Helen Bamber OBE has worked tirelessly in the human rights field for over 60 years helping thousands of survivors of human rights violations worldwide. She began working with survivors in the former concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen after WWII.

Faisel Rahman has a background in international development, including Grameen Bank and the World Bank, where he focused on developing the microfinance sector and expanding it around micro enterprise. He also briefly worked as an underwriter for a syndicate at Lloyds of London and co-authored a number of books on charitable fundraising and trust funds in the UK.

Menhaj Huda (born 1967, Bangladesh) is a British film director and producer of Bangladeshi descent. After completing a degree in Engineering at Oxford University, he embarked on a career in television. His directing career began in 1993 with the ground-breaking dance music show “Hypnosis” for Channel 4 (Winner of RTS Award for Best Graphic Design). This was followed by other music/youth programmes for Channel 4 (“Passengers”, “Flava” and “All Back to Mine”).

Barbara Roche is a former Government Minister and MP who was a Minister of State in the Home Office, Cabinet Office and ODPM. She was also Financial Secretary to the Treasury and a DTI Minister. As Minister of State at the Home Office she was the Immigration Minister and has been a long-standing advocate of the need for a National Museum of Migration.

Dr Peter Thomond is an Innovation Consultant and Social Entrepreneur and a Managing Partner at Clever Together LLP, a UK based innovation agency. From here he applies his expertise in the field of disruptive innovation and change management equally between three areas: (1) Facilitating breakthrough change in healthcare, (2) Driving environmental sustainability and (3) Fostering a more positive youth culture.

Paul Kerswill is committed to understanding how language is moulded by the societies in which it is spoken. His latest research is a long-term study of ‘Multicultural London English’ in the East End — misleadingly dubbed ‘Jafaican’ by the media. He has the dubious honour of being the first dialectologist to be lampooned on the Now Show.

Oliver Marlow is a multi-platform designer and co-founder of TILT. As Head of Design at the Hub he collaborated on over 20 Hubs all over the world. He was a co-founder of the Forest Café in Edinburgh, and has designed with amongst others, Futerra, the Young Vic Theatre, the Battersea Arts Centre, Aldeburgh Music, Edinburgh Film Festival and NPI, Shanghai, the first social innovation centre in China.

Hailed as the Asian Eminem by East London Grime legend Lethal Bizzle, Shizzio hardly needs an introduction. Born and bred on the borders of East London & Essex, this rapper has single handedly battled and navigated his way into an undeniable realm. His first ever video featured Tim Westwood & Kat Man (Choice FM) way back in 2006 and Shizzio has gone from strength to strength.

Penny Wilson grew up in the South East of England and played on the rolling hills of the South Downs and beside the sea. These childhood experiences influenced and continue to inform and inspire her work.

Danny Dorling is a Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield. He went to various schools in Oxford and to University in Newcastle upon Tyne. He has worked in Newcastle, Bristol, Leeds and New Zealand. With a group of colleagues he helped create the website www.worldmapper.org which shows who has most and least in the world.

Mihir Bose is an Award Winning Journalist and Author. He writes a weekly “Big Sports Interview” for the London Evening Standard, a Sunday Times column, and also writes and broadcasts on a range of social and historical issues as well as sport. His latest book on the power of modern sport is due to be published early in 2012.

Bridget Anderson is a Senior Research Fellow at COMPAS at the University of Oxford. Her work primarily focuses on Migration and the Labour Market, with a particular interest in domestic workers and au pairs, trafficking, immigration enforcement, citizenship and the politics of immigration controls.

Karl Sharro is an Architect, Writer and Commentator on the Middle East. He is the co-author of the architectural manifesto Towards a New Humanism in Architecture and Senior Associate Partner at PLP Architecture in London. He has practiced architecture in London and Beirut, and previously taught at the Department of Architecture at the American University of Beirut.

Raymond Antrobus is a spoken word poet and photographer, born and bred in Hackney. He is co-curator of Chill Pill/Keats House Forum. He has been performing poetry since 2007 and is the International Farrago slam champion 2008 and Canterbury Word Slam Champ 2012. He’s performed at Literature Festivals at London’s Southbank Centre and Universities across London, Manchester and Coventry. Raymond has also toured Germany, Italy, South Africa & USA.Raymond is currently studying on the pilot Spoken Word Education programme as part of the MA Writer/Teacher at Goldsmiths.

Martin Wright is a Director of Forum for the Future, with particular responsibility for India. He is Founding Editor of Green Futures, the world’s leading magazine on environmental solutions and sustainable futures. He is Visiting Judge for the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy (www.ashdenawards.org).

