Hilary Lawson is a philosopher, renowned critic of philosophical realism, and editorial director of the Institute of Art and Ideas. His central work, Closure: A Story of Everything, has been described as providing “the first non-realist metaphysics.” Lawson is a rare example of a philosopher who goes beyond postmodern critiques of truth, to give a new positive account of how language works.

Abandoning the traditional idea that language refers to external reality, Lawson’s pioneering metaphysics outlines how perception, language and thought operate by “closing” the openness of the world. The theory has dramatic consequences for how we understand ourselves and our reality. It points towards a new way to do science, philosophy, and politics without clinging onto the illusion of objective truth.

Linda Martín Alcoff is a philosopher and critic of the Enlightenment idea that science and other forms of knowledge-gathering can be done from a neutral perspective. She argues that our politics, identities and bodies shape what we can know and whether the world even recognizes us as knowers. In 2021 she was ranked as the third-most influential philosopher in the world by Academic Influence, and in 2024 was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her book Visible Identities: Race, Gender and the Self won the Frantz Fanon Award and reframed how we think about identity.

Alcoff is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, former President of the American Philosophical Association, and Co-Director of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy.

Gunes Taylor is a training fellow at the Francis Crick Institute, the London-based biomedical research centre. Her research predominantly focuses on the the genetic formation of ovaries and testes. Gunes has debated the implications of genome editing in forums such as Fertility Fest, the Festival of Genomics, and Virtual Futures, and is fascinated by our cultural and ideological responses to our genetic makeup.

As a molecular biologist she uses many cutting-edge technologies to understand how reproductive systems are built. Güneş is a highly experienced public speaker, who has interviewed Richard Dawkins, Yuval Harari, Slavoj Zizek, Robert Plomin, Simon Baron-Cohen and Lord Robert Winston.