Who we are
Directors
Professor Dennis Hayes
Dennis is the Director of Academics For Academic Freedom. His is a visiting professor at the University of Buckingham and an Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Derby. He is the co-author of the controversial, best-selling book The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education.
Dr Ruth Mieschbuehler
Ruth is a programme leader for education studies at the University of Derby. Her publications include The Racialisation of Campus Relations and The Minoritisation of Higher Education Students: An Examination of Contemporary Policies and Practice.
Dr Vanessa Pupavac
Vanessa has started a new career as a translator. She has recently co-translated the major plays of Miroslav Krleža, the leading Croatian writer of the twentieth century. She is still a research fellow at the University of Notting where she was a senior lecturer at the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham. Her publications include Language Rights: from free speech to linguistic governance and other works on human rights and humanitarian politics.
Membership Secretary
Karyn Ambridge
Karyn is an experienced administrator and membership secretary with a background in database management, member communications, and organisational support. Alongside her professional work, she is also an artist and creative project-maker, bringing a thoughtful, design-minded approach to everything she does.
Administrative Assistant
Domna Salonen
Domna is a PhD student at Newcastle University, with an interest in complex interventions and mental health.
Website Administrator
Simon Belt
Simon helps small businesses punch above their weight by deploying market leading technologies. Businesses he supports take on the challenges of a global market on equal terms with larger businesses and institutions through his Managed IT Services company, Simply Better IT. Having begun his working life within the very structured practises of the civil service and thereafter enjoying the opportunities available within the international outsourcing world, he now relishes the challenges businesses present by delivery the technology stack they need.
AFAF Advisory Board
Dr Shereen Benjamin
Shereen was a senior lecturer in primary education at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of The Micropolitics of Inclusive Education and a joint editor of The Politics of Gender and Education: Critical Perspectives. She has written on academic freedom and freedom of expression for the Times Educational Supplement and the Morning Star.
Dr Jim Butcher
Jim is a reader in the business school at Canterbury Christ Church University and author of three books on the politics of travel. He co-ordinates the Don’t Divide Us academics group. Jim has written on education, free speech and other matters on Spiked, Times Higher, Areo and elsewhere.
Tessa Clarke
Tessa is a free speech campaigner, and an award-winning journalist, documentary maker, media commentator. Among her publications are Restraint or Revelation? free speech and privacy in a confessional age and Disclosure: media freedom and the privacy debate after Diana. She is an alumna of the International Journalists’ Programmes (IJP, Germany).
Rachel Cutmore
Rachel is the national convenor of Student Academics For Academic Freedom (SAFAF) and the founder of ARU SAFAF, the first university-based branch of the group. She is an undergraduate law student at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge and an aspiring solicitor. Her interests lie in medical negligence, personal injury, and employment law with a focus on free speech related matters.
James Esses
James is the co-founder of ‘Thoughtful Therapists’ – a group of clinicians and trainee clinicians with concerns about the impact of gender ideology on counselling and therapy. He engages in advocacy, both written and oral, on the topics of sex, gender and free speech – particularly in relation to the medicalisation of children and the wider cultural, health, legal and political implications. He has been featured in articles within mainstream newspapers, including the Telegraph and the Mail. He has appeared on TalkRadio, GB News and numerous podcasts, including Triggernometry and the New Culture Forum. He also writes for the online publication, Spiked.
Dr Julia Gasper
Julia is an academic and writer. Her books include The Marquis d’Argens: A Philosophical Life and Elizabeth Craven, Writer, Feminist and European.
Richard Harris
Richard started as a secondary teacher, became a deputy head, and realised he had to move on. He then became a teacher educator in a number of universities, ending as Director of Teacher Education at the University of Hull. After a few years as Regional Secretary for one of the 2 big teacher unions, he remains active as one of AFAF’s legal advisors.
Professor Terence Kealey
Terence is a biochemist and is a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham. His publications include The Economic Laws of Scientific Research, Sex, Science and Profits, and Breakfast is a Dangerous Meal: Why You Should Ditch Your Morning Meal For Health and Wellbeing.
