Officers and Founders

Toby Young

Founder and Director

Toby Young is a British journalist and former Director of the New Schools Network, a free schools charity. In addition to being the founder and General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, he is an associate editor of the Spectator and the editor-in-chief of the Daily Sceptic.

Prof Nigel Biggar

Chair

Nigel Biggar is the Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford. He is the author of several books, including Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning.

Douglas Murray

Director

Douglas Murray is an author and journalist based in Britain. In addition to being an associate editor of the Spectator, he is the author of several books, including, most recently, The War on the West.

Luke Johnson

Director

Luke Johnson is a director of Gail’s Bakeries, Brompton Bicycles and chairman of the Brighton Pier Group. He is chairman of The Almeida Theatre and former chairman of Channel 4 Television, the RSA and the Institute of Cancer Research.

Former Directors, Founders, etc.

Inaya Folarin Iman

Founding Director 2020-21

Inaya Folarin Iman is a freelance journalist and former project manager at Index on Censorship. She uses her work to advocate for democracy and individual liberty.

Dr Radomir Tylecote

Co-Founder, Founding Director 2020-21

Dr Radomir Tylecote is the Director of Research at the Legatum Institute. Radomir was formerly a member of the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), where he was an external advisor to HM Treasury.

Ian Rons

Co-Founder, Honorary President

Company Staff

Toby Young

General Secretary

Sigrun Olafsdottir

Chief Operating Officer

Tracy-Jane Afriyie

Director of Development

Charles Daniel

Director of Digital Content and Marketing

Dr Bryn Harris

Chief Legal Counsel

Thomas Harris

Director of Data and Impact

Fraser Hudghton

Director of Case Management and FSU Scotland

Dr Benjamin Jones

Director of Case Operations and Outreach

Tim Cruddas

Case Officer

Dr Jan Macvarish

Education and Events Director

Karolien Celie

Legal Officer

Carrie Clark

Research Officer

Esther Hartley

Executive Assistant to the CEO and COO, and Membership Manager

Kate Howell

Events and Operations Officer

Samuel Armstrong

Legislative Affairs Director

Dr Frederick Attenborough

Communications Officer

Rebecca Butler

Legal Advisory Council

Rebecca Butler is a barrister at Kings Bench Chambers. She is also trained as a mediator. She has a large social media following and often appears on televison.

Paul Cavin KC

Legal Advisory Council

Paul Cavin KC specialises in fraud and corporate crime – particularly bribery and corruption but also money laundering, cyber crime, and proceeds of crime. He is regularly instructed by the CPS and the SFO and was on the Attorney General’s Criminal List for many years.

Geoffrey Davies

Legal Advisory Council

Geoffrey Davies, a partner in Keystone Law and has nearly 50 years’ experience as a corporate lawyer in the City of London.

Paul Diamond

Legal Advisory Council

Paul Diamond is a barrister who practices in the field of European law and is an expert on the law of religious liberty. He has acted in a number of controversial cases; including cases on free speech and Internet freedom.

Robert Dougans

Legal Advisory Council

Educated at Oriel College, Oxford, and an experienced litigation solicitor and High Court advocate, Robert now spends most of his time dealing with cross-border litigation but is always keen on the defence of free speech, having represented journalists, bloggers and newspapers in fending off people trying to shut them down.

Christopher Gelber

Legal Advisory Council

Christopher Gelber has over 25 years’ experience as a constitutional and commercial lawyer. He has degrees in Philosophy and Law from Cambridge and Sydney universities, and is passionate about free speech.

Dr Larry George

Legal Advisory Council

Larry George is dual qualified as a solicitor and barrister (non-practising) and is accredited as a Mediator. He has over 40 years’ experience principally in the areas of non-contentious corporate and commercial law but has significant dispute resolution, reputation management and litigation management experience. His academic research focussed on the use of media in group litigation and included the legal tensions between freedom of expression and other guaranteed rights, freedoms and protections.

Luke Gittos

Legal Advisory Council

Luke Gittos is a columnist for Spiked and a consultant solicitor at Murrays Partnership.

