Annie Laurie Gaylor is the co-founder and co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, a nonprofit organization advocating for atheists, agnostics, and secularism and protecting the separation of church and state. A third-generation freethinker, she co-founded the Freedom from Religion Foundation with her mother Anne Nicol Gaylor as a college student and served as the editor of Freethought Today for two decades. She is also the co-host of the weekly Freethought Radio and Freethought Matters, FFRF’s weekly TV show. She is the author of Woe to Women: The Bible Tells Me So and Betrayal of Trust: Clergy Abuse of Children, and editor of the anthology Women Without Superstition: No Gods — No Masters. For her work, she was awarded the American Humanist Association’s Humanist Heroine award.

Bill Cooke is a historian of atheism and humanism and Senior Editor of Free Inquiry. Based in Warrington, UK, he teaches philosophy and religious studies and holds a PhD in religious studies. His work examines how to live an authentic humanist life with minimal anthropocentrism, tracing the intellectual evolution of freethought from the Enlightenment to today. Having lived and worked in Kenya, New Zealand, the United States, and Britain, his global outlook informs his writing on secular ethics and rational inquiry. His books include A Wealth of Insights: Humanist Thought Since the Enlightenment and the Dictionary of Atheism, Skepticism & Humanism. His most recent book is H G Wells and the Twenty-first Century (Liverpool University Press, 2023).

David Nash is a professor of history, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHist.S) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), with expertise in the history of blasphemy and freethought. He’s taught at the universities of York, Leicester, and Oxford Brookes, with a focus on 19th century social, cultural, and religious history, and the history of law, crime, and deviance. 

David’s publications include Blasphemy in Modern Britain 1789-present (1999), Blasphemy in the Christian World (2007), Acts Against God (2020), and The Humanist Movement in Modern Britain: A History of Ethicists, Rationalists and Humanists, with Callum Brown and Charlie Nash (2022).

In connection with his work on blasphemy, Nash has advised the British and Irish governments, as well as the European Commission and the United Nations.

Edith Hall is a Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University and a Fellow of the British Academy. A leading authority on ancient Greek literature and culture, her work ranges across Greek and Roman history, philosophy, theatre, and the afterlives of classical ideas in the modern world. Edith is internationally recognised for her scholarship on class, gender, ethnicity, and social power in ancient sources, as well as for her commitment to making classics accessible and inclusive. She has published more than thirty books, appears frequently on radio and television, and works closely with theatres and cultural institutions worldwide. Awarded the Classical Association Prize in 2023, she is widely admired for combining rigorous scholarship with a passion for public engagement. 

Professor Francesca Klug is a Visiting Professor at LSE Human Rights and serves
on the Advisory Board of Sheffield Hallam’s Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice. Formerly Director of the Human Rights Futures Project at the LSE and a Senior Research Fellow at King’s College Law School, she helped design the model for incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law reflected in the Human Rights Act 1998. Francesca was a founding Commissioner on the Equality and Human Rights Commission, leading its Human Rights Inquiry, and has advised Parliament and the Ministry of Justice on equality and rights legislation. A trustee and advisor to several human rights and law reform organisations, she is the  author, among other publications, of Values for a Godless Age and A Magna Carta  for All Humanity, exploring the ethics of human rights and its impact on public and private life.

Lizzi Collinge is the Labour MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale, and Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group.

Elected to Parliament in 2024 after nine years as a Lancashire county councillor, she brings a wealth of experience from careers in catering, public health, project management, and mental health support. 

A proud humanist, Lizzi is committed to building a country where everyone can thrive—with access to good education, decent work, warm homes, and fulfilling lives. Her life as a mum, carer, low-paid worker, and public servant shapes her determination to represent her constituents with persistence, integrity, and compassion. 

Dr Lois Lee is a Senior Lecturer in Secular Studies at the University of Kent. Her research looks at how people make meaning in contemporary societies, with an empirical focus on non-theist and nonreligious people and populations. She also explores the role of nonreligious worldviews in public life. Lois has taken a leading role in developing the scientific study of nonreligion and non-belief, founding the field’s research association, the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network, and its first academic journal, Nonreligion and Secularism. Her books include Recognizing the Non-religious (OUP, 2015), The Oxford Dictionary of Atheism (OUP, 2016) and Negotiating Religion (Routledge, 2017).

