Humanists UK Convention 2018

Nick Ross is an international conference chairman and was for more than thirty years one of Britain’s best-known broadcasters. Although he still contributes to radio and TV journalism he is now heavily committed to charities and campaigns. He became a household name as a presenter when launching the BBC’s breakfast TV, Watchdog and Crimewatch and for the flagship radio programmes World at One, The World Tonight and two long-running series, Call Nick Ross and The Commission. He has written and directed award-winning documentaries, has been a lobby correspondent and presented A Week in Politics for Channel 4 and Westminster with Nick Ross for BBC Two.

For The Darkening Age, she was presented the Royal Society of Literature's 2015 Jerwood Award.  The Darkening Age tells the 'the largely unknown story of how a militant religion deliberately attacked and suppressed the teachings of the Classical world, ushering in centuries of unquestioning adherence to 'one true faith'. She studied Classics at Cambridge, and subsequently worked as a Classics teacher for several years, before becoming a journalist on the arts desk at  The Times, where she still works.

He currently works as social media editor for openDemocracy, a global news platform concerned with human rights, freedom, democracy, and the ideal of an open society, and previously founded and edited the centre-left blog Liberal Conspiracy. He is also one of 16 Convenors for the More United cross-party political movement, named for the maiden speech of humanist MP Jo Cox. He is a prolific commentator on national politics, the media, the environment, and race relations, and has been a frequent critic of religious fundamentalism.

He specialises in issues around immigration, civil liberties, democracy, free speech and social justice and appears regularly on the BBC, Sky and Al-Jazeera as well as a variety of radio stations. He also writes lifestyle columns for other publications and websites. He is the author of Brexit: what the hell happens now? and a host on the Remainiacs podcast.

Adam is the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s flagship science radio programme,  Inside Science, as well as many documentaries, on the inheritance of intelligence, on MMR and autism, human evolution, astronomy and art, science and cinema, scientific fraud, and the evolution of sex. On TV, Adam presented the award-winning  Horizon: Playing God (BBC2, Jan 2012);  The Gene Code (BBC4, Apr 2011); and the award-winning T he Cell (BBC4, Sept 2009). Adam is a movie geek, and has been scientific advisor to Björk’s movie  Biophilia Live, and worked on  World War Z,  The Secret Service(2014) and  Ex Machina (2015). His critically acclaimed first book,  Creation – on the origin and future of life – was published in 2013, and was nominated for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize.  A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived was published in 2016, and  Genetics: A Ladybird Expert Book will be published in June 2018. Adam has a PhD in Genetics, a degree in evolutionary biology, is an honorary Research Fellow at UCL, and is a former Editor at the journal Nature.

Adam is the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s flagship science radio programme,  Inside Science, as well as many documentaries, on the inheritance of intelligence, on MMR and autism, human evolution, astronomy and art, science and cinema, scientific fraud, and the evolution of sex. On TV, Adam presented the award-winning  Horizon: Playing God (BBC2, Jan 2012);  The Gene Code (BBC4, Apr 2011); and the award-winning T he Cell (BBC4, Sept 2009). Adam is a movie geek, and has been scientific advisor to Björk’s movie  Biophilia Live, and worked on  World War Z,  The Secret Service(2014) and  Ex Machina (2015). His critically acclaimed first book,  Creation – on the origin and future of life – was published in 2013, and was nominated for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize.  A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived was published in 2016, and  Genetics: A Ladybird Expert Book will be published in June 2018. Adam has a PhD in Genetics, a degree in evolutionary biology, is an honorary Research Fellow at UCL, and is a former Editor at the journal Nature.

A leading expert in religion’s interpretations of the past and influence on modern attitudes, Francesca’s research is primarily focused on ancient Israelite and Judahite religions, and portrayals of religious history in the Hebrew Bible. She is also interested in biblical traditions and religious practices most at odds with Western cultural values. Francesca presented a three-part BBC documentary series about the Bible and archaeology, called Bible’s Buried Secrets, in March 2011. She also appears regularly on the BBC’s The Big Questions and Sunday Morning Live, and has discussed biblical scholarship on several national and local radio programmes. Her stimulating talks on the history of religion and religious depictions of female sexuality were highlights of the Humanists UK Annual Convention in 2016 and the 2014 World Humanist Congress in Oxford.

