Alison Assiter
Alison Assiter is Professor Emerita of Feminist Theory at University of West England, Bristol. She is also a feminist and anti-fundamentalist activist. She writes on political philosophy, feminist thought, Enlightenment philosophy, and in particular on the philosophies of Kant and Kierkegaard. She is the author of a number of books, including Kierkegaard, Metaphysics and Political Theory: Unfinished Selves, Enlightened Women, Althusser and Feminism, and Revisiting Universalism. Alison is co-editor of the series Reframing the Boundaries: Thinking the Political with Rowman and Littlefield International. She is a Fellow of the RSA and Academician of the Academy of the Social Sciences.
Stephen Cowden
Stephen Cowden is from Melbourne, Australia, and has lived in the UK since 1986. He has been involved in left, anti-racist and trade union activism and he has worked as Social Worker from 1992. From 2001-2020 he taught on the BA and MA Social Work programmes at Coventry University, teaching sociology and ethics. His research is concerned with Social Work ethics, Critical Pedagogy and the Sociology of Multiculturalism and Religious Fundamentalism. In 2013 he published (with Gurnam Singh) Acts of Knowing: Critical Pedagogy In, Against and Beyond the University, In 2020 he took up the post of Academic Lead for Social Work at Ruskin College, Oxford. He tweets here.
Rebecca Durand
Rebecca Durand lives in east London and teaches English for Speakers of other Languages (ESOL) at a Further Education college. She is an activist and trade unionist.
Jane Gabriel
Jane Gabriel founded and edited the openDemocracy platform 50.50 from 2007 -2017, publishing women’s critical perspectives globally on social justice, gender and pluralism. Prior to joining openDemocracy she produced and directed 30 documentaries for Channel 4 and the BBC international current affairs series ‘Correspondent’. In the 1980s she was a member of the UK’s first all-women television production company, Broadside. She also worked for Granada TV and at Pacifica Radio KPFA.
Rosie Lewis
Rosie Lewis’s work, writing and politics are informed by her roots in anarcha-socialist punk DIY music, collectivist organising and activism. She has over two decades of experience advocating for and movement building with minoritised and migrant women, children and young survivors of violence and abuse and women subject to detention and incarceration. Rosie is currently Co-Director of Project Resist and works in national policy, research and consultancy roles.She has recently attained her Doctorate in Philosophy from Durham University.
Pragna Patel
Pragna Patel is the co-founder and co-director of Project Resist, an organisation focused on work with marginalised and vulnerable black and minority women and girls throughout the UK. She is the former director and founding member of the Southall Black Sisters (SBS) advocacy and campaigning centre where she worked from 1982 to Jan 2022 with a break in 1993 when she left to train and practice as a solicitor. Over those 40 years, she led SBS in some of its most important cases and campaigns on gender-based abuse, immigration and religious fundamentalism. She was also a founding member of Women Against Fundamentalism, and she has written extensively on race, gender and religion. She continues with her work in these areas at Project Resist.
Rosanne Rabinowitz
Roxanne Rabinowitz was a founding collective member of feminist zines such as Feminaxe and Bad Attitude during the 1990s and she continues to campaign around housing, health and austerity. She writes fiction, plus occasional essays and criticism. She is the author of Resonance & Revolt (short fiction collection) and Helen’s Story (novella), which were respectively shortlisted for the British Fantasy Society and Shirley Jackson awards. Rosanne lives in South London, where she works at several occupations including care work, copy writing and freelance editing; she relaxes with whisky, chocolate, strong coffee and loud music. You can sometimes find her at rosannerabinowitz.wordpress.com
Yasmin Rehman
Yasmin Rehman is a feminist, human rights activist and researcher. Yasmin is currently CEO at Juno Women’s Aid in Nottingham/South Nottinghamshire. In addition to her day job, Yasmin is often called as an expert witness in legal cases providing expert reports on faith-based abuse, honour-based abuse, forced marriage and polygamy.
Yasmin has worked for more than 30 years predominantly on violence against women and girls, race, faith and gender, and human rights. She co-edited a book, Moving in the Shadows: Violence in the Lives of Minority Women and Children, contributing two chapters on faith based abuse and polygamy. She is working on a second book examining polygamous and temporary marriage and its links to violence and abuse of women and girls.
Yasmin is currently a Honorary Research at University of Kent and a member of the editorial board of Feminist Dissent. She is a former Board member of Centre for Women’s Justice, a former fellow of the Muslim Institute, EVAW (End Violence against Women Coalition), National Secular Society Council and the Cross-Government Working Group on Hate Crimes.
Yasmin was awarded the Irwin Prize for Secularist of the Year 2017.
Gita Sahgal
Gita Sahgal is a writer and journalist on issues of feminism, fundamentalism, and racism, a director of prize-winning documentary films, and a women’s rights and human rights activist.
Amrita Shodhan
Amrita Shodhan is a researcher and historian. Amrita has worked with different feminist and human rights organisations in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chicago and London for the past thirty odd years. She wishes to put in more time into these commitments. She also teaches part-time at SOAS, University of London and writes about the history of Gujarat and western India.
Rashmi Varma
Rashmi Varma teaches English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick in the UK. She is the author of The Postcolonial City and its Subjects (2011) and of the forthcoming Modern Tribal: Representing Indigeneity in Postcolonial India. She has published numerous essays on feminist theory, activism and literature. She lives in London and has been a member of Awaaz-South Asia Watch and Women Against Fundamentalism.
Georgie Wemyss
Georgie Wemyss is Co-director at the Centre for research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging at the University of East London. She previously worked in youth work and adult education. Her publications include The Invisible Empire: White Discourse, Tolerance and Belonging, 2016 and Bordering, 2019.
Nira Yuval-Davis
Nira Yuval-Davis is a diasporic Israeli Jewish sociologist and an anti-racist anti-fundamentalist feminist. She is a founder member of Women Against Fundamentalism and the International Research Network on Women in Militarized Conflict Zones. Currently she is the Director of the research centre on Migration Refugees and Belonging (CMRB) at the University of East London.
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