a patient's life in his hands. In 2017, Henry published a second memoir, entitled Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery in which he expands on his 40 year career as a brain surgeon.
"If Marsh is even a tenth as good a neurosurgeon as he is a writer, I'd let him open my skull any time" The Independent
"Any American effort to decouple itself from China could well result in America decoupling itself from the world."
Kishore Mahbubani has served as both President of the UN Security Council and as Singapore’s Ambassador to the UN. His career as a diplomat stretched from 1971 until 2004 when he became Founding Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. As Professor in the Practice of Public Policy, he is an honorary international member to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Kishore has an honorary doctorate from Dalhousie University and was a fellow at the Centre for International Affairs at Harvard University. His numerous book titles include Has the West Lost It? and Has China Won?: The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy. In 2004, Kishore was awarded a medal for his service to diplomacy by the Foreign Policy Association.
‘A gifted diplomat, a student of history and philosophy, a provocative writer and an intuitive thinker.’ Foreign Policy Association
Noël Carroll is a distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is known as one of the most important contemporary figures in Philosophy of Art. Noël is one of the few individuals in the world who has PhDs in both Cinema Studies and Philosophy.
Early in his career, Noël worked as a journalist, writing about fine art, theatre and film for numerous magazines including Artforum and Soho Weekly News. Among his numerous books, his most influential is The Philosophy of Horror, or, Paradoxes of the Heart, a work on the aesthetics of horror in which he wrote, ‘...a work of art-horror has built into it, so to speak, a set of instructions about the appropriate way the audience is to respond.’
In 2002, Noël received a Guggenheim Fellowship for his research into dance and was named as ‘the sixth most influential philosopher of art since 1945’ by the Philosophical Gourmet Report.
Harvard University Professor Joseph Nye is a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense and chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council. Joseph has also been a faculty member at Harvard since 1964.
On top of his many government positions, Joseph has received numerous awards and medals of recognition. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a foreign fellow of The British Academy. In 2011, Foreign Policy magazine named him on its list of top global thinkers
Joseph has also found time to be a prolific writer, authoring well over a dozen books, including most notably Soft Power, in which he outlines his theory of Soft Power - a term that Joseph coined. His most recent book, Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump, argues that ultimately foriegn policy must be decided by pragmaticism and not morality.
https://zoom.us/j/98732057773
"Over the next thousand years or so, the biological substrates of suffering will be eradicated completely." David Pearce
David Pearce is an eminent figure within the transhumanist movement, and co-founder of Humanity+, an international organisation which advocates for the technological enhancement of the human species.
He envisions a future completely free of suffering for both humans and non-human animals, a pain-free paradise in which all thought, feeling, and experience is sublimated into what he calls "gradients of bliss". The abolition of suffering is for David an ethical necessity, elaborated in his manifesto, The Hedonistic Imperative.
“Every human being, in a way, is a philosopher. Because that's what it is to be human.” Hilary Lawson
Hilary Lawson is a post-realist philosopher known for his theory of Closure and director of the Institute of Art and Ideas which hosts our beloved festival, HowTheLightGetsIn. His book Closure: A Theory of Everything is an attempt to offer a post-modern approach to metaphysics. As a theory of everything it has dramatic consequences for how we understand ourselves, our society, our goals and our ability to achieve them.
Much of the work that is carried out at The Institute of Art and Ideas is a response to Hilary’s opposition to the mainstream approach to philosophy, particularly at universities, which he believes are old fashioned. Through the Institute of Art and Ideas and HowTheLightGetsIn, Hilary aims to put ideas at the centre of discussion and debate, and have people really engage with the things that matter.
“Lawson shows himself to be a latter-day 'metaphysician' on the grand scale ... a quite astonishing achievement.” Alan Montefiore, University of Oxford
“I love philosophy but it shouldn’t be just for the elite. We should all be asking these questions.” Joanna Kavenna
Joanna Kavenna is an award-winning writer. A seasoned traveler, she was born in the UK, but has lived in the US, France, Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic states. Her travels led to her first book, The Ice Museum, which details her experience traveling in the remote North. In 2013 she was named as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists.
Her latest book, Zed, explores the dystopian reality of big-tech and the digital meshing of humanity and technology.
