Speaker Portfolio
Welcome to our Speaker Portfolio.
Here you’ll find a list of academics, activists, personalities and community leaders in your area who share our goals to promote science, reason and secular values. You’ll be able to read through their areas of expertise and previous lecture topics to help find the perfect speaker for your next big event on campus.
All speaker bookings are subject to availability and must adhere to the Freethought Student Alliance’s guidelines and conditions for running a successful event.
If you’re a public speaker or community activist interesting in offering your services, get in touch with info@freethoughtalliance.org.au for more information or to have your bio added to the list.
NEW SOUTH WALES &
AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY
Russell Blackford
is a Conjoint Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Newcastle. He is the author of numerous books, short stories, academic articles, essays, reviews, and other writings. His research interests include philosophical bioethics, moral philosophy in general, legal and political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. With Udo Schuklenk, he is co-editor of 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).
Expertise: atheism, bioethics, Christianity, freedom of speech, history of religion, history of science, philosophy, religion and literature, science vs religion, secular ethics, secularism, separation of church and state.
Previous lectures: Atheists for Freedom of Speech, Living in a World Without Objective Values, NOMA No More, The “New Atheism”, Freedom of Religion and the Secular State, Why Atheists Should Speak Up, The Problem of Evil.
Dr Rachael Dunlop
is a campaigner for science-based medicine in Australia, with a special interest in refuting the claims of the anti-vaccination movement. In her day job, she works as a medical researcher with an interest in motor neurone disease and ageing disorders including heart disease and Parkinson’s disease. Rachael is a reporter for The Skeptic Zone Podcast and blogs at the Skeptics Book of Pooh Pooh. She is also a Vice President of the Australian Skeptics, and a member of Mystery Investigators science show for children. In 2010, Rachael won the Shorty Award in the Health category for the most interesting health and science information on Twitter. As an ex-graphic designer and copywriter, Rachael enjoys combining her love of science, art and social media as a means of communicating science to the public.
Expertise: alternative medicine, pseudoscience, science communication
Previous lectures: “Dr Rachie Reports: the adventures of a scientist in an alterantive medicine world”, “Diagnosis by Dr Google: Health misinformation on the internet & how to spot it”, and “Science Under Siege: addressing the public mis-understanding of science”.
Anthony Englund
is Reason Australia’s Secular Affairs Director.
Reason Australia is a voice for reason in Australia, a national umbrella organisation representing ‘free thought’ groups (atheists, humanists, rationalists, secularists and skeptics) and individuals who care about evidence-based reasoning and good science in public debate. Reason Australia aims to influence public policy and public opinion in favour of a secular society, freedom of inquiry and universal human values.
As Secular Affairs Director, Anthony is responsible for leading Reason Australia’s engagement on religious, secular and human rights issues. He co-ordinates policy and campaign development for secular matters and is the main point of contact for the organisation on those issues when working with other stakeholders including governments and the media.
Anthony is a consultant with over a decade advising governments, businesses and other stakeholder groups on policy and regulatory matters in the energy sector. He has qualifications in law, accounting and philosophy and was a prime mover behind, and first President of, Sydney Atheists Inc. Anthony is passionate about the use of evidence-based reasoning in public policy matters and is a strong advocate for a secular and compassionate state.
Expertise: Secularism, government policy, atheism
Fiona Patten
is the Convenor and founder of the Australian Sex Party and CEO of Australia’s national adult industry association, the Eros Association. She has had 20 years experience in advocating and lobbying for the rights of adult retailers, sex workers, HIV/AIDS groups and online businesses.
In 2008, frustrated and deeply disappointed with the increasing wowserism of the major parties, she decided to set up a political party dedicated to civil liberties, personal freedoms and curbing religious influence.
Averaged across all states, the Australian Sex Party outpolled the four religious parties at the last federal election, coming in fourth place in the Senate election. In the last Victorian State election she missed out on an upper house seat by 3,000 votes.
The Sex Party is the first political party in Australia to institute a specific policy platform against the influence of religion in society. Policies include:
· removing the tax exempt status for religious businesses
· Replacing chaplaincy programs with ethics classes
· Introducing a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse in religious institutions
Expertise: censorship, gay rights, adult entertainment industry, sex work, small party political strategies.
