[Speakers] 

Dr Jennifer Evans

Senior History lecturer, University of Hertfordshire

Jennifer's research focuses on perceptions of gender, the human body and medicine in early modern England. She is interested in health, sex and reproduction having examined infertility and the understanding of aphrodisiacs in the early modern period as part of her doctoral thesis. 

Gabriel Moreno

Poet and Artistic Director of Poetry Brothel

Gabriel is a bilingual published poet from Gibraltar with 10 published poetry collections in both English and Spanish. Graduated from Hull university and the university of Barcelona. Gabriel is the artistic director of The Poetry Brothel London and curator of various Poetry and Music nights in the underground London scene. Based in concept on the fin-de-siecle bordellos in New Orleans and Paris, many of which functioned as safe havens for fledgling, avant-garde artists, The Poetry Brothel's "Madame" presents a rotating cast of poets as "whores" in a bordello, each operating within a carefully constructed character, which for poet and audience function as disguise and as freeing device for uninhibited creative expression.

Mark Farid 

Artist

Love Expert at FutureFest, Mark will speak about the effects of technology on love from the perspective of a 25 yr old, who has grown up with technology. He is interested in the relationship between the State, new technologies and the prescribed identity of the individual. Drawing on his own personal experiences, along with research from two projects of his, Poisonous Antidote (2016), which saw him broadcast his realtime digital footprint live for a month, and Seeing I (2018), which will see him wear a virtual reality headset for 24 hours a day, for 28 days, only seeing and hearing what someone else sees and hears during that time, Mark explores how current and future potential paths manifest themselves in themes of intimacy, relationships, and individual autonomy.

Dr Jane O'Grady

London School of Philosophy, City University and Philosophy Obituarist for the Guardian

With A J Ayer she co-edited A Dictionary of Philosophical Quotations. She has written Introductions to John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and The Subjection of Women, and to Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium (Wordsworth), and 16 entries in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. At the moment, she is writing a book on being in love, which embraces philosophy, psychology, anthropology, sociology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology and literature (particularly Courtly Love, Shakespeare and Donne). She gave a ten-week course in the Philosophy of Love at the Freud Museum and her interests are -- how far love is spontaneous and involuntary, as opposed to deliberate and enacted (this is obviously a different question in different areas – biological, social, individual, cultural). Also what it could mean to 'love x for him/herself', as opposed to loving a fantasy or a projection or a set of properties.

Richard Bethlehem

PhD Candidate Psychiatry & Neuroscience University of Cambridge

Richard's research focuses on understanding how hormones contribute to behaviour and how they might change the dynamics of the brains intrinsic wiring. He specifically focuses on the hormones oxytocin and testosterone and their involvement in social interaction in individuals with an autism spectrum condition.

Vivienne Errington-Barnes

Global Events and Community Manager for HER (LGBTQ app)
HER is the largest LGBTQ+ dating and social networking app with over 1.6m users in over 55 countries and is the largest LGBTQ+ dating and social networking app in the world.
Vivienne believes technology is the catalyst of modern love and the difference between love then and now is choice. The requirements to love have been raised, the possibility of loving more than one person simultaneously (polyamory) has become acceptable and the gender gap is closing resulting in a lack of defined roles in love

[Chair] Dr Shama Rahman

Storyteller in different media: Scientist, Musician, Actor

Shama has an interdisciplinary PhD in the Neuroscience of Creativity, and is Founder/Artistic Director of Jugular Productions. She works at the cross section of music, technology and other art-forms and her album 'Truth BeTold', is the world's first full live album recorded/performed with wearable technology, which was showcased at an immersive performance with real-time generative visuals and dancers.