"Wonderful, impossible, dynamic" Observer
"Today’s feminism is opposed to criticism and nuance, refusing to allow women to form their own opinions or challenge preconceived ideas"
Ella Whelan is a political commentator and freelance journalist. After graduating in 2014, Ella joined online politics magazine Spiked, and quickly rose to assistant editor. She is a producer of the annual Battle of Ideas Festival in central London and writes for the Sunday Times, the Sun and the Economist. Ella regularly appears in the media; her criticism of no-platforming and 21st century feminism has caused her to clash with mainstream journalists on the BBC, Sky, and Channel 4. Her first book, What Women Want: Fun, Freedom and an End to Feminism, was described as "a leading voice of a rising generation of young warriors for free speech" by distinguished social critic Camille Paglia.
"We feel we choose, but we don’t.”
Patrick Haggard is a Fellow of the British Academy and Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. He completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge and then spent three years as a Wellcome Trust prize fellow at the University of Oxford.
Patrick is one of the leading neuroscientists researching the neurological basis of the subjective experience of free will in the world today and is an eminent speaker on the idea that free will is an illusion.
His research focuses on the cognitive neuroscience of voluntary action and the representation of one’s own body and sense of self.
“Patrick demonstrates, with humour and real lab experiments, how we might not be as in control of our decisions as we think we are.” TedX
VS Ramachandran is a world-leading neuroscientist, and currently the Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California. VS is known for his wide-ranging experiments and theories in behavioural neurology, including the invention of the mirror box, which is now used to treat amputees with phantom limb pain.
In 2003 he gave the annual BBC Reith lectures and was the first physician to give the lectures since they were begun by Bertrand Russel in 1949. VS has also been awarded the Henry Dale Medal and elected to an honorary life membership by the Royal Institution of Great Britain. He has been profiled in the New Yorker and appeared on the Charlie Rose Show, and TIME magazine named him one the 100 most influential people in the world.
“The Marco Polo of neuroscience” Richard Dawkins
Emma Sayle is a leading sex-entrepreneur and CEO of Killing Kittens - a sex party company committed to female empowerment. Emma describes her sex parties as "exclusive, decadent and hedonistic" and fully focused on female pleasure. The endeavour is an online and offline community and safe space where women can explore their sexuality without being judged and where they can feel in control. Emma has also found time to author a novel, Behind the Mask, loosely based on her experience at Killing Kittens.
Emma has gone on to found several further companies aimed at female empowerment, including the Sisterhood, a group of women who complete extreme sports challenges and raise money for charities, and Sistr, a platform that enables professional businesswomen to network, offer advice and mentor each other.
"Contrary to the scientific ideal of getting progressively closer to the truth, it looks rather like cosmology has become path-dependent: overdetermined by the implications of its past inventions." Bjørn Ekeberg
Bjørn Ekeberg is a philosopher of science and author of Metaphysical Experiments: Physics and the Invention of the Universe in which he explains how our current understanding of the universe, the Big Bang and nearly all of cosmology is based on faith rather than experimental evidence. He is an independent scholar based in Oslo, and his current research focuses on the concept of energy in biophysics.
Bjørn often contributes to Scientific American, with pieces such as 'Cosmology Has Some Big Problems', which has now been read by over 70,000 people.
"There's little room for dogma, because we constantly have to be re-educating ourselves." Natasha Vita-More
Dr. Natasha Vita More is an auhtor, strategic designer, and scientist, working in the fields of human enhancement technology and life extension. Natasha is the Executive Director of Humanity+, the world's largest transhumanist organisation, which advocates the ethical use of technology to expand human capacities.
Natasha wrote the Transhuman Manifesto in 1982, which discussed the possibility of overcoming disease and extending lifespans. She is currently a Professor Emeritus of Ethics and Innovation at the University of Advancing Technology, Scientific Advisor of the Life Extension Advocacy Foundation, and a Fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.
"If you want to meet an early adopter of these revolutionary changes, look no further than Natasha Vita-More" Wired
"Real science is desperately hard work; the paranormal is almost entirely the fruit of armchair fantasizing." Peter Atkins
Peter Atkins FRSC is an English chemist, outspoken atheist, and author of works of popular science such as Atkins' Molecules.