Richard Saunders
is an Australian skeptic, podcaster and professional origamist. He has received recognition by the Australian Skeptics with a Life Membership in 2001 for his contributions to the organisation. Saunders has been President and is currently co-Vice President of the Australian Skeptics and is the founder of Sydney Skeptics in the Pub. In addition, he has presented on skepticism globally, represented the Australian Skeptics on numerous television and radio shows and is the co-host of the Skeptic Zone podcast. Saunders is currently “The Skeptic” on Channel 7′s reality TV show The One, and is also a fellow of the Committee For Skeptical Inquiry (CSI).
Expertise: pseudoscience, science communication
Eran Segev
is the President of Australian Skeptics Inc. He is also a team member of the Skeptic Zone podcast, a regular contributor to the Skeptic Magazine, and a public speaker on matters relating to science, skepticism and critical thinking. He has a particular interest in education and in autism, and their intersection with science and skepticism.
Expertise: the scientific method, education, autism, skepticism in public policy, skeptical activism
Previous lectures: “Becoming a Skeptic”, “From scepticism about autism to capital-S Skepticism”, “SensaSlim, SLAPP writs, and Civil Society”, and more.
Max Walllace
is the Director of the Australia New Zealand Secular Association (ANZSA) and Publicity Officer for Australians United for Separation of Church and State. He completed a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and a Masters degree in Sociology at the University of Waikato. Max has been a tutor and lecturer in Sociology and Politics in Canberra for 20 years. He is the author of The Purple Economy (2007) and editor of Realising Secularism: Australia and New Zealand (2008).
Expertise: secularism, separation of church and state.
Previous lectures: “Secularism: Where is was, Where it is and Where it’s going”
QUEENSLAND
Chrys Stevenson
is a writer, blogger and historian. She contributed a chapter on the history of Australian atheism to The Australian Book of Atheism (Scribe, 2010). She has a BA and first class honours degree from Griffith University and won the University Medal for academic excellence. Chrys is currently researching a book which will refute the notion that Australia is (or ever was) a Christian nation. Chrys writes for her own blog, Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear, and has had several articles published via On Line Opinion.
Expertise: atheism, politics and religion, school chaplaincy.
Previous lectures: A History of Australian Atheism, Australia is not a Christian Nation, Christian Reconstruction and Nationalism: an Australian Context.
SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Scott Sharrad
recently completed a degree in Music Education at the University of Adelaide, it is from this direction that Scott Sharrad approaches the freethought movement. During his time at university, Scott was an active member of and a presidents of godless, the university’s atheist club for which he organised and ran numerous discussion groups. Being an educator, Scott believes there are no stupid nor wrong questions; if a person is taking time to ask questions then they deserve a respectful and thoughtful answer. It is only by engaging with people in this way that people can learn and better themselves.
Expertise: atheism, education
Previous lectures: “Active Atheists, who are we?”
VICTORIA
Lyn Allison
is a former Victorian Senator and leader of the Australian Democrats. She is a secondary school teacher by profession, and is now the director of eight not for profit organisations, mostly health related. She provides community groups with advice on lobbying government and the parliament. She currently serves on the committee of the Rationalist Society of Australia, was a speaker at the Global Atheist Convention in 2010, and was a contributor to The Australian Book of Atheism (Scribe, 2010).
Expertise: atheism, evolution vs creationism, euthanasia, feminism, school chaplaincy, secularism, separation church & state.
Previous lectures: Ever Wondered Why God is a Bloke? (Global Atheist Convention), The Value of Life & Death (Symposium on Death & Dying), What’s Wrong with the National School Chaplaincy Program? (Australian Council of State Schools Conference), We Should Keep Religion Out of Politics (Socratic Forum), We Would be Better Off Without Religion (Intelligence Squared Debate).
Jason Ball
completed his Bachelor of Arts at the University of Melbourne in 2010, majoring in Political Science. He served as President of the University of Melbourne Secular Society from 2008-2010, and is President and co-founder of the Freethought University Alliance. He also currently serves on the board of the Rationalist Society of Australia.
Jason is a contributor to the Young Australian Skeptics blog and produced the first season of their official podcast, The Pseudo Scientists.
As Media Spokesperson for the Atheist Foundation of Australia, Jason has made numerous appearances on both radio and television, including The 7PM Project, A Current Affair, ABC News as well as triple j’s Hack, Sunday Night Safran, and Breakfast with Red Symons on ABC Radio Melbourne.
Jason served on the committee of the 2010 Global Atheist Convention, and is currently part of the committee for the 2012 Global Atheist Convention.