Mica Nava is Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of East London, UK. Since the 1980s her work has contributed to the expansion of the field of cultural studies in the UK and abroad. In the last two decades she has been invited to give keynote conference papers and/or special lectures in Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Holland, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine and the United States, as well as at universities and other venues throughout Britain.

Peter Tatchell was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1952 and has been campaigning since 1967 on issues of human rights, democracy, civil liberties, LGBT equality and global justice. His human rights inspirations include Mahatma Gandhi, Sylvia Pankhurst and Martin Luther King.

Brooke Magnanti, one of Observer’s “Faces of 2009” and Guardian newspaper’s “Best British Weblog 2003,” is a scientist and author. She wrote the bestselling Belle de Jour series of books, which were adapted into the hit ITV show “Secret Diary of a Call Girl” starring Billie Piper. She is also the author of The Sex Myth, published by Orion in 2012. She has a masters in Genetic Epidemiology and gained her PhD at the Department of Forensic Pathology, University of Sheffield. Her professional interests include population-based research, standards of evidence, and human biology and anthropology.

Hamit Dardagan co-founded the Iraq Body Count project in 2002 (www.iraqbodycount.org), and is the co-director of the Every Casualty programme at Oxford Research Group (ORG), a London-based think tank.

Leandro Herrero is an organization architect, speaker, author and consultant; he heads The Chalfont Project, a UK based international consulting firm. Leandro and his team are in the business of creating Remarkable Organizations, organizations ‘worth remembering’ with stories worth telling. The “behavioural DNA” which makes an organization remarkable, resilient, ahead of the game and ever change-able is his personal passion.

Lisa Ma socialises activism. Combining fringe communities, ethnographic research and speculative design, her unusual ‘platforms of engagement’ creates social events that are perceived as activism but function as services.

Before retiring Liz Fewings was a primary school teacher and a trained Reading Recovery specialist. Since retiring Liz has seized the opportunity to volunteer for a variety of projects, including nature conservation and guerilla gardening.

Laura Bates founded the Everyday Sexism Project in April 2012 after realising that people no longer considered sexism to be a problem within society. The online platform where women can submit everyday examples of sexism directly or via email or Twitter, gives women from all over the world a voice.

Stephanie Pau has recently founded Citizen Inventor, a UK citizen science community open to all. Steph holds a master in electronics and electrical engineering from Imperial College, London. Beside technology, she has a strong interest in art, science and life-long learning. Multi-disciplinarity has planted a seed early in her training. During her master, she collaborated with the Fashion Department at Central Saint Martins to create wearable electronics. After, she started working as a software engineer across a wide range of industries and cultures.

Paul Smyth is the co-founders of the London based collective Something & Son, whose work reflects a varied backgrounds and passion in art, social enterprise, the environment and engineering, leading them to produce popular, provocative and witty work that tackles the big design and social/environmental challenges of our time.

Musa is a poet, sportswriter, broadcaster, muscian and communications adviser. His first book about football, A Cultured Left Foot, was nominated for the 2008 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, and his second book about football, Will You Manage?, was published in 2010.

George Hardwick is an inspiring performance poet and creativity expert, who has performed on 4 continents, to TV audiences of over 7 million, is a regular performer at Glastonbury Festival and has most recently shared the same stage as business greats James Caan and Sir Richard Branson.

Rita is the Chief Executive of the Refugee and Migrant Forum of East London. With over 25 years of experience of working in the community and voluntary sector and equalities, Rita has a unique perspective that is both grounded and able to see the bigger picture.

Judith is the Head of Idea Store, based in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in London’s east end. Idea Store provides a modern library, lifelong learning and information services in comfortable and friendly surroundings that have transformed the area by attracting over two million visits per year.

Jo is a Professor of Visual Analytics at City University London. His research and teaching interests are in the design and construction of visualization for exploring, analysing and communicating patterns in complex datasets. He has particular interests in visual analytics of data that have a geographic component. He is the course director of the postgraduate degree in Electronic Publishing that enables students to develop their skills in assembling data, stories and services for electronic media.

Roy is a serial restaurateur having opened his fourth cafe in London a year ago. Originally from Ireland, Roy went straight into the food industry after studying at University of Ulster at Coleraine. Passionate about people and food, he believes a cafe is more than about just serving food but creating a community and enhancing interactions between people.

John is Founder and Editor-In-Chief of the The Big Issue. He was born into poverty, brought up in care, and has lived through a lot. His life’s journey has included spells as a thief, prison inmate, artist and poet. Now an established iconoclast, activist and publisher, John Bird is the force behind The Big Issue, the world’s most successful street magazine. He is an inspirational business leader with an outstanding record of using business as a tool for social change.