Having left school at fifteen to join agribusiness giant Monsanto as a lab assistant, Peter taught himself A-level chemistry, gained a place at Leicester University, and went on to gain a doctorate for his research into electron spin resonance spectroscopy. A Distinguished Supporter of Humanists UK, Peter is outspoken in his opposition to religion. He argues that religion involves a lack of confidence in human powers of comprehension, encouraging us to be satisfied with ignorance instead of striving to understand the universe.
"More hardline than Richard Dawkins" The Guardian
"Human-like is not the same as human”
Susan Schneider is the NASA-Baruch Blumberg Chair at the Library of Congress and NASA, working high-level scholarship to understand the interface between human society and the scientific exploration of the cosmos. She is also the director of the AI, Mind and Society group at the University of Connecticut and a visiting member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.
Susan has garnered a reputation as one of the most prestigious thinkers in the world of the philosophy of mind and AI. She has been featured on BBC World News, Fox News, PBS and The National Geographic Channel, and in the feature film, Supersapiens: the Rise of the Mind. She frequently writes opinion pieces for publications such as the New York Times, The Financial Times and Scientific American.
Susan's latest book, Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, received outstanding reviews from the likes of Forbes, Washington Post and Nature.
“Enlightens new ways of thinking about a hot topic” Forbes
"“We have to shift our attention in social studies of science, from how do you reach the truth to how do you decide who’s an expert”
Harry Collins is one of the leading sociologists of science in the world and teaches at the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University. In 2012 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
In Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice, Harry outlines a general theory of sociology of science. Drawing from the concepts of ""Language Game"" and ""Forms of Life"", derived from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, he seeks an explanation for how scientists follow rules and patterns when performing experiments and scientific practice. His perspective is often labelled a relativist position, although Harry agues that this is a strong oversimplification.
Most recently, he has been a prominent voice on the role of experts in society, the importance of science in democracies and the dangers of artificial intelligence.
“Collins has presented us with an enthralling investigation into the way in which big science advances” Times Higher Education"
Rachel Moss is a journalist at HuffPost UK, where she specialises in women's health, covering topics such as the NHS IVF postcode lottery, the vaginal mesh scandal and the provision of abortion care, and more recently, the impact of Covid-19 on maternity and postnatal services. She runs HuffPost UK's What Works For Me series, interviewing people in the public eye about mental health and self-care, and is also the co-host of Am I Making You Uncomfortable?, a weekly podcast on women's health, bodies and private lives.
Rachel is passionate about gender equality and has made numerous appearances on BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC Radio Scotland and BBC Radio Foyle, discussing the latest headlines impacting women's lives.
Jesse Norman is a leading British Conservative Party politician currently serving as the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. He has been an MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire since 2010. Before becoming an MP he headed an educational charity in Eastern Europe following the Communist era. He was a director at Barclays before leaving to research and teach at University College London. Norman has been recognised by the political editor of the Spectator as a potential future Leader of the Conservative Party.
Jesse Norman has written extremely well-received biographies of two of his political and economic heroes, Edmund Burke and Adam Smith. He has written other celebrated books on the Big Society and compassionate conservatism.
“Amid the superficiality and hysterics of modern British politics, an admirably thoughtful brain is lurking" (The Times)
Ashwini Deshpande is an Indian economist known for her work on economic discrimination, specifically in relation to caste and gender. She is Professor of Economics at Ashoka University, and is the Founding Director of the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis at Ashoka.
Ashwini earned her Ph.D at the Delhi School of Economics in 1994 with a paper examining the international debt crisis of the 1980s, for which she won an award from the Exam Bank of India. Since then she was worked at different Indian universities and at the University of North Carolina, focusing on globalisation, inequality, and how Indian culture has shaped its economy. Ashwini has been appointed for many governmental roles, working as a principal investigator in Princeton University's Urban Labour Market Inequality project, and as a member in the Ministry of Minority Affairs in the Indian government.
Ashwini has authored hundreds of papers and several books, including The Grammar of Caste: Economic Discrimination in Contempary India, which looks at the economic impact of caste discrimination.
“We do need to make a distinction between when we are right and when we are wrong” Maria Bagramiam
Maria Baghramiam is the Professor of American Philosophy and one of the world’s leading experts on moral and epistemological relativism. Her work focuses on contemporary epistemology and relativism, and one of her most recent projects, Policy Expertise and Trust in Action (PEriTiA), received 3 million euros of funding form the European Commission.