Expertise: atheism, skeptical activism, running a student group,
Previous lectures: “A New Generation of Freethinkers is Among Us”, “Why Skeptics Should Target Universities” “Skeptical Activism 101″
Catherine Deveny
is a writer, comedian and social commentator best known for her work on 774 ABC Melbourne, ABC TV’s Q&A and as a columnist with The Age newspaper. She is in constant demand as corporate speaker, after dinner entertainment, panel member and guest lecturer. Her one-woman show “God Is Bullshit” was a sell out in the 2010 Melbourne International Comedy Festival and enjoyed a return season in 2011. Catherine is currently writing her seventh book, Tantrum With Reality which will be published by Black Inc Books in December 2011.
Expertise: atheism, comedy, euthanasia, feminism.
Dr Meredith Doig
is President of the Rationalist Society of Australia. Having spent most of her career as an executive in the private sector (manufacturing, mining and banking), she is now a company director and consultant. She is a Director of the Asian University for Women Support Foundation; a Councillor at the University of Ballarat; a strategic advisor to Finsbury Green Pty Ltd; a long time Moderator with the Cranlana Colloquium on Ethics and the Good Society; and a Facilitator at the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
Expertise: agnosticism, atheism, euthanasia, evolution, creationism and ID, feminism, history of religion, history of science, philosophy, psychology, secular education, secularism, separation of church and state, science vs religion.
Previous Lectures: The Emotionality of Belief
Dr Rachael Dunlop
is a campaigner for science-based medicine in Australia, with a special interest in refuting the claims of the anti-vaccination movement. In her day job, she works as a medical researcher with an interest in motor neurone disease and ageing disorders including heart disease and Parkinson’s disease. Rachael is a reporter for The Skeptic Zone Podcast and blogs at the Skeptics Book of Pooh Pooh. She is also a Vice President of the Australian Skeptics, and a member of Mystery Investigators science show for children. In 2010, Rachael won the Shorty Award in the Health category for the most interesting health and science information on Twitter. As an ex-graphic designer and copywriter, Rachael enjoys combining her love of science, art and social media as a means of communicating science to the public.
Expertise: alternative medicine, pseudoscience, science communication
Previous lectures: “Dr Rachie Reports: the adventures of a scientist in an alterantive medicine world”, “Diagnosis by Dr Google: Health misinformation on the internet & how to spot it”, and “Science Under Siege: addressing the public mis-understanding of science”.
Professor John Hayman
Expertise: Charles Darwin, history of science, evolution, creationism and ID.
Previous Lectures: ‘Diagnosing Darwin – the contribution of his Australian Experiences’. (Royal Society of Tasmania, Hobart, May 2011), ‘Darwin in Darwin – His Illness is no longer Infectious’ (Australian Society for Infectious Diseases, Darwin, June 2010) and ‘Darwin’s Illness Revisited’ (Aust Society for the History of Medicine, Perth, Dec 2009).
Professor Graham Oppy
is Professor of Philosophy and Head of the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies at Monash University. He is also Chair of Council of the Australasian Association of Philosophy. His books include: Ontological Arguments and Belief in God (CUP, 1996), Philosophical Perspectives on Infinity (CUP, 2006), Arguing about Gods (CUP, 2006), Reading Philosophy of Religion (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, with Michael Scott), and The History of Western Philosophy of Religion (Acumen & OUP, 2009, five volumes, with Nick Trakakis).
Expertise: atheism, agnosticism, theism, the existence of God
Fiona Patten
is the Convenor and founder of the Australian Sex Party and CEO of Australia’s national adult industry association, the Eros Association. She has had 20 years experience in advocating and lobbying for the rights of adult retailers, sex workers, HIV/AIDS groups and online businesses.
In 2008, frustrated and deeply disappointed with the increasing wowserism of the major parties, she decided to set up a political party dedicated to civil liberties, personal freedoms and curbing religious influence.
Averaged across all states, the Australian Sex Party outpolled the four religious parties at the last federal election, coming in fourth place in the Senate election. In the last Victorian State election she missed out on an upper house seat by 3,000 votes.
The Sex Party is the first political party in Australia to institute a specific policy platform against the influence of religion in society. Policies include:
· removing the tax exempt status for religious businesses
· Replacing chaplaincy programs with ethics classes
· Introducing a Royal Commission into child sexual abuse in religious institutions
Expertise: censorship, gay rights, adult entertainment industry, sex work, small party political strategies.
