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Dr Kate Fox

KATE FOX, a social anthropologist, is Co-Director of the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford.

Following an erratic education in England, America, Ireland and France, she studied anthropology and philosophy at Cambridge.

Her work involves monitoring and assessing global socio-cultural trends, and has included research, books, reports and broadcasts on many aspects of human behaviour, including drinking, flirting, body image, pub behaviour, gossip, violence, mobile phones, the effects of health scares, the psychology of smell and the meaning of chips.

She is also a consultant on the prevention and management of violence, and co-author, with Dr Peter Marsh, of Drinking and Public Disorder. Her most recent book is Watching the English – The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour.

Professor Chris C. French BA, PhD, FBPsS, CPsychol, FRSA

CHRIS FRENCH is a Professor of Psychology and Head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit in the Psychology Department at Goldsmiths College, University of London (http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/apru).

Anomalistic psychology may be defined as the study of extraordinary phenomena of behaviour and experience, including (but not restricted to) those which are often labelled “paranormal”. It is directed towards understanding bizarre experiences that many people have without assuming a priori that there is anything paranormal involved.

Professor French is a Chartered Psychologist and a Fellow of the British Psychological Society. He has published over 80 articles and chapters covering a wide range of topics within psychology, including publications in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, The Lancet, Emotion, the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, and the British Journal of Psychology.

In addition to academic activities, such as conference presentations and invited talks in other departments, he frequently appears on radio and television, casting a sceptical eye over paranormal claims.

Professor Brian Goodwin

BRIAN GOODWIN was born in Canada in 1931. He studied biology at McGill University, mathematics at Oxford, and received a PhD from Edinburgh University in 1960.

After research appointments at McGill and MIT, he became a Reader in Biology at the University of Sussex, then Professor of Biology at the Open University. He is now a Scholar in Residence at Schumacher College. His research and teaching interests are on the uses of the sciences of complexity to study emergent phenomena and to understand health in various contexts. This involves a fundamental rethinking of basic scientific and biological assumptions and leads to a new science of qualities.

Professor Emeritus Richard Gregory, CBE, FRS

RICHARD GREGORY studied philosophy and experimental psychology at Cambridge, after serving in the RAF during World War 2. He became a Lecturer and directed the Special Senses Laboratory of the Psychology Department, before moving to Edinburgh to start Artificial Intelligence with Donald Michie and Christopher Longuet-Higgins.

He went on to the University of Bristol to run the Brain and Perception Laboratory in the Medical School, where his research tried to combine philosophical questions of brain and mind with experiments: some clinical, such as the recovery of sight from infant blindness; others on perceptual phenomena, and especially illusions of many kinds.

He developed a general philosophy that perceptions are predictive hypotheses, and that many illusions result from false inferences due to misleading probabilities, while others are more simply physiological.

He is a CBE and Fellow of the Royal Society.

Philip Howard

PHILIP HOWARD is a leader writer and columnist for The Times. He often writes the third (whimsical, arty, jokey) leaders. His columnns include the daily Word Watching quiz and Modern Manners (etiquette and jokes). He has written books of general history and social affairs as well as several about the changing English language.

Aquila Berlas Kiani

AQUILA BERLAS KIANI is a Professor of Sociology and a Social Work educator who obtained degrees in education and sociology in India, the UK and the USA. In the 1960s–70s she worked in Pakistan, first as a specialist in Rural Sociology and Anthropology in Peshawar, and then as Head of the Department of Social Work, and later Chairman of the Department of Sociology at the University of Karachi. She has also worked in North America, as an Associate Professor of Sociology/Social Work at the University of Alaska, and for the Ontario Administration of Settlement & Integration Services.

She has participated in numerous research programmes on a variety of subjects including family planning and the role of women in society. She was President of the Pakistan Federation of University Women, President of the Pakistan Sociological Association, and President and Founder of the Soroptomist Club of Karachi. In 1996 she was Guest Speaker at the conference held by the Women’s Federation for World Peace in Seattle Washington. She now lives in retirement in Vancouver, Canada.

Dr Alexander King, CBE

ALEXANDER KING CMG, CBE, DSc was born 1909 in Glasgow. He read science in the universities of London and Munich, later becoming a Senior Lecturer in Physical Chemistry at Imperial College, London.

In World War 2, he was a science adviser to the Minister of Production and later head of The British Central Scientific Office and Councillor at the British Embassy in Washington. After the war he was head of the Central Scientific Secretariat and Science Adviser to the Lord President, during the Attlee Administration.

Later he became Director of the European Productivity Agency during the reconstruction. Then, until his retirement in 1974, he was Director General for Science, Technology and Education at the OECD in Paris.

In 1968 he co-founded the Club of Rome. He was awarded the Erasmus Prize for cultural services to Europe.

We are sorry to report that Dr. King died on 28th February 2007. Read his obituary in The Times Online >>

Dr. Peter Lamont

DR. PETER LAMONT is a lecturer at the Koestler Parapsychology Unit, University of Edinburgh. He is a former winner of the Jeremiah Dalziel Prize for British History, and a recent Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts. He is also a former professional magician, a past president of the Edinburgh Magic Circle, and author of three books and many articles on the history and psychology of magic and psychic phenomena. He wrote and presented the BBC radio series ‘Wizards of the North’, and was the academic consultant on the BBC television series, ‘Magic’.

Read The Rediff interview with Dr. Lamont

Dr James Le Fanu

JAMES LEFANU is a general practitioner and medical columnist of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph. Among his many published books is Home Remedies (Robinson, 1997), a Sunday Times top-ten best-seller, and The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine (Abacus, 2000).

