5 Speakers, 15 Minutes Each - June 2023
Jeffrey Boakye is an author, broadcaster, educator and journalist with a particular interest in issues surrounding race, masculinity, education and popular culture. Originally from Brixton in London, Jeffrey has taught secondary English for fifteen years. He is the author of several books: Hold Tight: Black Masculinity, Millennials and the Meaning of Grime; Black, Listed: Black British Culture Explored; What is Masculinity? Why Does it Matter? And Other Big Questions; Musical Truth: A Musical Journey Through Modern Black Britain; and I Heard What You Said. He is also the co-presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Add to Playlist. He now lives in Yorkshire with his wife and two sons.
Jennifer Robinson is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London. She has acted in key human rights and media freedom cases in domestic and international courts. Jennifer has advised survivors, journalists, media organisations, advocacy and frontline services organisations on free speech and media law issues. Jennifer serves on the boards of the Bonavero Human Rights Institute, the Bureau for Investigative Journalism and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.
Dr Keina Yoshida is a human rights barrister at the Center for Reproductive Rights, an associate tenant of Doughty Street Chambers and a visiting fellow at the Center for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics. Keina has represented and advised victims and survivors of abuse, and has acted in important women´s rights and LGBT rights cases. Keina’s publications include Feminist Conversations on Peace (Bristol University Press, 2022) as well as academic journal articles in the European Human Rights Law Review, Human Rights Quarterly and International Affairs.
Jennifer and Keina are co-authors of the 2023 book How Many More Women? The Silencing of Women by the Law and How to Stop It.
Dr Janina Ramirez is an Oxford lecturer, BBC broadcaster, researcher and author. She has presented and written over 30 hours of BBC history documentaries and series on TV and radio, and written five books for children and adults. Her new book Femina offers a ground-breaking reappraisal of medieval history. It reveals why women were struck from our historical narrative, restoring them to their rightful positions as the power-players who shaped the world we live in today.
Mark Vanhoenacker is a commercial airline pilot for British Airways and the author of the international bestseller Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot and How to Land a Plane. A columnist for the Financial Times and a regular contributor to The New York Times, he has also written for The Times, The Atlantic, Wired and the Los Angeles Times. Born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Mark trained as a historian and worked as a management consultant before starting his flight training in Britain in 2001. He now flies the Boeing 787 Dreamliner from London to cities around the world. In his new book, Imagine A City, he explores cities across the globe and chronicles his personal, often complex, search for the meaning of home.
Lewis Dartnell is an astrobiology researcher and professor at the University of Westminster, and also an Honorary Research Associate at University College
London (UCL). He is the author of the bestselling books The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch and Origins: How the Earth Shaped Human History, which has been translated into 26 languages. He writes for the Guardian, The Times and New Scientist. Copies of The Knowledge exist on the surface of the Moon, and in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.