She completed an MPhil in Medieval Arabic Thought, at the Oriental Institute, Oxford, in 2012, under the supervision of Professor Fritz Zimmerman and Dr. Afifi Al-Akiti. Her thesis research focused on reason and revelation in the works of Raghib al-Isfahani. Arzoo has worked as a Research Associate at the Office for Public Management, completing research and evaluation projects for the NHS, Macmillan Cancer Support, and London Creative Labs. She also worked on policy issues with the government through her role in YMAG, where she was elected as Chair. In 2013, Arzoo completed a degree in Islamic Studies with Al-Salam Institute, after having studied the Islamic Sciences with Shaykh Akram Nadwi for eight years. She is also managing the publication of Al-Muhaddithat: a 40-volume encyclopedia on the history of Muslim female scholarship. Arzoo’s research interests include: the soul and the human person; epistemology; methodology; ethics and gender studies..

He is a fellow of Lincoln College in the University of Oxford and the author of about seventy books for students and a general audience. He is the author of Conjuring The Universe and The Laws of Thermodynamics: A Very Short Introduction. His texts are market leaders around the globe. A frequent lecturer in the United States and throughout the world, he has held visiting professorships in France, Israel, Japan, China, and New Zealand. He was the founding chairman of the Committee on Chemistry Education of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and was a member of IUPAC's Physical and Biophysical Chemistry Division. Peter was the 2016 recipient of the American Chemical Society's Grady-Stack Award for science journalism.  

She is also a humanist campaigner and regularly speaks out on topics such as legal humanist marriage, freedom of expression, the promotion of science, and women’s rights. Acutely aware of the relative lack of women expressing their sexuality in Northern Ireland media, she decided to pursue a career in modelling to change these attitudes, actively challenging outdated views about how women ‘should’ behave and express themselves.

Her most recent battle, in 2017, saw her and her fiance Eunan take the Northern Ireland Government to court, in a successful attempt to have their humanist marriage legally recognised. As a result, Laura and her husband are the first and currently only couple to have had a legally recognised humanist marriage conducted in Northern Ireland.

Laura was a founding member of Atheist NI, the first atheist organisation in Northern Ireland. She campaigns for greater respect for science and for it to be seen as a more essential part of our lives, recently working with the British Science Association. Laura has appeared as a guest on  This Week,  Jeremy Vine,  Newsnight,  Sky News,  BBC News, and on many other outlets.

Saiful presented the 80th anniversary Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2016 for BBC TV on the theme of energy; the lectures were entitled ‘Supercharged: Fuelling the Future’, and achieved over 3.5 million interactions through the BBC broadcasts and social media.

His research interests include advanced computer modelling studies of new materials for clean energy technologies particularly lithium batteries and perovskite solar cells. He has presented more than 65 invited talks at international conferences, and has around 190 publications. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and has received several awards for his research including the RSC Peter Day Award for Materials Chemistry (2017) and the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (2013-2018).

He has served on the Diversity Committee of the Royal Society, and was selected for the Royal Society’s ‘Inspiring Scientists’ project that recorded the life stories of ten British scientists with minority ethnic heritage in partnership with National Life Stories at the British Library.

His career path was clear. Since his songs were featured on the  Guardian's Science Weekly podcast, he has been at the forefront of comic science communication, having shared stages with the likes of Robin Ince and Professor Brian Cox, Bill Bailey, and Professor Richard Dawkins, and performed at scientific institutions such as CERN in Geneva and the Royal Institution of London. As a qualified science teacher in the process of an a MA in science education, he has become an expert in using songs in the classroom, both as a revision tool and a means to communicate complex information in a simple, engaging way.

Iszi works regularly with  Making History on Radio 4. She also writes, hosts, and co-produces The British Museum Membercast and  Z List Dead List podcasts, which all cover a broad range of unfamiliar topics that have turned listeners into superfans. Iszi has over 12 years experience on the live comedy circuit doing shows across Europe including The Gielgud Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The British Museum, Mirth Control, Jongleurs, The Stand, Kill for A Seat as well performing warm up sets for Stewart Lee, Sarah Millican, Omid Djalili, and Alan Davis.

