An international human rights lawyer and author, Alegre’s first book Freedom to Think highlighted the alarming erosion of the most fundamental of our human freedoms, the freedom to think, by technology, and was chosen by the Financial Times as a Technology Book of the Year in 2022. Her second book, Human Rights, Robot Wrongs: Being Human in the Age of AI, carries forward the inquiry of her first book in the context of AI. Besides technology, Alegre has worked on some of the most challenging legal and political issues of our time, including human rights and security, combating corruption in the developing world, protecting human rights at borders and the human rights impacts of climate change on small islands. Alegre is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance and Innovation (CIGI).

Canton is Director of Wild Writing at the University of Essex. He is the author of Grounded: A Journey into the Landscapes of Our Ancestors (2023), The Oak Papers (2020), Ancient Wonderings: Journeys into Prehistoric Britain (2017) and Out of Essex: Re-Imagining a Literary Landscape (2013), which was inspired by his rural wanderings in East Anglia. He has written for the Guardian, reviews for the TLS and Caught by the River, and is a regular on television and radio.

Dalton is a foreign policy specialist and writer who spent over a decade working in the UK Parliament and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as a special adviser and speechwriter, with a particular focus on human rights and international justice issues. She now works as a consultant on international political and humanitarian issues. A graduate of Oriel College, Oxford University, Dalton recently completed an MBA at Oxford’s Said Business School and published her first book, Raising Hare, last year.

Probably Britain’s best-known mathematician, du Sautoy is the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. Besides having won many awards and distinctions in maths, Marcus is a prodigious polymath whose bibliography includes several books about maths and science, including Creative Code. The latter explores the impact of AI and machine learning on the creative arts and mathematics. Marcus has also hosted several TV shows including the four-part landmark TV series for the BBC called The Story of Maths and collaborated with artists on multi-disciplinary projects in theatre and music. In 2004, Esquire Magazine chose him as one of the 100 most influential people under 40 in Britain. He received an OBE for services to science in 2010.

Inarguably the top English-speaking expert about Chinese gastronomy in the world, Dunlop trained as a chef at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine in the 1990s and is the author of seven books including, most recently, Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food. Besides winning the Fortnum and Mason Food Book 2024 award for Invitation to a Banquet, her laurels include four James Beard Awards in the United States, Fortnum and Mason Cookbook of the Year (2020), Guild of Food Writers Food Writer of the Year (2022), The Kate Whiteman Award (2009, 2013) The Andre Simon Award (2017) and the IACP Jane Grigson Award (2009). Fuchsia is a regular contributor to FT Weekend and other publications and to radio and TV shows including Ugly Delicious, Chef’s Table and Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, in addition to consulting to clients such as Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer and Williams Sonoma. Dunlop grew up in Oxford and was educated at Cambridge University, Sichuan University and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London.

Friedman is Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science and co-editor of the British Journal of Sociology. He co-authored The Class Ceiling: Why it Pays to be Privileged and authored Comedy and Distinction: The Cultural Currency of a “Good” Sense of Humour. His most recent book is Born to Rule, about the changing conception of class in British society, co-authored with LSE colleague, Aaron Reeves. The book was chosen by The Economist and The Times as one of the Best Books of 2024.

Lewis is an author, podcaster, and documentary filmmaker. His investigative writing and work focus on the space where art and culture intersect with politics and economics. His last book, The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World’s Most Expensive Painting, explores the fascinating story behind Salvator Mundi, a painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci that became the world’s most expensive artwork when it sold for $450 million in 2017. The book delves into the painting’s mysterious history, from its rediscovery in a New Orleans auction house in 2005 to its restoration, attribution controversies, and eventual sale. His podcast in the same vein, Art Bust, unearths the murkier side of the art world - forgery, market manipulation and cultural looting.

Britain’s most celebrated nature writer, Mabey has written over 30 books including, most recently, The Accidental Garden. Mabey has been awarded two Leverhulme Fellowships, and honorary doctorates by the universities of St Andrews, Essex and East Anglia. Among his numerous awards and distinctions, his biography about England’s first ecologist, clergyman Gilbert White, won the Whitbread Biography of the Year prize and Nature Cure, his book about recovering from depression through nature, was short-listed for three major literary awards, the Whitbread, Ondaatje, and J.R. Ackerley prizes. Mabey lives in the Waveney Valley in Norfolk.

Raised in a Catholic family by a mother who was a nun and a father who was a monk, Nixey is an author whose work centres on religion. Her first book, The Darkening Age, about the destruction of the classical world by Christianity, was an international bestseller that won a Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award and the Morris D. Forkosch Book Award for the Best Humanist Book of 2018. Last year saw the publication of Heresy: Jesus Christ and the Sons of God, about the competing versions of Jesus, not to mention other would-be saviours, jockeying for pole position in Christianity during the first millennium.

Ramakrishnan was born and educated in physics in India, before moving to the US to pursue a PhD in the latter. He quickly realised, however, that his true passion was biology. In 2009, he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for determining the precise atomic structure of the ribosome, in order to understand how genetic information is “read” to make the proteins it specifies. He is the author of two books, Gene Machine (2018), a frank memoir about his quest to understand the structure of the ribosome. The book is not just about his research but the culture of science, its competitiveness and collegiality, viewed through his experience as an outsider. His most recent book, Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality (2024) is about the biology of aging and death. He is a Group Leader of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.

An award-winning sociologist who has written extensively on social inequality, Reeves is Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and co-editor of the British Journal of Sociology. Reeves co-authored Born to Rule, the book about the changing conception of class in British society that has been named one of the Best Books of 2024 by The Economist and The Times.

Customarily termed “the cleverest man in Britain”, Sumption is a British judge and historian, who served as a Supreme Court Justice from 2012 - 2018. He is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Trials of the State, Law in a Time of Crisis, and Divided Houses, which won the 2009 Wolfson History Prize. The latter is the third volume in his five-part history of The Hundred Years War. His new book, The Challenges of Democracy and the Rule of Law, will be published in Spring 2025.

Willis is a features journalist and writer. She worked at Vogue for 15 years and at the Independent on Sunday. She was Associate Editor of Intelligent Life, the sister magazine of The Economist, where she wrote the Applied Fashion column. 2024 saw the publication of her first book, Life, Death and Getting Dressed: How to love your clothes…and yourself.

Hailing from Bungay, Suffolk, Wright is quite literally one of East Anglia’s great cultural treasures and one of the UK’s most riveting spoken word performers. Delivering his poems with an intensity and charisma that keeps audiences on the edge of their seats, Wright bases his poetry on his own life - as a poet, father and son. Wright is a regular on Radio 4, has won a Fringe First for writing, a Stage Award for performance, and four Saboteur Awards.