Prof Steven Greer

Legal Advisory Council

Steven Greer is Emeritus Professor of Human Rights at the University of Bristol Law School, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and Visiting Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for British Islam. He studied Law at the University of Oxford, Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and has a PhD in Law from the Queen’s University of Belfast. In a career spanning nearly 40 years he has taught and delivered numerous papers throughout the UK and abroad, including in China and at Harvard Law School. He has published widely, particularly in the fields of criminal justice, human rights, and law and terrorism. Two of his books were shortlisted for prestigious prizes. He has also acted as consultant/advisor to various organizations, written for The Guardian, The Times, The Irish Times, and The Belfast Telegraph, and appeared on numerous radio and TV stations, including in Pakistan.

Gareth Hughes

Legal Advisory Council
 

Gareth is a barrister and Partner at Keystone Law and has practised in the field of public law for 30 years and more particularly in planning law and licensing and gambling law for which he is recognised in both Legal 500 and Chambers as one of the top ten leading practitioners in London. He has also been an elected councillor and was a parliamentary candidate in the 2010 General Election.

John Jolliffe

Legal Advisory Council

John Jolliffe is a barrister who practises across public and regulatory law. He has acted in dozens of cases before the High Court and the Court of Appeal.

Spencer Keen

Legal Advisory Council

Spencer Keen is an advocate with a broad practice. His main specialisms are employment, commercial law and European law. He appears regularly in the High Court, Employment Tribunal and appellate courts and tribunals.

Jaan Larner

Jaan Larner is a corporate partner at Keystone Law with over 20 years professional experience.

Graham Lodge

Legal Advisory Council

After some years in banking and commerce, Graham Lodge was called to the Bar in 1971 and practised until 2007 in civil, family, employment and criminal law. He set up a trade union called the Bar Union, since discontinued.

Lord Macdonald of River Glaven Kt KC

Legal Advisory Council

One of the UK’s leading criminal, international and regulatory lawyers, Ken Macdonald KC was called to the Bar in 1978 and elected Chairman of the Criminal Bar Association in 2003. A founder member of Matrix Chambers, he served as Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales between 2003-2008. In 2007, he was knighted for services to the law, and in 2010 he was appointed to the House of Lords, where he sits as a crossbencher. He is a former Visiting Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and was Warden of Wadham College Oxford from 2012-2021. He is presently Chair of the Orwell Foundation, which awards the UK’s premier prizes for journalism and political writing, and President of the Howard League for Penal Reform. In his spare time, Ken Macdonald presents Double Jeopardy, a law and politics podcast.

James Montgomery

Legal Advisory Council

James Montgomery has 30 years experience in the courtroom defending individual rights. He is a member of the New York State Bar and also the English Bar.

Dr Wanjiru Njoya

Legal Advisory Council

Dr Wanjiru Njoya is a former Rhodes Scholar (St Edmunds College Cambridge and Kenya, 1998). She teaches law at the University of Exeter. She is the author of Economic Freedom and Social Justice: The Classical Ideal of Equality in Contexts of Racial Diversity, a book which argues that equality law must have regard to individual liberty, fundamental human freedoms and the broader welfare of society.

Peter Smith

Legal Advisory Council

Peter Smith is a barrister based in Dubai with experience of media litigation including defamation, malicious falsehood, the misuse of private information and data protection litigation.

Prof Andrew Tettenborn

Legal Advisory Council

Andrew Tettenborn is Professor of Commercial Law at Swansea University (previously Cambridge and Exeter), who also teaches and lectures in Europe and the Far East. A member of the Heterodox Academy, he writes from time to time for Spiked, the Catholic Herald and other publications on freedom of speech issues.

Prof Raymond Wacks

Legal Advisory Council

Raymond Wacks, Emeritus Professor of Law and Legal Theory, is a leading authority on privacy and media freedom. He has published numerous books on this and other legal subjects which have been translated into a dozen languages.

Patrick Way KC

Legal Advisory Council

Patrick Way KC qualified as a solicitor and was a partner in two London law firms before being called to the Bar and then taking silk. He has advised and represented a wide range of clients at all levels of the English legal system. He is passionate about the need to protect and enforce freedom of speech particularly as this fundamental right seems currently to be under threat.

