AC Grayling Keynote Speaker

He has written about the work of Descartes, Berkeley, Russell, Wittgenstein and Quine, the scientific revolution of the 17th Century, the Enlightenment period, and the evolution of conceptions of rights during the modern period. He has published “The Good Book”, “Ideas That Matter”, “Liberty in the Age of Terror”, “To Set Prometheus Free”, “The God Argument”, “Friendship” and “The Challenge of Things”, and his most recent books, “Discriminations: Making Peace in the Culture Wars” (2025) and “For The People: Fighting Authoritarianism, Saving Democracy” (2025), to name a few. Grayling is also a frequent contributor to the Literary Review, the Observer, Independent on Sunday, the Times Literary Supplement, Index on Censorship and New Statesman. He is also a frequent broadcaster on BBC Radio 4, 3 and the World Service. He was also, for a number of years, a columnist for The Guardian. In 2013, he was awarded the Forkosch Literary Prize and in 2015, the Bertrand Russell Award.

Grayling sits on the editorial boards of several academic journals, including being appointed as director and contributor at Prospect magazine from its foundation until 2016.

His philosophical work focuses on the problems of scepticism and epistemology with questions about ‘meaning’ within the philosophy of language and logic. A principal theme in his work considers metaphysics, relating to what exists. Until 2011, he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is also a Supernumerary Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford and in 2003 he was a judge on the Man Booker prize. He then was appointed Chairman of the Judges for the 2014 Man Booker Prize and proceeded to be a judge on the Wellcome Trust Book Prize and the Art Fund prize. Additionally, he was a chairman of June Fourth, a human rights group concerned with China, and is a representative to the UN Human Rights Council for the International Humanist and Ethical Union.