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Friday 9 June 2023
– Sunday 11 June 2023

Liverpool Guild of Students
160 Mount Pleasant
Liverpool
L3 5TR

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Our ticket types

Weekend tickets

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Tickets for Humanists UK Convention 2023 are £119, and we have a special rate of £59 for students.

Ticket-holders are entitled to attend all sessions of Convention 2023 from Friday evening comedy through to Sunday afternoon.

General ticket £119
Student ticket £59

Food add-ons

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Attendees may choose to add on teas, coffees, and lunch on both days.

A highlight of the weekend is the three-course Gala Dinner on the Saturday evening, which can now be booked separately from lunch.

We include these as optional add-ons to allow attendees to choose the shape of their weekend, while keeping the basic ticket price as low as possible.

plus coffees, teas, and lunch +£65
plus Gala Dinner +£79

Speakers announced so far

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Adam
Rutherford

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Samira
Ahmed

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Robin
Ince

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Tommy
Sheppard MP

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Sarah
Chaney

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Robin
Dunbar

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Susie
Alegre

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Chris
French

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David
Voas

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Emily
Kenway

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Kate
Pickett

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Richard
Wilkinson

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Bobby
Duffy

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Madeleine
Goodall

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Andrew
Copson

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Lee
Peart

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Alison
Spittle

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Hannah
Platt

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Adam Rutherford

Geneticist, author, and President of Humanists UK

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Samira Ahmed

Journalist and broadcaster

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Robin Ince

Comedian, broadcaster, and writer

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Tommy Sheppard MP

Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group

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Sarah Chaney

Historian and writer

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Robin Dunbar

Anthropologist and psychologist

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Susie Alegre

Human Rights Barrister

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Chris French

Professor of Anomalistic Psychology

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David Voas

Professor of Social Science

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Emily Kenway

Author and public speaker

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Kate Pickett

Epidemiologist and author

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Richard Wilkinson

Epidemiologist and author

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Bobby Duffy

Professor of Public Policy

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Madeleine Goodall

Humanist Heritage Coordinator

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Andrew Copson

Chief Executive,
Humanists UK

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Lee Peart

Comedian

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Alison Spittle

Comedian

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Hannah Platt

Comedian

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Testimonials

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This was my first Humanists UK Annual Convention so just meeting fellow humanists was fantastic.

Humanists UK Convention 2022 attendee

 

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[I most enjoyed] the quality of the speakers, meeting old friends and like minds and reassurance that you are not alone in your philosophy of life.

Humanists UK Convention 2022 attendee

 

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Comedy was brilliant. Speakers were brilliant. Delegates were brilliant.

Humanists UK Convention 2019 attendee

 

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I enjoyed the high quality speakers who brought so many ideas and such understanding to us. I felt thrilled to belong to an organisation which takes action at the highest levels of politics and does so much work in so many fields. I enjoyed the sense of being with people who shared my values and were of similar mind. Thank you to all who organised it.

Humanists UK Convention 2019 attendee

 

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It’s like in the old days, when we used to read newspapers – when you turn the page, you’re not sure what you’re going to get. So it can be challenging and thought-provoking, but most of all it is an oasis of greatness in a world that is going absolutely mad.

Humanists UK Convention 2019 attendee

 

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I thought the discussions and talks were excellent and that it was a full, fascinating, and well-chosen programme. I liked the mix of subjects and variety of speaker formats – there was never a moment where it occurred to me to skip a panel – in fact, having to miss [one talk to see another] led to a FOMO experience!

Humanists UK Convention 2022 attendee

 

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I loved the fabulous array of speakers – top quality people with really stimulating and worthwhile things to say. Utterly brilliant.

Humanists UK Convention 2019 attendee

 

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As someone attending my first convention, it was very easy to meet and discuss things even if I was not certain on my position on the topics – the friendliness of those attending gave space to discuss and explore the ideas.

Humanists UK Convention 2022 attendee

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Hard to pick what was the highlight!

Humanists UK Convention 2022 attendee

 

About our speakers

Samira Ahmed

Samira Ahmed is a multi-award winning journalist and broadcaster with a special focus on culture, politics, and social change. She won Audio Broadcaster of the Year at the 2020 British Press Guild Awards for her work as a presenter of Front Row on BBC Radio 4 and her podcast How I Found My Voice.

Susie Alegre

Susie Alegre is an international lawyer, author, and speaker. She has worked on some of the most challenging legal and political issues of our time, including: human rights and security; combatting corruption in the developing world; protecting human rights at borders; the human rights impact of climate change on small island states; and privacy, cybersecurity, disinformation, data protection, and neurotech. Her experience includes both judicial, and oversight roles in the UK and internationally.

She has particular expertise on tech ethics and neuroscience through the lens of human rights, bringing both legal skills and a background in philosophy to the key ethical questions of our time.

Her book Freedom to Think: The Long Struggle to Liberate our Minds, argues that only by recasting our human rights for the digital age can we safeguard our future, has been chosen as one of the Financial Times’ Best Summer Books of 2022, and is longlisted for the Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing.