Paul Yowell

Legal Advisory Council

Paul Yowell is the Benn Fellow and Tutor in Law at Oriel College and Associate Professor of Law at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Constitutional Rights and Constitutional Design: Moral and Empirical Reasoning in Judicial Review and co-author of Legislated Rights: Securing Human Rights Through Legislation.  

Advisory Council

Dr John Armstrong

Advisory Council

John Armstrong is a Reader in Financial Mathematics at King’s College London. His current research interests are applications of geometry to stochastic processes and mathematical finance and collective pension schemes.

Prof Timothy Bates

Advisory Council

Timothy Bates is Professor of Individual Differences in Psychology at Edinburgh University.
 

Dr Jaspreet Singh Boparai

Advisory Council

Jaspreet Singh Boparai is a classicist and art historian, and a contributor to Quillette.

Nick Dixon

Advisory Council

Nick Dixon is a comedian and writer. He has appeared on Comedy Central and written articles for publications such as Spiked and Free Market Conservatives

Dr Andrew Doyle

Advisory Council

Andrew Doyle holds degrees in English and a doctorate in Early Renaissance Poetry from Wadham College, Oxford. He is a Visiting Research Fellow at Queen’s University, Belfast, and the creator of Titania McGrath.

Nic Elliott

Advisory Council

Nic is the CTO of Evolving Networks, a technologist and consultant with experience delivering IT solutions across the private and public sectors. He is also co-host of the Sounding Board podcast on free speech, free markets and free trade.

Simon Evans

Advisory Council

Simon Evans has been a stand up comedian for 25 years. He is a regular on Radio Four’s The News Quiz and has written and presented five series of his own Radio Four show, Simon Evans Goes to Market.

Francis Foster

Advisory Council

Francis Foster is a comedian and teacher. He is the co-presenter of the popular YouTube channel Triggernometry.

Claire Fox, Baroness Fox of Buckley

Advisory Council

Claire Fox is a broadcaster and writer. She is the Director of the Academy of Ideas, a board member of the international debate network Time To Talk, and a convenor of the Battle of Ideas festival.

Dominic Frisby

Advisory Council

Dominic is a financial writer and a comedian. His writes a weekly investment column for MoneyWeek and his most recent book is Daylight Robbery: How Tax Shaped Our Past and Will Change Our Future (2020). As a comedian he is perhaps best known for the song 17 Million F*ck-Offs.

Mark Gallagher

Advisory Council

Mark Gallagher founded Pagefield Communications. He specialises in campaigning, PR, public and regulatory affairs, and issues and crisis management.

David Goodhart

Advisory Council

David Goodhart is a British journalist, commentator, and author. He is the founder and former Editor of Prospect magazine.

Prof Matthew Goodwin

Advisory Council

Matthew Goodwin is a British academic who is currently Professor of Politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent, and Associate Fellow at Chatham House.

Dr David Green

Advisory Council

David G. Green is an author and the Founder and Director of Civitas. His most recent book is entitled The Demise of the Free State: Why democracy and the EU don’t mix.

Prof James Hankins

Advisory Council

James Hankins is a professor in the History Department of Harvard University, the General Editor of The I Tatti Renaissance Library and the Associate Editor of the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum.

Julia Hartley-Brewer

Advisory Council

Julia Hartley-Brewer is the breakfast show presenter on talkRADIO. A former political editor of the Sunday Express, she has worked at LBC, the Guardian and the London Evening Standard, as well as being a regular guest on BBC Question Time and Sky News. She has been an outspoken defender of freedom of speech for many years.

Prof Dennis Hayes

Advisory Council

Dennis Hayes is Professor of Education at the University of Derby and the Director of the campaign group Academics For Academic Freedom. His latest book is entitled The Death of Academic Freedom: Free speech and censorship on campus.

Inaya Folarin Iman

Advisory Council

Inaya Folarin Iman is a freelance journalist and former project manager at Index on Censorship. She uses her work to advocate for democracy and individual liberty.

Prof Jeremy Jennings

Advisory Council

Jeremy Jennings is an English political theorist and Professor of Political Theory at King’s College London. He is predominantly interested in the history of political thought, and is the founding editor of The European Journal of Political Theory.

Dr Helen Joyce

Advisory Council

Dr Helen Joyce is the author of the best-selling book Trans, named by the Spectator as one of the best books of the year in 2021. Until 2022 she was the Britain editor of the Economist. She has a PhD in mathematics from University College London.