Andrew became Chief Executive in January 2010 after five years coordinating Humanists UK’s education and public affairs work. His writing on humanist and secularist issues has appeared in  The Guardian,  The Independent,  The Times and  New Statesman as well as in various journals and he has represented Humanists UK and Humanism extensively on television news on BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky, as well as on television programmes such as  Newsnight,  The Daily Politics, Sunday Morning Live and  The Big Questions. He has also appeared on radio on programmes from  Today,  You and Yours,  Sunday,  The World Tonight,  The World at One, The Last Word and  Beyond  Belief on the BBC, to local and national commercial radio stations. He is a former director of the European Humanist Federation (EHF) and is currently President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) and a trustee of the International Humanist Trust. He has previously served as head of the IHEU delegation to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg and has represented humanist organisations to the United Nations (UN) and Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In other humanist roles, he has served as a trustee of the Conway Hall Ethical Society, and is a former chair of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (now LGBT Humanists, and part of Humanists UK). He has advised on Humanism for the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Authority, the Department for Children, Schools and Families, the BBC, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and the Office of National Statistics among others, and for ten years was a member and then Chair of the Westminster Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education. He was a member of the Advisory Group for the Humanist Library at Conway Hall and, in a previous post in the office of Lord Macdonald of Tradeston in the House of Lords, provided the secretariat for the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group. He also served for many years as a director and trustee of the Religious Education Council, the Values Education Council, and the National Council for Faiths and Beliefs in Further Education. Together with A C Grayling, Andrew edited the  Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Humanism . Andrew studied Classics and Ancient and Modern History at the University of Oxford and was a member of the winning team of the 2005 Young Educational Thinker of the Year Programme. He is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an Associate of the Centre for Law and Religion at Cardiff University. He came to Humanists UK in 2005 from the Citizenship Foundation, where he worked on political literacy projects.

He was a BBC New Talent Pick of the Fringe, and Runner Up in the 2010 Musical Comedy Awards. In 2010 he sold out his debut solo hour  Pretend you're happy at the Edinburgh Fringe, and in 2011 sold out his second solo Edinburgh show  We're Living in The Future. He co-wrote and starred in cult online spoof documentaries  Unfinished London, which have been viewed over three million times between them.

Front Line Defenders is an organisation Mary established in 2001 to meet the immediate security and protection needs of human rights defenders at risk around the world. Mary is widely respected in the international human rights movement and has been a leading figure in developing rapid response mechanisms and institutional responses for HRDs.  Prior to Front Line Defenders, Mary was Director of the Irish Section of Amnesty International from 1988 to 2000. She became a Board member in 1975 and was elected Chair from 1983 to 1987. Mary was awarded the  Irish Life WMB Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2008. In 2011, she received the  Irish Tatler Woman of the Year Special Recognition Award.  In 2014, Mary was awarded the French insignia of  Chevalier de l'Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur and an honorary degree of Doctor in Laws from Trinity College Dublin. In 2015, she was appointed Adjunct Professor in the School of Business Trinity College Dublin.

He has campaigned for legalised assisted dying since 1994 – having being Chairman of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (1996–1999 and 2001–2003) and President of the World Federation of the Right-to-Die Societies (2002–2004). He founded the Secular Medical Forum and also the Society for Old Age Rational Suicide, which is now renamed as My Death My Decision; this organisation campaigns for all competent adults, suffering unbearably from severe medical conditions to have the option of a doctor-assisted death. Since 2005, Michael has accompanied five determined, suffering individuals to Switzerland to witness their doctor-assisted suicides.

Squadron Leader Emily McCullouch joined the RAF as an Air Traffic Controller in 2007, after working within the NHS and as a teacher. She has served operational tours in Afghanistan and the Middle East. As Chair of Defence Humanists, Emily is proud to work with the MoD towards greater inclusion for all, particularly the non-religious.