After graduating with a Double First, Maria received her PhD from Trinity College Dublin under the supervision of Timothy Williamson. For ten years, she was the Chief Editor of the International Journal of Philosophical Studies.
Rana Mitter is Professor of the history and politics of modern China at Oxford University. Rana was educated at King's College. He has been elected for several prestigious positions including president of the Cambridge Union, Kennedy Scholar at Harvard University and Fellow of the British Academy. In 2019 he was appointed an OBE for his services to education.
Rana is a regular writer for publications such as the Financial Times, Guardian and Telegraph and is a frequent presenter on BBC Radio 3's Night Waves. Rana's research focuses on the emergence of nationalism in modern China and he has authored several books on the topic.
"Breathtaking and authoritative" Daily Telegraph
"Knowledge matters - it matters if we are to achieve our goals, individually or communally, and it matters to a well functioning democracy."
Åsa Wikforss is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at Stockholm University, and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Building on her innovative work in the intersectional space between philosophy of mind, language, and epistemology, she published her book Alternative Facts in 2017 to nationwide acclaim in Sweden. The book stems from Asa's belief that a sound basis for knowledge is essential to the functioning of democracy, and equips citizens with the tools to resist propaganda, fake news, and conspiracy theories in a post-truth world.
Asa frequently participates in public debate in Sweden, in print as well as on television and radio, with over a hundred public appearances in 2018 alone. In 2019 Asa was elected to be one of the eighteen members of the Swedish Academy, the highest authority on the Swedish language and the group that chooses the laureates for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Tania Branigan is foreign leader writer for The Guardian, having reported from Beijing since 2008.
Tania received her Bachelors from City University London before embarking on a career in journalism at The Guardian in 2000. Tania spent several years as a foreign correspondent in Beijing, focussing on politics, the economy, international relations, crime, social changes, the arts and even sports. Particularly, she is interested in big cultural shifts and how those play out at the level of individuals.
Since 2015 Tania has assumed the role of The Guardian's foreign leader writer in Beijing and has been in charge of producing leading articles that have documented the shifting relationship between China and the West in recent years.
"You must see how your own socialization, behaviour, and choices are complicit with multiple systems of oppression, racism included.” Crystal Fleming
Crystal Fleming is Professor of sociology and Africana studies at Stony Brook University. She is recognised as an international authority on race and has authored three books on race, anti-racism and white supremacy.
Crystal earned a Ph.D. and a master’s degree in Sociology from Harvard University and graduated with honors in Sociology and French from Wellesley College. She regularly appears as an authority on race and equality issues and has published articles in Newsweek, The Root, Huffington Post, and more. Her critically acclaimed book, How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy and the Racial Divide (Beacon Press, 2018), combines memoir, critical race theory, social commentary and satire to debunk common misconceptions about racism.
Crystal’s upcoming work Words to Remake the World: A People's Dictionary for Social Change is described as a people’s dictionary for social justice. The work is intended to clear up widespread misunderstandings, add context and clarity, and transform our discourse about inclusivity and inequality in an effort to create durable change. Crystal is also finishing another book, this time for young readers, entitled Rise Up! How You Can Join the Fight Against Racism! Both books are scheduled for release in 2021.
“Dr. Fleming offers a straight-no-chaser critique of our collective complicit ignorance regarding the state of race” Nina Turner
“It’s not sufficient to talk about what-it’s-like-ness… we should talk about what-it’s-like-for-me-ness” Dan Zahavi
Dan Zahavi is the renowned Professor of Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen, as well as the Professor of Philosophy at University of Oxford. At just age 34, he became the Director of the Center for Subjectivity Research on the basis of funding from the Danish National Research Foundation.
His work focuses on phenomenology and the philosophy of mind, and he has authored many celebrated works on these topics. He has a particular focus on Husserl, and examines the social, as well as the philosophical, consequences of the phenomenological approach.
“One of the most prolific and insightful phenomenologists of his generation” Alessandro Duranti, University of California
Mary Ann Sieghart has spent most of her life as a journalist and broadcaster. She was at the Times for nearly 20 years, as Assistant Editor, Comment Editor, Arts Editor and political columnist, and has also worked at the FT, the Economist and the Independent.
