Contributors to the Freethinker

Emma Park is editor of the Freethinker. She is also a freelance writer and former Classics teacher.

Daniel James Sharp is Assistant Editor at The Freethinker and an independent writer who has published in Areo Magazine, Quillette, the Washington Examiner, Free Inquiry, and other outlets. He also writes on Substack and is currently working on a book about Christopher Hitchens for Pitchstone Publishing.

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid is a political journalist and Pakistan correspondent for The Diplomat.

Paul Fitzgerald, a.k.a. Polyp, is a radical cartoonist. He is the author of 'Paine: A Fantastical Visual Biography' (2022), a graphic novel about Thomas Paine.

Bob Forder is the National Secular Society's historian, a bookseller, freethought book collector, and former history teacher. He is also a board member of Secular Society Limited, which (via GW Foote & Co) publishes the Freethinker.

Mohammed Jones (a pseudonym) is the author of the Jesus and Mo cartoons.

Modus Tollens is the Freethinker's correspondent for Diversity, Respect and Social Cohesion.

Khadija Khan is a journalist and commentator based in the UK. She writes for different publications, focusing on human rights, mainly women’s rights, as well as minorities and extremism.

Noel Yaxley is a freelance writer from England. He writes regularly for a number of publications, including The Spectator, City Journal, The Critic, Quillette, Spiked and Areo magazine.

Stephen Evans is CEO of the National Secular Society.

Rahman Toone (a pseudonym) is a writer and futurist. His day job is in the technology sector.

Dr Charlie Lynch is a research associate in history at Ulster University, Belfast. He is co-author, with Professors Callum Brown and David Nash, of 'The Humanist Movement in Modern Britain' (Bloomsbury, 2023).

Nathan G. Alexander is the author of Race in a Godless World: Atheism, Race, and Civilization, 1850-1914 and the co-host of the Beyond Atheism podcast. He holds a PhD in modern history from the University of St Andrews.

Tehreem Azeem is a freelance journalist and communication strategist. She is reading for a PhD in Communication Studies at the Communication University of China.

Dr Tony Howe is Reader in English Literature and Director of Graduate Research in the School of English at Birmingham City University. His research centres on the poetry of the English Romantic period. He is co-editor of 'The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley' (2012).

Niko Alm is an Austrian media entrepreneur. He used to publish VICE (Austria and Switzerland) and co-founded Addendum, a platform for investigative journalism. He is a founding member of the Austrian liberal political party NEOS, and was a Member of Parliament from 2013 to 2017. He is the author of ‘Ohne Bekenntnis’ (‘Faithless’), a 2019 book on secularism.

Richard Scorer is a lawyer who represents victims and survivors of abuse. He is the author of ‘Betrayed: The English Catholic Church and the Sex Abuse Crisis', and a vice president of the National Secular Society.

Russell Sandberg is Professor of Law at Cardiff University. His research interrogates the interaction between law and the humanities with particular reference to legal history and the legal regulation of religion and belief.

Frances M. Lynch is a singer and composer. She is artistic director of the contemporary music theatre ensemble, Electric Voice Theatre.

Porcus Sapiens is Faith Watch columnist at the Freethinker and a quirk of evolution.

Andrew Whitehead is a former BBC correspondent, an honorary professor at Nottingham University and the biographer of Freda Bedi. He is a member of the National Secular Society.

Simon Cheng is a British pro-democracy activist, human rights advocate, and exile from Hong Kong. He studied political science at National Taiwan University and the London School of Economics, and worked in trade and investment at the British Consulate General in Hong Kong. Due to his pro-democracy stance, he was detained by the Chinese authorities, hunted by the security police, and stigmatised by the state media. He is the founder and chairperson of Hongkongers in Britain, a non-profit expatriate organisation.

Dr Daryl Leeworthy is a historian and biographer. He is the author of several books, including 'Labour Country' (2018); 'Elaine Morgan: A Life Behind The Screen' (2020); and 'Fury of Past Time: A Life of Gwyn Thomas' (2022).

Frank Cranmer is an Honorary Research Fellow at Cardiff University’s Centre for Law and Religion and a Fellow of St Chad’s College, Durham. He blogs with David Pocklington at Law and Religion UK. He is a Quaker.

Keith Porteous Wood has been campaigning for secularism both internationally and with the National Secular Society since 1996. He has served as NSS president since 2017. He is fascinated by the history of secularism in France and its contradictions.