Sarah Chaney

Dr Sarah Chaney is an honorary research fellow at the Queen Mary Centre for the History of the Emotions. She spent her teens and twenties furiously rebelling against the mainstream, while secretly longing to be normal. It wasn’t until she passed 30 that she (mostly) stopped worrying about this mythical ideal. Alongside her research work she runs the public exhibitions and events programme at the Royal College of Nursing. Her most recent book Am I Normal?: The 200-Year Search for Normal People (And Why They Don’t Exist) was published in 2022. She has also written on the history of self-injury, Psyche on the Skin (2017).

Robin Dunbar

Robin Dunbar is Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Oxford. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and an elected Foreign Member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. He has been awarded the Osman Hill Medal and the Huxley Medal. His popular science books include The Human Story, How Many Friends Does One Person Need?, and Human Evolution, and, most recently, How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures. They have been translated into a dozen languages.

Chris French

Professor Chris French is the Head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit in the Psychology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a patron of Humanists UK. He has published over 150 articles and chapters covering a wide range of topics. His main current area of research is the psychology of paranormal beliefs and anomalous experiences. He frequently appears on radio and television casting a sceptical eye over paranormal claims. His most recent book is Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience.

Robin Ince

Robin Ince is many things: a comedian, an author, a broadcaster and a populariser of scientific ideas. The Guardian once declared him a ‘becardiganed polymath’ which seems about right.

He is probably best known as the co-host of the Sony Gold Award winning BBC Radio 4 series The Infinite Monkey Cage with Professor Brian Cox. He also co-hosts the podcast Book Shambles with Josie Long, An Uncanny Hour and Science Shambles with Dr Helen Czerski, all three of which are a part of The Cosmic Shambles Network, which he also co-created.

His 2018 book, I’m a Joke and So Are You, was described by Chortle as ‘one of the best books ever written about what it means to be a comedian’.

Emily Kenway

Emily Kenway writes and speaks about thought-provoking social issues. Drawing on a decade-long career working in social justice, from campaigning for living wages to tackling worker exploitation, alongside a MSc with Distinction in Social and Political Theory, she researches and writes about crucial forces shaping our lives and communities.

As a writer of political thought, Emily has been published by the Guardian, Independent, Huffington Post, Times Literary Supplement and more. Her memoir and creative non-fiction writing has been published in several literary magazines. In 2020, Emily was shortlisted for the Alpine Writing Fellowship and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Kate Pickett

Kate Pickett is Professor of Epidemiology, Deputy Director of the Centre for Future Health, and Associate Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity, all at the University of York. Kate is a Fellow of the RSA and a Fellow of the UK Faculty of Public Health. She is co-author, with Richard Wilkinson, of the worldwide best-selling The Spirit Level (2009) and The Inner Level (2018). The Spirit Level was awarded Publication of the Year by the Political Studies Association, chosen as one of the Top Ten Books of the Decade by the New Statesman, and one of the top 100 books of the century by the Guardian. She is a co-founder and trustee of The Equality Trust.

Adam Rutherford

Dr Adam Rutherford is a scientist, writer, and broadcaster. He’s a Lecturer in Biology and Society at UCL, and has written and presented award-winning series and programmes for the BBC, including Radio 4’s Start the Week, Inside Science, and The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry with Dr Hannah Fry. He’s written an indefinable number of books including A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, the very humanist Book of Humans, the Sunday Times bestselling How to Argue With a Racist, and, most recently, Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics, published in 2022.

Tommy Sheppard MP

Tommy Sheppard has been the MP for Edinburgh East since 2015, representing the Scottish National Party. In May 2022, he was elected Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group, having been a Vice Chair for five years previously.

David Voas

David Voas is Professor at the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex, and was formerly Simon Professor of Population Studies at the University of Manchester. He is the national programme director in Great Britain for the European Values Study and co-director of the British Religion in Numbers project, an online centre for British data on religion. He serves on the editorial boards of the British Journal of Sociology and the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and on the council of the British Society for Population Studies.

Richard Wilkinson

Richard Wilkinson is Professor Emeritus of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham Medical School, Honorary Professor at University College London and Visiting Professor at the University of York. He wrote The Spirit Level with Kate Pickett, a bestseller now available in 24 languages. It won the 2011 Political Studies Association Publication of the Year Award and the 2010 Bristol Festival of Ideas Prize. He co-founded The Equality Trust (with support from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust). In 2013 Richard received Solidar’s Silver Rose Award and received Community Access Unlimited’s ‘Humanitarian of the Year’ Award. The Irish Cancer Society awarded him the 2014 Charles Cully Memorial medal, and he was the 2017 medalist of The Australian Society for Medical Research.