She presents programmes on BBC Radio 4 and the World Service. She spent 2018-19 as a Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, researching and writing a book about women and authority – how and why we still take women less seriously than men – and is currently a Senior Academic Visitor at Oriel.
Mary also chairs the non-partisan Social Market Foundation think tank and is a trustee and chair of the investment committee of The Scott Trust, which owns The Guardian and The Observer. She is senior trustee of the Kennedy Memorial Trust and has sat on the boards of Tate Modern, Ofcom’s Content Board, the Heritage Lottery Fund and three large FTSE-quoted investment trusts.
Christopher Belshaw is an Honorary Associate in Philosophy at the Open University and York University. His research covers diverse topics in the theoretical side of applied ethics - questions of the value of death and the nature of a person as well as that of animals.
Christopher studied philosophy at the University of York, and later at the University of California, Santa Barbara and has gone on to teach at both. An early interest in Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons led Christopher away from his early interest in Humean scepticism towards an interconnected range of contemporary philosophical problems in ethics.
His books include 10 Good Questions about Life and Death, Environmental Philosophy, and his most recent book, The Value and Meaning of Life, which will be published next month.
'You have to be humble about the limits of your views, even when we’re talking about this world we happen to live in." Mazviita Chirimuuta
Mazviita Chirimuuta is a Senior Lecturer in philosophy at Edinburgh University, with interests in neuroscience and philosophy of mind, especially in colour perception. Her 2015 book Outside Color: Perceptual Science and the Puzzle of Color in Philosophy draws on history, philosophy and recent scientific studies to offer a novel and thorough answer to the ancient question of what colour is and how we perceive it. Recently, she has worked on the topic of explanation in neuroscience.
"Her explanations are thoughtful and articulate, free of the clouds of jargon." Nautilus
"Trade frictions, even symbolic ones, are obviously bad for business."
Pravin Krishna is the Chung Ju Yung Distinguished Professor of International Economics and Business at Johns Hopkins University. He has served as a consultant to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and is also a regular host on the podcast Transforming India.
Pravin is a prominent supporter of Narendra Modi’s liberalisation of India, although has recently cited concerns that Modi’s government might be backsliding into protectionism.
His main areas of research interest are international economics and economic development, and his research has been published in countless journals.
"Professor Krishan has made fundamental contributions in the areas of trade theory and policy." India Today
"I hope that we can look back in 10 years and say, gosh, I remember when all of those technologies were rolled out and we had to spend five years taking the government to court and now we live in, yes, a technologically advanced but a freer, happier, more creative society." Silkie Carlo
Silkie Carlo is the founding director of Big Brother Watch, a non-party, non-profit, civil liberties organisation formed to protect the privacy of UK citizens.
Before founding Big Brother Watch, Silkie was a Senior Advocacy Officer at Liberty, an advocacy group intended to protect civil liberties and to engender a "rights culture" in British society. Silkie was also involed in both the legal challenge to the Investigatory Powers Act and Edward Snowden's official defence fund. Outside of her civil rights campaigning, Silkie is also a passionate Buddhist and a self-professed 'Vegangelist'.
"I never felt comfortable as a privileged leftist, the inauthenticity was too stark"
David Goodhart is a British journalist and cultural commentator, and the founder and former editor of Prospect magazine. After working as a correspondent for the Financial Times for 12 years, Goodhart founded the popular general interest magazine Prospect in 1995, which covers British current affairs across politics, economics and culture.
David's views have sparked controversy. He has previously argued that "sharing and solidarity can conflict with diversity", in a marked departure from liberal consensus on the issue; in his book The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-War Immigration, he suggested that high immigration can threaten national identity and solidarity. He has also recently argued that the BBC News coverage of Covid-19 has been too emotional and simplified, and should instead calmly and rigorously interrogate the complex issues raised rather than patronisingly praising and reassuring the public.
"Hugely influential" John Gray
“The greatest emergency is the absence of emergency.” Santiago Zabala
Santiago Zabala is a philosopher and cultural critic. The goal of philosophy for Zabala is to thrust us into absent emergencies (such as climate change, economic inequality, and refuges crisis) in order to disrupt the ongoing “return to order” that surveillance capitalism and right-wing populism are imposing upon us. He is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at Pompeu Fabra University and author of several books on aesthetics and political philosophy. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Guardian.