Siniša Prijić is a RE teacher in London and a developer of the KS4 and KS5 Exploring Secularism resource published by the National Secular Society. Originally from Croatia, he has been living and working in London since 2017.

Dr Carolin Kosuch is a historian at the University of Göttingen, Germany. She is currently researching and publishing on secularist approaches to death in the 18th-21st centuries.

Kevin Yam used to be a Hong Kong lawyer and democracy activist. He now lives in Melbourne, and is a Senior Fellow of Georgetown University’s Center for Asian Law, as well as an Editor-at-Large of Mekong Review, an Asian literary publication.

Nath Jnan (a pseudonym) has been working as a secondary school teacher in England for ten years. He has asked not to be named because of threats and reprisals that have been experienced by teachers who have crossed some parts of the Islamic community.

Hank Pellissier is the founder and programme director of the Humanist Mutual Aid Network. He launched the world's first atheist film festival in San Francisco in 2009, and the world's first atheist orphanage in 2015.

Stephen Law is Director of the CertHE and Director of Studies in Philosophy at the Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford. He researches in philosophy of mind, religion, language and metaphysics, and has published many popular introductions to philosophy, including 'The Philosophy Gym: 25 Short Adventures in Thinking'.

David Nash is Professor of History at Oxford Brookes University. He has published widely on the history of atheism and freethought as well as on blasphemy. He has given advice to the EU, the United Nations and the Irish government.

Helen Dale is Senior Writer at Law & Liberty. She won the Miles Franklin Award for her first novel, 'The Hand that Signed the Paper'. Her most recent novel, 'Kingdom of the Wicked', was shortlisted for the Prometheus Prize for science fiction. She writes for various outlets, including The Spectator, The Australian, and Quillette. She lives in London.

Ralph Leonard is a British-Nigerian writer based in England. His work has appeared in UnHerd, Sublation Magazine, Areo Magazine, Quillette and elsewhere.

Tauya Chinama is a Zimbabwean humanist, apatheist, human rights activist, and a part-time intern ethics lecturer at the Catholic University of Zimbabwe.

Derk Venema teaches law at the Open University of the Netherlands. He previously taught jurisprudence at Radboud University Nijmegen. He has published on law and war, transitional justice, legal ethics, Pastafarianism, and legal philosophy. He is not a Pastafari, although he fears the Flying Spaghetti Monster might not agree.

Nick Cohen is a journalist who has worked for many publications and was a columnist at the Observer. He is the the author of 'What's Left?' and 'You Can't Read This Book'. He lives in London.

Hina Husain is a Pakistani-Canadian freelance writer based in Toronto. Her work has appeared in Foreign Policy, The Spectator, UnHerd and the CBC.

Rastine Mortad ('truthful apostate') and Sadaf Sepiddasht are the noms de guerre of an Iranian couple living in Tehran. They have been actively involved in the long struggle against the Islamic regime. They write pseudonymously so as to be able to sustain their underground activities against the state, and because of the dangers that would ensue if they used their real names. Both of them studied in North America, and regularly travel back there.

Christoph De Spiegeleer is a Research Fellow at Liberas, a heritage and research centre for the history of the liberal movement and the freedom ideal in Belgium. He studied History at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and Leiden University. He obtained his PhD in modern history at the VUB.

Leo Igwe is a board member of Humanists International UK and the Humanist Association of Nigeria. He is an independent scholar with a doctoral degree in religious studies from the University of Bayreuth, Germany. He wrote his doctoral thesis on witchcraft accusations in northern Ghana and has research interests in witchcraft, atheism and non-religion, and transhumanism in Africa.

Edward Royle is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of York, and a leading historian of secularism, freethought and nonconformism.

Nigel Sinnott was the editor of the Freethinker from 1971–72. He has been a member of the National Secular Society since 1963, and is a life member of the Rationalist Association and the Conway Hall Ethical Society. Since 1976 he has lived in Victoria, Australia, where he has an extensive collection of freethought books.

Jacques Berlinerblau is a professor at Georgetown University, Washington DC. He has written many scholarly books and articles on secularism, including 'How to be Secular' (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and the recently released 'Secularism: The Basics' (Routledge).

Ray Argyle was a Canadian writer and author of 'Inventing Secularism: The Radical Life of George Jacob Holyoake'. He died in June 2022.

Madeleine Goodall is the Humanist Heritage Coordinator for Humanists UK. Since 2019 she has been researching the history and influence of humanism, atheism, and freethought in the UK to mark 125 years of Humanists UK. The major output of this project has been the Humanist Heritage website.