Prof Lee Jussim

Advisory Council

Lee Jussim is an American social psychologist, researching the fields of person perception, stereotype accuracy and bias. He also helped found the Heterodox Academy.

Prof Eric Kaufmann

Advisory Council

Eric Kaufmann is a Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is a specialist on Orangeism in Northern Ireland, nationalism, political demography and demography of the religious/irreligious.

Konstantin Kisin

Advisory Council

Konstantin Kisin is a Russian-British comedian, podcaster, writer and social commentator. He is the co-presenter of the popular YouTube channel Triggernometry.

Claire Lehmann

Advisory Council

Claire Lehman is an Australian journalist and the founding editor of Quillette. She holds a degree in psychology and English from the University of Adelaide.

Mark Littlewood

Advisory Council

Mark Littlewood is the Director General of the libertarian free-market think tank The Institute of Economic Affairs. He has formerly been the Chief Press Spokesman for the Liberal Democrats and the Pro-Euro Conservative Party and was an advisor to Prime Minister David Cameron.

Sumantra Maitra

Advisory Council

Dr. Sumantra Maitra is a Non-Resident Fellow at the James G Martin Center and an Early Career Member at the Royal Historical Society. He is also a Senior Contributor to The Federalist and a columnist for The National Interest.

Jon Moynihan

Advisory Council

Jon Moynihan OBE is a British businessman who served as the CEO and Executive Chairman of PA Consulting Group.

Dr James Orr

Advisory Council

Dr James Orr is a University Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge. He entered academia after a legal career in corporate finance.

Dr Pamela Paresky

Advisory Council
 
Pamela Paresky has taught at the University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, and the US Air Force Academy. She writes for Psychology Today online, contributes to other publications, and served as chief researcher and in-house editor for The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.
 

Allison Pearson

Advisory Council

Born in South Wales and educated at Cambridge University, Allison Pearson is an award-winning journalist and an international bestselling novelist. Her books have been translated into 32 languages. Allison is a columnist for the Daily Telegraph and writes for many other publications, both in the UK and the US.

Prof Robert Plomin

Advisory Council

Robert Plomin is an American psychologist and geneticist at King’s College London best known for his work in twin studies and behaviour genetics.

Prof Michael Rainsborough

Advisory Council

Michael Rainsborough is Professor of Strategic Theory at King’s College London. He is a former Head of the Department of War Studies. He is a specialist in the ideas of  dissent and resistance. Among his numerous writings he is co-author of Sacred Violence: Political Religion in a Secular Age (with David Martin Jones).

Matt Ridley

Advisory Council

Matt Ridley is an author, a journalist and a Conservative Peer. His books have won several awards and sold over a million copies worldwide, the latest of which is How Innovation Works.

Andrew Roberts

Advisory Council

Andrew Roberts is a Visiting Professor at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, a Roger and Martha Mertz Visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a Lehrman Institute Distinguished Lecturer at the New York Historical Society.

Prof Abhishek Saha

Abhishek Saha is a Professor of Mathematics at Queen Mary University of London who is known for his research contributions in number theory. He also has a long-standing interest in individual liberty, free speech and academic freedom.

Juliet Samuel

Advisory Council

Juliet Samuel is a columnist at The Telegraph. She previously covered finance and business at The Times, The Wall Street Journal and City A.M.

Benjamin Schwarz

Advisory Council

Benjamin Schwarz is an American journalist and author. He is the former national and literary editor of The Atlantic magazine.

Andy Shaw

Advisory Council

Andy Shaw is the co-founder (with Andrew Doyle) of London’s free-thinking comedy club, Comedy Unleashed. The club hosts comedians who challenge conventional thinking and make us think as well as laugh.

Lionel Shriver

Advisory Council

An American writer of longstanding residence in Britain, Lionel Shriver is the author of thirteen novels and one collection of short fiction. She’s a widely published journalist, currently with a fortnightly column in the Spectator.

Dr Michael Shermer

Advisory Council

Dr Michael Shermer is the Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon podcast, a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University and the author of a number of New York Times bestselling books.