His latest book, Being at Large. Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts (2020), demonstrates the anarchic power of philosophy by calling for interpretive disruptions of the authoritarian narrative as a way of reclaiming freedom in the age of alternative facts.
"Zabala sets the record straight in the ongoing debate on fake news in which philosophical issues gained political urgency.” Slavoj Žižek, University of Ljubljana.
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"We should not aim merely to believe the truth; we should aim to know it." Anandi Hattiangadi
Anandi Hattiangadi is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Stockholm, with interests in the philosophy of mind and language, epistemology, and meta-ethics. She is a core part of the interdisciplinary program Knowledge Resistance: Causes, Consequences, and Cures.
Her book Oughts and Thoughts: Rule-following and the Normativity of Content makes the innovative argument that, contra Kripke, meaning cannot be normative, and so there must be facts about what we mean by our words.
"Hattiangadi has done a magnificent job of covering so much philosophical territory with great insight and care for details" Reinaldo Elugardo, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Linda Woodhead is Distinguished Professor of Religion and Society, and has been awarded an MBE for her services to higher education. In 2007, Linda became the director of the Religion and Society research programme, heading 265 academics in the field. This culminated in the Westminster Faith Debates which she co-founded with then-Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke. The debates featured Tony Blair, Rowan Williams and Richard Dawkins. The head of the Royal Society of Arts, Matthew Taylor, described Linda as ‘one of the world's leading experts on religion’.
Linda's latest book, That Was the Church that Was: How the Church of England Lost the English People, asks how religion in England became such a ‘toxic’ brand. The book contains candid accounts of many church figures and has caused some controversy. She writes, ‘Like a cargo cult, [the Church] assumed that if you aped the jargon and waved some of the symbols, success and prestige must naturally follow.’
“Sex might be huge delicious fun. But ultimately, it’s pretty meaningless.” Olivia Fane
Olivia Fane has endured one divorce, married two husbands, been awarded three M.A.s in Classics, Social Work and Theology, written five novels, and given birth to five sons. Olivia’s combination of intellectual ideas and clear, involving prose won her a Betty Trask Award for her first novel, Landing On Clouds.
In her most recent book, Why Sex Doesn’t Matter, Olivia addresses the politics, the obsessions, the misconceptions of one of the most important aspects of human existence.
Physician, philosopher, poet and novelist Raymond Tallis is ‘one of the world’s greatest living polymaths’ (Intelligent Life) and the author of Not Saussure, The Pursuit of Mind, and The Kingdom of Infinite Space. He is Emeritus Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester, and much of his philosophical writing has been informed by his medical expertise.
Born in Liverpool in 1946, Ray started his career at St Thomas' in London where he studied medicine. After pursuing a successful medical career for many years, he switched to full-time writing in 2006, producing poetry, fiction, and theoretical works. His most recent book is Logos: The Mystery of Howe We Make Sense of the World.
After completing a Law degree from the Inns of Court School of Law, Sean Curran joined the BBC in 1988 as a trainee reporter, where he has worked ever since. For twenty years Sean has worked at Westminster reporting on politics and parliament. On BBC Radio 4, Sean is a regular presenter of Yesterday in Parliament, and the historic Today in Parliament, which will celebrate its 75th anniversary this year.
Sean is the presenter of Conversations for BBC Parliament and the Deputy Editor of parliamentary programmes for BBC Radio 4. While presenting Conversations, Sean has talked to political figures such as John Prescott, Ken Clarke and Ann Widdecome.
“Activists and intellectuals are essential to protecting the society from two of the greatest dangers — power and profit.” Sundar Sarukkai
Sundar Sarukkai was, till 2019, a professor of philosophy at the National Institute of Advanced Studies. He was also the Founder-Director of the Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities. His work is primarily in the philosophy of natural and social sciences. Sarukkai is the author of Translating the World: Science and Language; Philosophy of Symmetry; Indian Philosophy and Philosophy of Science; What is Science? and two books co-authored with Gopal Guru: The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory and, most recently, Experience, Caste and the Everyday Social. His most recent publication is JRD Tata and the Ethics of Philanthropy, which draws on the experience of entrepreneur JRD Tata to examine philanthropy in an Indian context.