Eliza Mondegreen is a graduate student in psychiatry. She researches gender identity, with a focus on online trans communities.

A.C. Grayling is a philosopher, author, Master of the New College of the Humanities, and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford.

James Lin Shan Hon is a writer, activist and former teacher from Hong Kong. He was previously chairman of its Council on Professional Conduct in Education, as well as one of the directors of the Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union and founder of various NGOs, all of which were disbanded. He was twice arrested by the HK police but then discharged 'pending further investigation'; all his professional websites were deleted. Since 2018, he has divided his time between the UK, Hong Kong and New Zealand.

Mathew Giagnorio is a writer and researcher. He is the creator and host of the podcast 'Modes of Inquiry' and the founder of the Substack publication 'A Further Inquiry'. His areas of interest include illiberal social and political movements internationally, the incoherent narratives of the modern Left, topics pertaining to national security and counterterrorism, and the present resurgence of antisemitism.

Adam Wakeling is an Australian author and historian. His most recent book is 'Why the Enlightenment Matters: The Shift in Our Thinking that Made the Modern World'.

Jean-Luc Romero-Michel is a deputy mayor of Paris with responsibility for human rights, integration, and countering discrimination, and Honorary President of the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity.

Matt Johnson is a writer. His work has been published in Haaretz, The Bulwark, Persuasion, The Daily Beast, Quillette, American Purpose, and elsewhere. He is the author of How Hitchens Can Save the Left: Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter-Enlightenment (Pitchstone Publishing, 28 February 2023).

Paul Cliteur is emeritus professor of Jurisprudence at Leiden University. He was also a professor of Philosophy at the University of Delft and visiting professor at Hastings College of the Law, University of California. He is the author of 'The Secular Outlook' (2010) and 'Theoterrorism versus Freedom of Speech' (2019), and he edited 'The Fall and Rise of Blasphemy Law' (2016).

Dr Alejandro Sanchez is a Campaigns Officer at the National Secular Society. He previously worked as an NHS doctor and has an MA in Medical Ethics and Law from King’s College London.

Megan Manson is head of campaigns at the National Secular Society.

Andrew L. Seidel is the Vice President of Strategic Communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an author, and an attorney who has defended the separation of church and state for more than a decade. He has written books about Christian nationalism and religious freedom, and organised and contributed to the groundbreaking report, 'Christian Nationalism at the January 6, 2021, Insurrection'.

John Richards is President of Atheism UK.

Julius Weinberg is a British academic and a Trustee of Ormiston Academies Trust. He was formerly an NHS consultant, Vice Chancellor of Kingston University and Chair of Ofsted. He is a Council member of the National Secular Society.

Puja Bhattacharjee is an independent journalist based in Kolkata, India. She writes about health, science, policy, social justice, LGBTQ issues, art and culture.

Rachel Laser is the President and CEO at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and a lawyer, advocate and strategist. As senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, she founded and ran the Pharmacy Refusal Project, which challenged pharmacists who were refusing to fill women’s birth control prescriptions in the name of religion. She is the author of 'Uncovering White Privilege: A Primer'.

David McGrogan is Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. His research looks critically at international human rights law, with particular reference to how it serves to buttress the power of the state.

Clare Stainthorp is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Queen Mary University of London. Her current research focuses on the nineteenth-century freethought movement. Her book, 'Constance Naden: Scientist, Philosopher, Poet', was published by Peter Lang in 2019.

Ella Nixon is an art historian based in Cambridge. Her research concerns the transformative power of art, freedom of expression, twentieth-century female artists, and the role of the regional art gallery.

Sadaf Sepiddasht and Rastine Mortad are the noms de guerre of an Iranian couple living in Tehran. They have been actively involved in the long struggle against the Islamic regime. They write pseudonymously so as to be able to sustain their underground activities against the state, and because of the dangers that would ensue if they used their real names. Both of them studied in North America, and regularly travel back there.

Shaukat Korai is an investigative journalist and political reporter originally from Sindh and now based in Karachi, Pakistan. He focuses on human rights, religious minorities, and climate change.

Mienke de Wilde is a Dutch law student, playful opinion-maker and Pastafarian. In 2016 she applied for a driver's licence with a pasta strainer on her head, which was denied. This resulted in the first decision at the European Court of Human Rights about Pastafarianism.