Contributors to the Freethinker

Emma Park is a freelance writer. She was editor of the Freethinker from January 2022 to March 2024.

View Posts →

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

View Posts →

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

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

View Posts →

Paul Fitzgerald

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.

View Posts →

Bob Forder

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.

View Posts →

Mohammed Jones

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

View Posts →

Khadija Khan

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.

View Posts →

Noel Yaxley

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.

View Posts →

Modus Tollens

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

View Posts →

Tehreem Azeem

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

View Posts →

Nathan Alexander

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.

View Posts →

Leo Igwe

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.

View Posts →

Rahman Toone

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

View Posts →

Stephen Evans

Stephen Evans is CEO of the National Secular Society.

View Posts →

Charlie Lynch

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).

View Posts →

Niko Alm

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.

View Posts →

Megan Manson

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

View Posts →

Richard Scorer

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.

View Posts →

Russell Sandberg

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.

View Posts →

Tony Howe

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).

View Posts →

Adam Wakeling

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'.

View Posts →

Kevin Yam

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.

View Posts →

Eliza Mondegreen

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

View Posts →

Zwan Mahmod

Zwan Mahmod writes about history, current affairs and politics. He has been published in the Fabian Society Review, DiEM25, and Ceasefire Magazine. He also writes a Substack newsletter, Zwan's Review, about a range of topics including foreign policy, economic democracy, and free speech.

View Posts →

Alejandro Sanchez

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.

View Posts →

Hina Husain

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

View Posts →

Piers Benn

Piers Benn lectures in philosophical ethics at Fordham University London and the Margaret Beaufort Institute, Cambridge. He is the author of Intellectual Freedom and the Culture Wars (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).

View Posts →

PooterGeek

Damian Counsell is the Freethinker's Webmaster. Please direct technical enquiries to him on 07967 026293.

View Posts →

Kevin Yuill

Kevin Yuill is emeritus professor of history at the University of Sunderland. He is also CEO of Humanists Against Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia (HAASE) and author of the book 'Assisted Suicide: the Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalization'.

View Posts →

Andrew Seidel

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'.

View Posts →

Jack Rivington

Jack Rivington is the Campaigns Officer for the National Secular Society. He graduated from the University of Manchester with a Masters degree in Philosophy and has a particular interest in linguistics and epistemology. He is a keen sailor and spends most of his spare time writing and producing music.

View Posts →

Porcus Sapiens

Porcus Sapiens is an occasional columnist at the Freethinker and a quirk of evolution.

View Posts →

Simon Cheng 鄭文傑

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.

View Posts →

Nath Jnan

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.

View Posts →

Andrew Whitehead

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.

View Posts →

Jack Stacey

Jack Stacey writes on culture and society, with an interest in secularism and free speech. His work has appeared in The Critic, The Mallard, Areo Magazine, and elsewhere.

View Posts →

Siniša Prijić

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.

View Posts →

Eoin Carter

Eoin Carter is a doctoral researcher in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge, where he is completing a PhD on Richard Carlile and other pioneers of the British freethought movement. He is a Council member of the National Secular Society.

View Posts →

Azad

Azad is the pen name of an anonymous Pakistani writer.

View Posts →

Jacques Berlinerblau

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).

View Posts →

Frances Lynch

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

View Posts →

James Lin Shan Hon

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.

View Posts →

Daryl Leeworthy

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).

View Posts →

Madeleine Goodall

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.

View Posts →

Frank Cranmer

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.

View Posts →

Nick Cohen

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.

View Posts →

Carolin Kosuch

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.

View Posts →

Jean-Luc Romero-Michel

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.

View Posts →

Ralph Leonard

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

View Posts →

Mathew Giagnorio

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.

View Posts →

Stephen Law

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'.

View Posts →

Gerfried Ambrosch

Gerfried Ambrosch is a heterodox writer and author with a PhD in English and American Studies/Literary and Cultural Studies from the University of Graz. He has intimate knowledge of radical social and political movements. His book 'The Poetry of Punk: The Meaning behind Punk Rock and Hardcore Lyrics', was published by Routledge in 2018.

View Posts →

Nigel Sinnott

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.

View Posts →

Rastine Mortad

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.

View Posts →

Matt Johnson

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).

View Posts →

Suyum Audu

Suyum Audu is an independent thinker and researcher in the humanities. He is the Founder of A&B Society: Centre for Creative Dialogue and Critical Inquiry in Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria.

View Posts →

Grayson Slover

Grayson Slover is a freelance writer and the author of 'Middle Country: An American Student Visits China’s Uyghur Prison-State'. Most recently, he was a Policy Analyst at the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), and the Managing Editor at FAIR Substack.

View Posts →

John Richards

John Richards is President of Atheism UK.

View Posts →

Ray Argyle

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

View Posts →

David Nash

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.

View Posts →

Tauya Chinama

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

View Posts →

Hank Pellissier

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.

View Posts →

Christoph De Spiegeleer

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.

View Posts →

Derk Venema

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.

View Posts →

Michel Petheram

Michel Petheram is a writer and translator who taught for many years for the Open University. He has written articles and book reviews on philosophy and published books on media ethics and JS Mill.

View Posts →

Anthony Grayling

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.

View Posts →

Helen Dale

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.

View Posts →

Paul Cliteur

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).

View Posts →

Keith Porteous Wood

Keith Porteous Wood led the National Secular Society’s campaign for secularism nationally and internationally as CEO from 1996 to 2017. Since then he has been NSS President. He also leads the Society’s work, including at the UN, combatting the clerical abuse of minors.

View Posts →

Edward Royle

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

View Posts →

Clare Stainthorp

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.

View Posts →

Sadaf Sepiddasht

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.

View Posts →

Shaukat Korai

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.

View Posts →

Ella Nixon

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.

View Posts →

Puja Bhattacharjee

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

View Posts →

Rachel Laser

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'.

View Posts →

David McGrogan

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.

View Posts →

Julius Weinberg

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.

View Posts →

Mienke de Wilde

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.

View Posts →

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.