He runs Ready Steady Science, a science communication company committed to making information interesting and takes science based performances into schools, museums, theatres and festivals. He also runs the Ugly Animal Preservation Society, a comedy night with a conservation twist. It went on to find global fame (and notoriety) when it teamed up with the National Science and Engineering Competition to host an online campaign resulting in the election of the blobfish as the ugliest animal on the planet. He has written dozens of articles for national newspapers and websites including the  Times, the  Sunday Times, the  Sun, the  Daily Telegraph, the  Independent, the  Daily Mirror and the  New York Daily News. He is a regular contributor to TV, radio and web and is perhaps best known as a presenter on the BAFTA-winning documentary series  Inside Nature’s Giants and the Channel 4 special  The Elephant: Life After Death.

He has written about space, science, and the history of technology for a variety of publications including the Independent, the BBC, and Wired. His book 2001: Filming the Future is considered to be the authoritative account of the making of Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Piers was also involved in the curation of ‘Space: 50’, a joint venture between the publishers Harper Collins Worldwide and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., marking the 50th anniversary of Sputnik and the dawn of the space age. His book Starman, a biography of Yuri Gagarin (co-authored with Jamie Doran) revealed controversial and often harrowing details of the early Soviet space effort. Atom, a tie-in for a BBC TV series, told the dramatic story of the rivalries and passions behind the discovery of quantum physics, while The Rivers of Mars, a critically acclaimed analysis of the life on Mars debate, was shortlisted for NASA’s Eugene M. Emme Award for Astronautical Writing.

Born in Iran in 1973, Shappi Khorsandi and her family were forced to flee from Iran to London after the Islamic Revolution, as her father had written satirical poetry. She is a comedian, performs stand-up, and has appeared on many radio and television shows, including Shappi Talk and Question Time. She became President of Humanists UK in January 2016.

He was first elected to Parliament in 1983 and he has been an MP ever since (for Newcastle upon Tyne East 1983-97, for Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend 1997-2010, and for Newcastle upon Tyne East since May 2010) . He has had a long career on the backbenches, and the Government and Opposition frontbenches, and is the Opposition Chief Whip in the House of Commons. In 1997 he was made a Privy Councillor and in 2001 he was awarded the freedom of the city of Newcastle.

Deborah Hyde wants to know why people believe in weird stuff, using the perspectives of psychology and history to try and answer this question. During the day, she’s a film/TV industry coordinator/production manager who has worked in makeup effects and scenery. She is the editor of the Skeptic magazine, the UK’s only regular magazine to take a critical-thinking and evidence-based approach to pseudo-science and the paranormal. Deborah was Co-Convenor of Westminster Skeptics and Speaker Liaison of Soho Skeptics. Soho Skeptics was an alliance of Little Atoms, The Pod Delusion, Skeptic magazine, Skeptics in the Pub, and independent writers and film-makers. In February 2018, she was elected a fellow of The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

He has reported extensively on refugees in Europe. His work has been published in the London Review of Books, the Guardian, New York Times and others, and won a 2017 Migration Media Award. His first book, Bloody Nasty People: the Rise of Britain’s Far Right, was longlisted for the 2013 Orwell Prize.

He has 13 sold out Edinburgh Festival Fringe shows to his name, three national tours under his belt, and was the host of QED 2017. Phil Jupitus reckons they've had burned him at the stake 300 years ago..

He came to this role after professorial posts in Oxford and Exeter. He works on all areas of Greek literature and culture, specialising particularly in the world of Greeks under the Roman Empire. He is author of the 2015 book Battling the gods: atheism in the ancient world.

Isabel worked as an actor in theatre, film, and television for 20 years before becoming a humanist celebrant in 2009. Isabel then worked as a funeral, wedding, and naming celebrant for four years, before becoming Head of Ceremonies at Humanists UK in May 2013. The role of ritual and storytelling in shaping and influencing community has been a central thread throughout her working life.

He works on issues from across Humanists UK's public policy remit. From May 2011 to February 2015 he was the Faith Schools and Education Campaigns Officer, and before that he was the President of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies. Richy is the Treasurer of the Religious Education Council of England and Wales, a member of the advisory group of the Sex Education Forum, and on the steering groups of Voice for Choice, the Accord Coalition for inclusive education and the Fair Admissions Campaign.