Sarukkai has also been active in outreach programs to take philosophy to different communities and places, including philosophy workshops for children and bringing philosophy to the public through his writing in the media and through his initiative Barefoot Philosophers.
“[Sundar] has contributed significantly to the philosophy of science, and has advanced our understanding of political lives as experienced on an
everyday basis.” Dipankar Gupta
Bernadka Dubicka is Chair of the Child and Adolescent Faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Her research is often focussed on mood disorders, with her expertise lying in clinical trials and evidence-based practice.
Bernadka is a member of the National Institute of Health Research, and is an editor of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Journal. She recently appeared in the news to speak out about the effect that social media is having on the mental wellbeing of children and young adults. During a recent news cycle on the dangers of social media, Bernadka implored social media firms to hand over their data amid an increased suicide risk.
“Without a state, there can be no society.” Hannah Dawson
Hannah Dawson is a historian of ideas, currently lecturing in the History of Political Thought at King's College London. Alongside publications on everyone from Hobbes to Wollestonecraft, Hannah has written articles for TLS, Prospect and Literary Review. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
She has previously spoken about how our lives are changing in the digital age, highlighting growing inequality as a result of technological advancements and our lack of awareness of others as we sit comfortably in our echo chambers.
"Thoroughly welcoming and approachable." Prospect
"You can't be transgender and not know that there is a crack in everything" Sophie-Grace Chappell
Sophie-Grace Chappell is a Professor of Philosophy at the Open University, who writes about ethics, politics, feminism and epistemology. Her books include Ethics Beyond the Limits, Knowing What To Do, and Ethics and Experience. Her most recent book is the edited collection Intuition, Theory, and Anti-Theory in Ethics, published in 2015. She also writes poetry, and may well be the UK's first openly transgender academic philosopher, an experience she has written about for Aeon and The Lovepost.
Her most recent fascination, and subject of her latest book, is epiphanies - moments of revelation that change how we see the world through offering truths that depend on our position and perspective.
On Knowing What To Do: "an inspiring expression of an ethical vision with deep historical roots and urgent contemporary relevance... an ethical exemplar" The Times Literary Supplement
“Basic animal agency is an astonishing but an unashamedly biological phenomenon”
Helen Steward is a highly esteemed Professor of the philosophy of mind and action at the University of Leeds. She obtained her D.Phil. from Oxford University and her research focusses on the philosophy of action, free will, philosophy of mind and metaphysics. Helen's most recent book, A Metaphysics for Freedom, argues for a distinctive version of incompatibilism, based on the idea that there is a conflict not only between determinism and free human action, but also between determinism and the activities of a wide variety of animals.
Helen is one the leading defenders of the libertarian account of free will, and resolutely defends her position with reference to both human and animal action.
“A refreshing and important contribution to the ongoing metaphysical discussion of freedom." The Review of Metaphysics
"What kind of intelligence allows a bird to anticipate the arrival of a distant storm? Or find its way to a place it has never been before, though it may be thousands of miles away? Or precisely imitate the complex songs of hundreds of other species? Or hide tens of thousands of seeds over hundreds of square miles and remember where it put them six months later?"
Jennifer Ackerman is an author, who has been writing about science and nature for 30 years. Jennifer has authored eight books, including Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body, Birds by the Shore and The Genius of Birds: The Intelligent Life of Birds, which was a New York Times Bestseller, as well as winning Best Book of the Year from the Spectator and the National Post. The Genius of Birds sees Jennifer drawing on her extensive research and expertise to tell the story of the recently uncovered genius of birds, and investigating new research that is changing the way we view intelligence.
Her most recent book, The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think examines the unique cognitive abilities of bird brains, which, while radically different from mammal brains, seem to be just as capable at generating intelligence. Published this year, The Bird Way has been called “An enthralling study of the avian world” by the Guardian and has been picked as one of "The Best Summer Science Books of 2020" by NPR's Science Friday.
Jennifer is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including an NEA Literature Fellowship in Nonfiction, a Bunting Institute Fellowship, and a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
"Like a bowerbird, Ms. Ackerman gathers and displays treasures to amaze and delight—then lets the scientists’ stories take center stage." - Wall Street Journal
Lisa Bortolotti is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham. She is known for her work on the philosophy of the cognitive sciences, dealing with cognitive fallibility, delusions, poor knowledge of the self, and mental health. From 2014 to 2019, Lisa led a project on Pragmatic and Epistemic Role of Factually Erroneous Cognitions and Thoughts (PERFECT).