Programme

The below times are tentative and subject to adjustment

Friday 9 June

Start time End time Session
18:00 20:00 Humanists UK Convention Registration
19:30 21:30 Comedy night
21:30 23:00 Welcome drinks

Saturday 10 June

Start time End time Session
08:30 Registration
09:00 12:00 Morning sessions
12:00 13:00 Lunch
13:00 17:00 Afternoon sessions
19:30 00:00

Drinks reception and gala dinner

No dress code

Sunday 11 June

Start time End time Session
09:30 Registration
10:00 12:00 Morning sessions
12:00 13:00 Lunch
13:00 15:00 Afternoon sessions
15:30 ~17:00 Humanists UK AGM – members only

Host city

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Humanists UK Convention will make its first return to the North West of England since 2011, and we’re delighted to be coming to Liverpool.

Liverpool has a rich and varied humanist history, home to many prominent humanists as well as to organised groups of freethinkers for hundreds of years. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Liverpool had a positivist ‘Church of Humanity’, a thriving ethical society, and even one of only a handful of so-called ‘ethical churches’, led by socialist and suffragist Harry Youlden.

Liverpool was the birthplace of a number of remarkable humanists, including the city’s first female MP, Bessie Braddock, and George Melly, jazz singer and former President of Humanists UK. Other humanists who’ve made Liverpool their home have included the indomitable abortion law campaigner Stella Browne, Nobel Peace Prize-winning physicist Joseph Rotblat, and science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon. As this small sample shows, this year’s Convention continues a strong humanist tradition in this radical and remarkable city.

Getting there

Liverpool is well-connected from across the UK. You can reach Liverpool city centre by train direct from Birmingham in under 2 hours, direct from London in under 2 hours 30 mins, and in 3.5 hours from Glasgow or Cardiff – all faster than driving, even in the best conditions (according to Google Maps).

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Accessibility

AccessAble has produced a comprehensive Access Guide for Liverpool Guild of Students.

Frequently Asked Questions

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How do the food add-ons work?

  • Our base ticket does not include any food or refreshments, including teas or coffees. We separate these out to allow us to offer the ticket at as low a price as possible, to allow as many people to attend as possible.

    Years ago we took the decision to split out lunch and dinner from our standard ticket, to allow us substantially reduce the basic cost of attending our Convention. Attendees are welcome to add on coffees, teas, and lunches, and the Gala Dinner, or to arrange their own food from the range of shops and eateries in Liverpool City Centre.

Can I bring my lunch in from outside the venue?

  • No. As is standard, our venue’s terms and conditions do not allow food to be brought in from off the premises.

Is there a dress code for the Gala Dinner?

  • No. You should wear what you feel most comfortable wearing. Some people take a quick nap, freshen up, and have a change of clothes before dinner, while others will head out to see what Liverpool has to offer.

Can I attend just the Gala Dinner?

  • No. The Gala Dinner on Saturday night is open only to Convention attendees with the Gala Dinner add-on.

Can I attend the Gala Dinner without adding on lunch?

  • Yes. We have added now added the option for attendees join the Gala Dinner without having also bought a lunch add-on. This decision makes the dinner a more affordable prospect for more attendees. However, you must still be a Convention attendee to attend the Gala Dinner.

Can I get a printed programme?

  • Yes. By default, the option to receive a printed programme is selected when booking your ticket. If you leave the checkbox selected, you will receive a full-colour printed booklet at registration. In 2022, we took the decision to make our programme available by request, to cut down on unnecessary printing and waste, as in previous years we printed a programme for each attendee, and always had many spare by the end of the weekend. All attendees will be emailed a full-colour electronic version of the programme in advance of the event, and we will have simplified black-and-white schedules available at the venue.

Do you offer day tickets?

  • No. If we are able to offer day tickets at a later stage, they will be displayed on this page, and announced by email to our members and supporters.

Can I pay in installments?

  • No. Unfortunately our systems are not capable of processing payments by installment at this time.

Do you offer discounts?

  • No. Through splitting out lunch and dinner, we have reduced our minimum ticket price for everyone to allow as many people as possible to attend each year. Our most affordable ticket is still priced lower than for Convention 2015.


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Event policies

Cancellations

Bookings may be cancelled free of charge up to 120 days prior to the Convention start date (by 9 February 2023, inclusive). Bookings cancelled 60-119 days (by 10 April 2023, inclusive) from the start date will incur a 50% charge of the full price of the ticket. Cancellations made within 60 days of the Convention start date (from 11 April 2023, inclusive) will not be refunded, but may, at the discretion of Humanists UK and with no less than 21 days’ notice (by 19 May 2023, inclusive), be transferred to another eligible individual. Any refunds for ticket cancellations will be processed within two months.

Speakers

All appearances are subject to speakers’ work and other scheduling commitments.

Photography, video, and audio recording

Humanists UK reserves the right to photograph and record video and audio of all public sections of the Convention and to make public the footage as it sees appropriate. Please be aware that by attending Humanists UK Convention 2023, you consent to your voice, name, and/or likeness being used, without compensation, in any and all media, whether now known or hereafter devised, for eternity, and you release Humanists UK, its successors, assigns, and licensees from any liability whatsoever of any nature. If you would like to ensure that you are not captured in any media, please contact events@humanists.uk and we will do our best to accommodate you.

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