Professor Ellie Lee
Ellie is a sociologist of the family and parenting culture at the University of Kent and is the co-author of Parenting Culture Studies. She considers the upholding of liberal values by adults to be central to the effective socialisation of children. She is involved with colleagues at Kent in finding ways of promoting the centrality of academic freedom to meaningful campus life, for staff and students. She has spoken out against compulsory values training for students as antithetical to academic freedom.
Dr Diane Rasmussen McAdie
Diane is Commissioning Editor and Journalist for the independent news outlet UK Column. A former librarian and a former Professor of Social Informatics, she was pushed out of academia for her views. She is proud to be on AFAF’s Banned List.
Heather McKee
Heather is the founder of Student Academics For Academic Freedom (SAFAF). She is currently a postgraduate student at the University of Buckingham. Her interests lie in psychology, women’s rights, free speech and the effect of social contagions and class issues on women and girls. Heather continues to advise AFAF on our work with students.
Harry Saul Markham
Harry first joined the Board as a student at UCL, where he was the President of the UCL Friends of Israel Society. He was also a Critical Thinking Fellow at the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Foundation. His first book The Melted Pot: Diversity, Antisemitism, and the Limits of Tolerance was published on 1 June 2025.
Katherine Morgan-Davies
Katherine is the author of The Girl in the Shadows. She became a member of the board as a final year joint honours student at Leeds University. She is now part of the Leeds AFAF branch.
Professor Ian Pace
Ian is a pianist, musicologist and Professor of Music, Culture and Society at City St George’s, University of London, where he has worked since 2010, having previously worked at the University of Southampton and Dartington College of Arts. He has recorded over 40 CDs, mostly first recordings of contemporary music, and published a range of books, chapters and articles on new music, music history and historiography, performance studies, critical musicology, and much else. His work is especially focused on music in the context of twentieth-century German history, from the Weimar Era through to the post-war years; but equally on the music of British composer Michael Finnissy, which he has played and recorded widely, and about whom he has published one monograph and two edited volumes. He is deeply committed to the causes of free critical thinking and academic freedom in academia. Visit his personal website here.
Professor David Paton
David is Professor of Industrial Economics at Nottingham University Business School. His research areas include gambling taxation, Covid-19 policy, economics of teenage pregnancy, assisted suicide and the economics of cricket. He has written on a range of current topics including academic free speech for outlets such as The Spectator, Spiked, Unherd, Reaction and Cap-X.
Professor Lawrence Patihis
Lawrence is a British/American psychologist interested in distinguishing science and pseudoscience, with a particular interest in applying this to claims of both repression and oppression as invisible entities and explanatory forces. He researches and teaches on trauma, memory, and the law, and works as an expert witness on false memory and memory reliability cases. He is a member of the Heterodox Academy, the Free Speech Union, and serves the Scientific Advisory Board of the British False Memory Society.
Professor Jo Phoenix
Jo has wide ranging (theoretical, methodological and empirical) expertise in matters pertaining to sex, gender and justice as well as the treatment of young people in trouble with the law. She has a deep abiding concern for ethics and knowledge production and academic culture. She has held several senior leadership roles including Dean (Durham University), Head of Department (Leicester University) and is currently Deputy of Head of the School of Law and their inaugural Professor of Criminology.
Richard Reynolds
Richard is a barrister practicing from Three Temple Gardens. His practice ranges from gangs and guns to the finer points of Human Rights law. He will be appearing in the UK Supreme Court later this year. As a student, he organised Students For Academic Freedom (SFAF)
Professor Andrew Tettenborn
Andrew is a professor of commercial and shipping law at Swansea University. He is a member of the Heterodox Academy, Don’t Divide Us and the Free Speech Union, and sits on the Legal Advisory Committee of the latter. In addition he writes on political topics in a number of publications, including the Spectator and Spiked.
Professor James Tooley
James is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham where he is also professor of Education Entrepreneurship and Policy. His ground-breaking research on low-cost private education has won numerous awards. His book based on this research, The Beautiful Tree: A personal journey into how the world’s poorest are educating themselves was a best-seller in India and won the Sir Antony Fisher Memorial Prize.
(Photo Credit: Steve Forrest)