Lisa has authored and edited several books, including Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs, in which she argues, against the orthodox position, that beliefs are not constrained by rationality, so delusions can be understood as types of beliefs. Lisa's most recent book, published this year, is The Epistemic Innocence of Irrational Beliefs, in which she interrogates the ways in which irrational beliefs can still be both practically and epistemically valuable.
Lisa also runs a blog, Imperfect Cognitions, and regurlarly writes for Aeon and The Philosopher's Magazine.
Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad is one of the leading experts on the philosophy of religion in the world. A Distinguished Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy, he is also a Fellow of the British Academy. Chakravarthi's research focuses on phenomenology, epistemology, metaphysics and the philosophy of religion. He pays special attention to the Indian religions – Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.
He is a regular contributor to the BBC Radio 4's Beyond Belief and Sunday Programme.
Soma Ghosh is a cultural critic, performer and founding editor of cult polysexual magazine The Demented Goddess. The magazine explores gender, belonging and creativity across the arts, from rock and electronic music to AI, street art and ‘terrorist pornography’ by women. She also writes essays on sexuality and identity for The Quietus, Europe’s biggest independent music magazine.
Soma has written and presented her own satirical radio show and Forbidden Women, her theatre series on subversive female artists, debuted at The Photographer’s Gallery in 2019. Her drag comedy cabaret appearances have been mesmorizing festivals since 2016.
Priyadarshini Karve is the CEO of Samuchit Enviro Tech. She invented the Samuchit Carbon Footprint Calculator which measures individuals' impact on climate change. Priyadarshini is actively involved in imparting education about sustainable development and climate friendly lifestyles. She has been honoured by several national and international awards, including World Technology Award in 2005.
Priyadarshini is one of India’s leading educators on the importance of individual responsibility in the fight against climate change and argues diligently that the blame cannot always laid at the feet of big corporations.
Güneş Taylor is a training fellow at the Francis Crick Institute, the London-based biomedical research centre. Her research predominantly focuses on the the genetic formation of ovaries and testes. Güneş has debated the implications of genome editing in forums such as Fertility Fest, the Festival of Genomics, and Virtual Futures, as well as on the Guardian's podcast Science Weekly. In 2018, Güneş was awarded the Crick Public Engagement Prize for her efforts in the public communication of science.
"Scientists and others sometimes deride philosophy on the basis of very little, if any, evidence of what it is like."
James Ladyman is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Bristol, where he is occupied principally with general philosophy of science and philosophy of physics.
During his undergraduate study of pure mathematics, Ladyman's interests extended to philosophy and theoretical physics, and he pursued postgraduate qualifications in philosophy of science. He has defended the view of reality known as "naturalised metaphysics", which seeks to update metaphysics in the light of contemporary findings in science.
In his book Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized, co-written with Don Ross, Ladyman urges philosophers to eject from their worldview the classical physical model that describes the world as made up of "self-individuated", "little bits of matter".
"Besson succeeds in showing the appeal of the path that she recommends taking, through what has often seemed to be impassable territory." - Christopher Mole
Corine Besson is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Sussex and Director of the Centre for Logic and Language at the Institute of Philosophy, University of London. Her principal areas of research are epistemology, the philosophy of logic and the philosophy of language.
Corine has been awarded a grant by the Bank of Sweden for her current project, The Foundations of Epistemic Normativity. In this project Corine will be defending a form of epistemological realism called Robust Realism, crucial against the growing disregard for facts and evidence in issues like climate change. Corine is also working on a book, Logic, Reasoning and the Tortoise, to be published by Oxford University Press.
It's both my strength and my weakness that I answer the question"
Politician and journalist, Natalie Bennett served as the leader of the Green Party from 2012 to 2016. She was born and raised in Australia before moving to Thailand to work as a journalist, and has since written for the Times, the Guardian, and the Independent amongst others.
Natalie became the leader of Britain’s Green Party just six years after joining the Party, and is now the Green Party’s proud representative for Sheffield.
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