Surya Monro is a Professor in Sociology & Social Policy at the University of Huddersfield, and Director of its Centre for Citizenship, Conflict, Identity & Diversity. Surya works in the fields of gender and sexuality, notably on LGBT and Intersex issues. She is the author of Gender Politics: Citizenship, Activism, and Sexual Diversity (Pluto Press 2005) and Bisexuality (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), and co-author of Sexuality, Equality and Diversity (Palgrave MacMillan, 2012) and Intersex, Variations if […]
Speakers and Panellists
previous speakers
Remi Joseph-Salisbury
Remi Joseph-Salisbury is a Presidential Fellow in the University of Manchester’s Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity, a trustee and organiser with the Racial Justice Network, and a steering member of the Northern Police Monitoring Project. He is the author of Black Mixed-Race Men (Emerald Publishing, 2018) and co-editor of the forthcoming collection The Fire Now: Anti-Racist Scholarship in Times of Explicit Racial Violence (Zed Book, 2018). He is also the ‘Race […]
Ella Whelan
Ella Whelan is a journalist and author of What Women Want: Fun, Freedom and an End to Feminism (Conor Court, 2017). She was the assistant editor at spiked and host of the spiked podcast between 2015 and 2018. Ella is a frequent commentator on TV and radio and writes forthe Spectator, The Sunday Times, the Sun, The Economist, Conscience Magazine and others. […]
Paul Waley
Dr Paul Waley is a Senior Lecturer in East Asian Geography at the University of Leeds. His research grows out of a strong focus on particular geographical settings in East Asia. His interests cover urban and cultural geography, both historical and contemporary, with a focus on large cities in China (in particular Shanghai and Nanjing) and Japan (Tokyo). He has published widely in leading urban studies journals. […]
Giles Blackburn
Dr Giles Blackburne is Associate Professor of International Business and Executive Director of The Business Confucius Institute at the University of Leeds. He teaches on a range of international business topics at all levels, including the economics of China, principles of international business, and intellectual property. Prior to Leeds, Giles was Director of the China-Britain Business Council from 2005 to 2016, Director of Chinese Studies at the University of Abertay […]
Austin Williams
Austin Williams is director of the Future Cities Project, and author of China’s Urban Revolution: Understanding Chinese Eco-cities (Bloomsbury, 2017) and 20 Chinese Architects (Thames & Hudson, 2018). He is also the China correspondent for the Architectural Review, contributing editor for AR Pacific Region, and writes occasionally for L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui. Austin is senior lecturer at Dept of Architecture, Kingston University, and honorary research fellow at Xi’an-Jiaotong Liverpool University. He is also the […]
Valerie Bryson
Valerie Bryson is Professor Emerita of Politics (ie officially retired but still academically active) at the University of Huddersfield. She has published extensively on feminist theory and politics, and her work has been translated into Arabic, Russian, Japanese and Greek. Her books include Feminist Political Theory (latest, extensively revised, edition 2016), Gender and the Politics of Time (2007) and Feminist Debates (1999). She taught and researched at a number of UK universities before […]
Joanna Williams
Joanna Williams is an author, academic and the education editor of the online magazine spiked. Her latest book, Women Versus Feminism was published in October 2017. Her previous books are Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity (2016) and Consuming Higher Education: why learning can’t be bought (2012). Joanna taught in schools, further and higher education for over twenty years, most recently as director of the University of Kent’s Centre for the Study […]
Wendy Earle
Dr Wendy Earle writes on the arts and culture for spiked and is convenor of the Academy of Ideas Arts & Society Forum, which promotes open and open-ended discussion of the arts and culture and of the place of arts and culture in society. She works at Birkbeck, University of London, to promote knowledge exchange and public engagement with research in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Previously she […]
Leanne Buchan
Leanne Buchan works for Leeds City Council‘s Culture & Sport team, alongside running her own freelance cultural consultancy. She led the development of the Leeds Culture Strategy and the associated Delivery Plan for the city pioneering a co-produced, open-sourced approach. She is also the Leeds 2023 team lead for Marketing, Communications & Artistic Projects. Leanne’s professional interests explore how culture can be used as a catalyst for […]