Professor Leonard Lewin

LEONARD LEWIN was born in 1919 in Essex, England. During World War 2 he worked at the British Admiralty on radar. In 1946 he joined Standard Telecommunications Laboratories (now Nortel), and became head of the Microwave Department.

He is author of 40 patents and some 200 publications, including 12 books. One of these, The Diffusion of Sufi Ideas in the West, won an award from the UNESCO 1972 International Book Year.

In 1962 he won the International Microwave Prize, moved to the USA and became a professor at the University of Colorado, where he taught microwaves and telecommunications. He also set up Sufi study groups and other enterprises for the promotion of Sufi ideas. In 1987 he taught at the University of Auckland, and gave the New Zealand IEE Prestige Lecture on education. In 1991 he was an invited speaker to the International Conference of Mathematicians, Kyoto, Japan. His last post was as a Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado.

We are sorry to report that Professor Lewin died on August 13, 2007 in Boulder, Colorado.

Professor Steven Mithen

STEVEN MITHEN is Professor of Early Prehistory and Head of the School of Human and Environmental Sciences at the University of Reading.

He studied subjects ranging from fine art to computer science at the Universities of London, Sheffield and York, before specialising in archaeology at Cambridge. Since moving to the University of Reading in 1992, he has directed excavations in western Scotland and southern Jordan, used computer simulation for archaeological research and become a leading figure in the development of ‘cognitive archaeology’.

In 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. His books include Thoughtful Foragers: A Study in Prehistoric Decision Making (1990), The Prehistory of the Mind (1996), Creativity in Human Evolution and Prehistory (1998), Hunter-Gatherer Landscape Archaeology (2000), After the Ice (2003) and The Singing Neanderthals (2005).

Dr. Robert Ornstein

ROBERT ORNSTEIN received his PhD at Stanford University in 1968. His thesis, On the Experience of Time, received the American Institutes for Research Creative Talent Award and is still in print as a book. Since then he has written some 20 books on the nature of the human mind, brain, and their relationship to thought, health, and individual and social consciousness.

He won the American Psychological Association's Master Lecture Award and has received commendations from UNESCO, UNICEF and others. His most recent books are The Evolution of Human Consciousness, The Axemaker's Gift (with James Burke) and The Right Mind, a re-evaluation of the research on the functions of the two sides of the brain, the research area with which Dr. Ornstein is most associated.

To learn more about Dr. Ornstein click here

Professor Ian Robertson

A neuroscientist and trained clinical psychologist, IAN ROBERTSON is a former writer for the The Times of London, columnist for the British Medical Journal, and is one of the world’s leading experts on neuropsychology applied to brain rehabilitation.

Currently Professor of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin, and formerly Fellow of Hughes Hall, Cambridge, Ian Robertson has written two popular science books, Mind Sculpture and Mind’s Eye, and one self-help manual, Stay Sharp with the Mind Doctor, as well as over 150 scientific articles. He has frequently appeared on television with BBC Northern Ireland and RTE.

He was recently elected as a member of the Royal Irish Academy, Ireland’s Royal Society.

Professor Peter Wade

PETER WADE did a PhD in Social Anthropology at Cambridge University, focusing on the black population of Colombia. He was a Research Fellow at Queens' College Cambridge (1985–1988), before becoming a Lecturer in Geography and Latin American Studies at the University of Liverpool (1988–1995). He is currently Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester.

His publications include Blackness and Race Mixture (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (Pluto Press, 1997), Music, Race and Nation: Música Tropical in Colombia (Chicago University Press, 2000), and Race, Nature and Culture: An Anthropological Perspective (Pluto Press, 2002).

To learn more about Prof. Wade click here

Professor Richard Wiseman

PROFESSOR RICHARD WISEMAN started his working life as an award-winning professional magician, and was one of the youngest members of The Magic Circle. He then obtained a first class honours degree in Psychology from University College London and a doctorate in psychology from the University of Edinburgh. For the past twelve years he has been the head of a research unit at the University of Hertfordshire, and in 2002 was awarded Britain's first Professorship in the Public Understanding of Psychology.

Prof Wiseman has established an international reputation for his research into unusual areas of psychology, including deception, luck and the paranormal. He has published over 40 papers in refereed academic journals, including Nature; his research has been featured on over 150 television programmes, including ‘Horizon’ (BBC2), ‘Equinox’ (Channel 4) and ‘World In Action’ (ITV), and on radio. In early 2003, Prof Wiseman wrote The Luck Factor – a comprehensive account of his ten-year research project into the nature of luck. This book has now been published into 14 languages and published in over 25 countries.

To learn more about Prof. Wiseman click here

Professor Lewis Wolpert, CBE, FRS

LEWIS WOLPERT is Professor of Biology as Applied to Medicine in the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology of University College, London. His research interests are in the mechanisms involved in the development of the embryo.

He was originally trained as a civil engineer in South Africa, but changed to research in cell biology at King's College, London, in 1955.

He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1980 and awarded the CBE in 1990.

He has presented science on both radio and TV and for five years was Chairman of the Committee for the Public Understanding of Science.

His book Malignant Sadness. The Anatomy of Depression was published by Faber in 1999. Passionate Minds with Alison Richards, a second set of interviews with scientists, was published by Oxford University Press in 1997. The Unnatural Nature of Science was published in paperback in 2000 and second edition of Principles of Development, on current biology, in 2001.

He also writes for The Independent and The Independent on Sunday.

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