Professor Michael Hunter, Emeritus Professor of History at Birkbeck, is the world’s leading authority on Robert Boyle and a foremost historian of early modern science. His editions of Boyle’s Works, Correspondence, and Workdiaries transformed scholarship on the Royal Society and seventeenth-century intellectual culture. His acclaimed biography Boyle: Between God and Science (2009) reshaped our understanding of Boyle as a conflicted, questioning figure. More recently, in Atheists and Atheism before the Enlightenment: The English and Scottish Experience (2023), Hunter examined the roots of unbelief long before the so-called “Age of Reason.” His wider research into science, magic, and religion highlights the currents of doubt, dissent, and freethought that underpin Britain’s humanist heritage. Elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2007, he is recognised internationally for his contributions to the history of ideas.

Nan Sloane is a historian, author, speaker and trainer with a focus on women’s roles in public life, particularly within politics and the Labour Party. Her forthcoming book Margaret Bondfield: Labour’s First Female Cabinet Minister will be published in 2026, following earlier works including Uncontrollable Women: Radicals, Reformers and Revolutionaries and The Women in the Room: Labour’s Forgotten History. An experienced facilitator, she has delivered political development and leadership training across the UK, the Balkans, MENA countries and Africa. Formerly a Leeds councillor, Labour Party organiser and Regional Director for Yorkshire & the Humber, she founded the Centre for Women & Democracy in 2006, leading research and policy work on women’s representation until its closure in 2018. Nan co-ordinates Labour Women’s Network’s training programme, including the Jo Cox Women in Leadership course and continues to prepare MPs, councillors and activists for public office.

Patrick McGhee is an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Durham, where he is developing his postdoctoral project, 'The Anatomy of Atheism in the Atlantic World, c. 1600–1800', with the support of a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, 2020–2023. He completed his AHRC-funded PhD on '"Heathenism" in the Protestant Atlantic World, c. 1558 – c. 1700' at the University of Cambridge in 2019. A monograph based on this project, entitled ‘The Reformation of the Heathen’, is under contract with Manchester University Press. He has published articles in 'Atlantic Studies', 'Studies in Church History', and 'Exchange', as well as ‘The Freethinker’ magazine, and has co-edited a Special Issue of the 'Journal of Early Modern History' entitled 'Global Protestantisms' (2024).

S.I. Martin is a British historian, author, and educator specialising in Black British history and literature. He has published both fiction and non-fiction, including the acclaimed Britain’s Slave Trade, written to accompany the Channel 4 documentary of the same name, and the historical novels Incomparable World and Jupiter Williams.

A tireless advocate for inclusive education, Steve works with museums, schools, and libraries across the UK to bring hidden histories to life, and founded the popular "500 Years of Black London" walking tours. He is also a patron of Humanists UK, championing humanist values, critical thinking, and the importance of diverse narratives in understanding Britain’s past.

Dr Susannah Wright is an Associate Professor in History of Education and Childhood in the School of Education, Humanities and Languages at Oxford Brookes University. She joined as Research Fellow in 2007, before becoming a Senior Lecturer in 2009. Susannah is a  Postgraduate Research Tutor for Education, teaches on the MA Education and supervises research students working towards their MPhil/PhD and EdD. 

Dr Wright's key research and teaching interests relate to the history of education and childhood, with a focus on themes of secularism, and war and peace. From 2014-2019 Susannah was one of three editors of a peer-reviewed journal, History of Education, and was appointed Hon. Secretary of the History of Education Society (UK) in 2020. Her monographs are Morality and Citizenship in English Schools: Secular Approaches, 1897-1944 (Palgrave, 2016) and Youth and Peace in England, 1919-1969 (Palgrave, 2025)

Tim Whitmarsh is Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. A specialist in the literature, culture and religion of ancient Greece, he is the sole author of nine books, including Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World and Dirty Love: The Genealogy of the Ancient Greek Novel. He is editor-in-chief of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (5th edition), and edits book series for Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. He was Principal Investigator for a major AHRC project Greek Epic of the Roman Empire: A Cultural History (2014–17), which will (among other things) produce the first complete set of translations of this relatively neglected corpus of Greek poetry. He has written over 80 academic articles, lectured on every inhabited continent, and contributed frequently to newspapers such as the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books, as well as to BBC radio and TV.