The Rationalist Association

Governance

President

Laurie Taylor

Laurie Taylor

Laurie Taylor presents Thinking Allowed on BBC Radio 4 and has made numerous television and radio programmes. In another life he was a Professor of Sociology at the University of York and the author of books on criminology and parenthood. You can learn more from Laurie from his wide range of articles and interviews on the New Humanist website.

Board of trustees

Clive Coen

Clive Coen

Chairman (appointed 2015), Appointed 2014

Clive is Professor of Neuroscience at King's College London. He has served on the Council of the Royal Institution, where he chaired the Young Persons' Programme, and on the Natural Sciences Committee of the UK National Commission for UNESCO. Clive is fascinated by the distinctions between so-called fact, fiction and opinion. Jonathan Swift may have written that it's "useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into", but Clive thinks it's sometimes worth having a go.

Rosemary Emanuel

Rosemary Emanuel

Appointed 2018

Following a Mathematics degree from Cambridge and a period writing computer software in machine language, Rosemary's career has been dedicated to Mathematics education. She has written a series of A level Mathematics text books and served on the education committee of the London Mathematical Society. For the last 20 years she has helped run the Hans Woyda London schools' mathematics competition. She is a life member of Humanists UK and a member of the Royal Institution.

In the unreliable, confusing, or even intentionally misleading dust storm of 21st century information, she sees the Rationalist Association as a beacon of responsible and rational thoughts and ideas.

John Emanuel

John Emanuel

Appointed 2018

John studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University and then Economics at the London School of Economics.

In his early career, based in the UK, continental Europe, and the US, he worked around the world for UK and US multinationals. He went on to found Pax Technology Transfer Ltd, a company dedicated to commercialising technology from scientists and inventors and to transferring technology from one country to another.

John is a former Fellow and Chairman of the Institute of International Licensing Practitioners and was a Council member of the Licensing Executive Society of Britain and Ireland.

He is interested in the spread of evidence-based knowledge and clear thinking and would like to see the Rationalist Association become better known and more widely valued in the UK and internationally.

Colin Brewer

Colin Brewer

Appointed 2018

Colin studied medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital, where reading an article in Margaret Knight's Humanist Anthology led to a lasting interest in Europe's first post-classical atheist, the village priest Jean Meslier. In 2007, he co-produced a play about Meslier at the Edinburgh fringe. After periods as a ship's surgeon and in general practice, he trained in psychiatry, becoming director of the Westminster Hospital's alcoholism service. A subsequent interest in heroin addiction, including support of methadone maintenance at a time when the British Addiction Establishment strongly disapproved of it resulted in a GMC hearing that split the addiction world and led to his removal from the medical register. (Details at his website planetservetus.org) He is a foundation member of the International Society of Addiction Medicine and continues to publish papers. Elected a committee member of the former Voluntary Euthanasia society in 1978, he remains active in the assisted dying movement and recently published O, let me not get Alzheimer's, sweet heaven! Why many people prefer death or active deliverance to living with dementia.

Keiron McCabe

Keiron McCabe

Appointed 2023

Keiron McCabe is a Barrister Training Course graduate and future lawyer. He previously worked as the Assisted Dying Campaigner of Humanists UK and managed the right-to-die campaign group My Death, My Death. Before this, he volunteered for Hillary Clinton's 2016 election campaign. He is a strong advocate of evidence-based policy, challenging intolerance, and the free exchange of ideas.

Honorary associates

David Aaronovitch, Peter Atkins, John Birt, Alan Brownjohn, Colin B Campbell, Philip H Campbell, Noam Chomsky, Helena Cronin, David Cunningham, Richard Dawkins, Marcus Du Sautoy, Sanal Edamaruku, Ekow Eshun, Sally Feldman, A C Grayling, Trevor Griffiths, Tony Harrison, Simon Heffer, Ted Honderich, Robin Ince, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Steve Jones, Stewart Lee, Kenan Malik, Haydn Mason, Jonathan Meades, John Metcalf, Edwin Mullins, Alice Onwordi, David Pollock, Philip Pullman, Jonathan Rée, Amartya Sen, Alom Shaha, Stephen Sedley, Simon Singh, Ralph Steadman, D J Stewart, Ian Stewart, Jonathan Stopes-Roe, Raymond Tallis, Hazhir Teimourian, Claire Tomalin, Francis Wheen, Elizabeth Wilson, Richard Wiseman

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The Rationalist Association is independent, irreverent & non-profit. We are supported by our members.