Ian Robinson
is President Emeritas of the Rationalist Society of Australia and for a number of years edited the Australian Rationalist Journal. After graduating from the University of Melbourne, he became a tutor in Philosophy, and then a lecturer in education at Coburg Teachers’ College. He worked for many years in curriculum development with the Victorian Education Department. He has written extensively on atheist and secular topics, as well as on education, and was a speaker at the 2010 Global Atheist Convention. He was Buckley in the cabaret group “Buckley, Hope and Nun” and has acted in and directed a number of plays including at La Mama. His fantasy story The Crypt of Fleeting Hope was published by Penguin and he wrote the chapter on Bruce Doull in Footy’s Greatest Players. He now spends his time writing serious polemics and frivolous plays. And serious polemics disguised as frivolous plays.
Expertise: atheism, Christianity, deism, evolution, creationism and ID, Islam, history of religion, history of science, new age, philosophy, pseudoscience, Rudolf Steiner, science vs religion, secularism, separation of church and state, spirituality.
Previous lectures: What is Rationalism?, The New Atheism and its Critics, That Atheism is more Reasonable than Christianity, Can an Atheist have a Religious Experience?, Atheism as a Spiritual Path, Why is there something rather than nothing?, If God is Dead, is Everything Permissible?, Intelligent Design, Is Faith Rational?, Islam and Rationalism, Chaplains in Schools Program, Rudolph Steiner and the Anthroposophy Cult, Children as Commodities: Adoption and Donor Conception, The Public Interest Defence, Blasphemy and Human Rights
Professor Peter Singer
was born in Melbourne in 1946, and educated at the University of Melbourne and the University of Oxford. He has been Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University since 1999, a position that since 2005 he has combined with an appointment as Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, attached to the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. An internationally renowned philosopher and acclaimed author of over 25 books on ethics, Singer is best known for Animal Liberation, widely credited with starting the animal rights movement. The Ethics of What We Eat, (2006), and his most recent book, The Life You Can Save: Acting now to end world poverty (2009) were both international bestsellers.
Expertise: abortion, animal rights, atheism, bioethics, euthanasia, philosophy,
Simon Taylor
loves the psychology of entertainment. After graduating in psychology at The University of Melbourne, he went on to win the Adelaide Magic Convention, become a finalist in Raw Comedy Competition, be a selected finalist in The Age Poetry Slam and win an improvised comedy Theatre Sports title in the Adelaide Fringe Festival.
Simon’s ability to excel in a broad range of intellectual capacities makes him a unique and engaging entertainer.
Simon has featured on ABC for his TEDxCanberra talk on the psychology of magic. He also writes a weekly column called Moral Melbourne for Beat.com.au and has created a skeptical comic strip called Flim-Flam.
Expertise: Entertainment, Psychology, Communication, Event Management
WESTERN AUSTRALIA
Daniel Midgley
is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Western Australia, and a member of the UWA Atheist and Skeptic Society. He is also a presenter on the radio show and podcast ‘Talk the Talk’ on RTRFM 92.1, and the author of the blog Good Reason.
Expertise: alternative medicine, atheism, Christianity, cognition, linguistics, Mormonism, new age, science vs religion, skepticism.
Previous Lectures: Cargo Cults, Chick Tracts, Are Science and Religion Compatible?, Atheism With a Capital ‘A’, The End of the World… Again, Examining Sathya Sai Baba, Science v Superstition: What’s the Difference? and Language Myths Busted.
Kylie Sturgess
is an award-winnning educator and researcher, specialising in the study of paranormal beliefs. She is the founder of Token Skeptic, the first solo-female skeptical podcast, and is dedicated to promoting critical thinking and science communication. Kylie is the ‘Curiouser and Curiouser’ columnist for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry website and regularly contributes to a number of publications worldwide. When not teaching high-school Philosophy, she travels world-wide delivering entertaining presentations on education, feminism, belief and skepticism.
Expertise: atheism, critical thinking, education, evolution, creationism and ID, feminism, new age, new media, philosophy, pseudoscience, psychology, science communication, science vs religion, skepticism.
Previous Lectures: Fleeced – The Rise And Fall of an Aries’ Belief In Astrology, Very Superstitious – From Crossing Fingers To Friday The Thirteenth, Feminine Intuition, Pseudoscience And How To Be More “Skep-chic”, Podcasting Philosophically – Critical Thinking Online, Token Skepticism – Adventures in Podcasting, Eight (and a Half) Rules To Blogging Your Atheism and Skepticism, Read Your Way To Becoming A Better Skeptic, Sain’t Misbehaving – Sex, Feminism and the Religious Right, Critical Thinking And Skepticism In The Classroom And Beyond.