Jim Sillars

Advisory Council

James Sillars is a Scottish politician and a leading figure in the campaign for Scottish independence. Sillars served as a Labour Party MP for South Ayrshire from 1970 to 1976. He founded and led the Scottish Labour Party in 1976, continuing as MP for South Ayrshire until he lost the seat in 1979. Sillars joined the Scottish National Party in 1980 and later served as MP for Glasgow Govan after winning a by-election in 1988, and was Deputy Leader of the Scottish National Party.

Paul Staines

Advisory Council

Paul Staines is the Editor-in-Chief of the Guido Fawkes website.

Prof David Starkey

Advisory Council

David Starkey is an English constitutional historian and a well-known radio and television personality.

Prof Doug Stokes

Advisory Council

Doug Stokes is Professor of International Security and Strategy at the University of Exeter.

Dr Zoe Strimpel

Advisory Council

Zoe Strimpel is a British journalist, writer, commentator, and historian of gender and relationships in modern Britain. She is a columnist for The Sunday Telegraph.

Dr Radomir Tylecote

Advisory Council

Dr Radomir Tylecote is a Fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs. Radomir was formerly a member of the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), where he was an external advisor to HM Treasury. He was also a co-founder of the Free Speech Union and Research Director.

Dr Joanna Williams

Advisory Council

Joanna Williams is the founder of the think tank Cieo and director of the Freedom, Democracy and Victimhood Project at Civitas. She is an author, commentator and a columnist at Spiked.

Dr Tim Williams

Advisory Council

Tim Williams is a management consultant based in Sydney. Before moving to Australia, he worked as a special advisor to various Labour ministers in the Blair and Brown Governments and was CEO of the Thames Gateway London Partnership.

Scottish Advisory Council

Tom Burns

Scottish Advisory Council

Tom Burns is a full-time train driver and former ASLEF official.

Joanna Cherry KC MP

Scottish Advisory Council

An SNP MP since 2015, Joanna Cherry KC has served as Justice spokesperson for the SNP Group at Westminster and is a practising Scottish Advocate. 

Puneet Dwivedi

Scottish Advisory Council

Puneet Dwivedi is a former Vice President for Scotland in the Hindu Forum Britain.

Murdo Fraser MSP

Scottish Advisory Council

Murdo Fraser has been MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife since 2001. He is currently the Scottish Conservatives spokesman on Covid Recovery, having previously held a variety of roles in the Party, including Deputy Leader.

Jamie Gillies

Scottish Advisory Council

Jamie Gillies was a leader of the Free To Disagree Campaign which led the opposition to the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill.

Brent Haywood

Scottish Advisory Council

Brent Haywood is a partner and solicitor advocate at Lindsays LLP.  He has been in private practice for 30 years covering commercial disputes and public law. He was involved in the Judicial Review that saw some Coronavirus regulations in Scotland declared unlawful.

Peter Kearney

Scottish Advisory Council

Peter Kearney is the Director of Communications for the Catholic Church in Scotland.

Penny Lewis

Scottish Advisory Council

Penny Lewis is a Lecturer in Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Dundee.

Jenny Lindsay

Scottish Advisory Council

Jenny Lindsay is a writer, poet and performer, who is also an award-winning programmer of literary events. She won a John Byrne Award for Critical Thinking in 2020.
 

Iain Macwhirter

Scottish Advisory Council

Iain Macwhirter is an award-winning political columnist for the Herald and the author of several books including Disunited Kingdom. He is a former Rector of Edinburgh University.

Lindsay Paterson

Scottish Advisory Council

Lindsay Paterson is Professor of Education Policy at Edinburgh University.

Jim Sillars

Scottish Advisory Council

Jim Sillars has served as both a Labour and SNP MP and is a former Deputy Leader of the SNP.

Kapil Summan

Scottish Advisory Council

Kapil Summan is the editor of Scottish Legal News, a daily news service for lawyers.

Neil Thin

Scottish Advisory Council

Neil Thin is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Edinburgh University.

Adam Tomkins

Scottish Advisory Council

Adam Tomkins is a former Conservative MSP and has been the John Millar Chair in Public Law at the University of Glasgow since 2003.

Tom Walker

Scottish Advisory Council

Tom Walker is a businessman who campaigned for Brexit in the 2016 referendum.