JP Morgan Jr helps people to create a life that they truly love. Through helping you to find and follow your true purpose, you experience a deep passion for exploring, creating and living. A major focus of JP’s work is on human connection — the foundation of your growth and success — because he endeavours, by bringing us all a bit more together, to make the world a more understanding and peaceful place.

Nazila lectures in International Human Rights Law at the University of Oxford. She has been a visiting academic at a number of institutions including Columbia and NYU, and previously taught at the University of London and Keele University, UK. Nazila’s publications include nine books, four UN publications and a number of journal articles and reports.

Servane is an activist and a social innovators developer. She founded Ogunte, the award-winning social business, in 2001, and Make a Wave, the first incubator focused on women social entrepreneurs, to put extraordinary people at the forefront of the economy.

Guy is the Creative Director of CODOC (http://www.codoc.org/), an award winning social documentary platform dedicated to creating spaces for critical thinking through digital media. Together with his producing partner Heidi Lindvall, Guy has produced human rights related documentaries from places such as Sri Lanka, Uganda and Guatemala.

Nando is a senior researcher at the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, currently working on research on statelessness, immigration governance and citizenship in the EU, and on transitions to adulthood of former unaccompanied asylum seeking children. He recently completed a ground-breaking study on irregular migrant children in Britain (No way out, no way in: Irregular migrant children and families in the UK, 2012).

Philippa founded BandBazi an award winning, multicultural and inclusive performing arts company and charity in 2001. Philippa trained as an actress at the Scottish Royal Conservatoire. After working in regional repertory theatre including the Royal Court Theatre, London, she went on to train as an aerial artiste at The Circus Space, London. As Artistic Director of BandBazi she aims to integrate narrative theatre with aerial metaphors in what the company calls ‘Aerial Drama’.

Graham is the founder of Learning Without Frontiers (http://www.learningwithoutfrontiers.com/) a global platform for thinkers and practitioners from the education, digital media, technology and entertainment sectors to explore how affordable disruptive technologies are radically improving learning and equality of access.

Three of the most exciting and relevant spoken word artists in the UK. With influences from Somalia to Denmark and having performed from Glastonbury to the Barbican, they bring together our theme of society beyond borders through their beautiful lyrics.

Can you cross seven bridges without retracing your steps? Marianne Freiberger weaves one of history’s greatest puzzles into an ever-expanding illustration of how networks pervade the world and mathematics gives us the power to understand them.

Magic is real. Naji El-Arifi argues that for the first time in history, we are living with true wizards: people who can code. Those who don’t teach themselves this skill will be left behind by programmers who can, in minutes, fix what is broken, make the world behave differently, or bring new concepts into existence before our eyes.

Equality is not just between women and men, gay and straight, or trans and cis. It’s not even about choice versus biology. Jay presents a whirlwind tour of the philosophy of gender with one core theme: a gender is not what you are – it is what you do.

Genetic science has definitively proved that all humans originate from the same group of East African ancestors. So why do people insist on trying to create divisions between races or nationalities? Anna Chen suggests this is more than instinctive racism – there are economic interests at stake. Political rhetoric about migrants exists to justify exploitation and create divisions. A better world is possible.

The perfect way to start your working day: get up at 6.30, have a fruit juice, get a bit of exercise..go to a rave? Sam tells us the story and vision behind Morning Gloryville, and takes the audience by surprise by getting them dancing with a troupe of unicorns, to a DJ set from Basement Jaxx.

So called ‘honour violence’ or ‘honour killings’ are a reality for women all around the world; this talk looks at the stories of three women in the UK. From Kurdistan to the UK, Diana explores her journey as a campaigner and how she has fought for justice for victims.

We don’t have to look far to find stories about violence – locally or globally. Felicity de Zulueta has spent her life understanding violence and its link to pain and trauma all around the world. This talk explores the psychological origins of violence and how we can prevent it.

There’s a power in the world: the most powerful force there is – and it could be an evil force. But it can also be the biggest force for good. That force: multinational business. Colin Mayer explains his vision for how business can and must transform itself and its impact on the world.

Building an economy for the future isn’t something new. The Victorians did it too. Diane Coyle, economist and author, looks back at economic measurement, complex networks and investing on behalf of generations not yet born – all just as important in the 19th century as the 21st.

In Zimbabwe, most well-trained professionals including doctors want to live in the cities. But 75% of the population is in rural areas. How can they get healthcare? The answer lies in Africa’s 640 million mobile phone subscriptions. Via those phones, health information, advice and diagnosis are being provided. Precious Lunga tells us some lessons that other developing countries – and the “first world” too – can learn.

What can we learn about resilience from remote small island communities? Emily’s work and passion for conservation have taken her around the world, from picking up 56 tonnes of garbage to researching the impact of plastic pollutants on women’s health. In this talk she shares what we can all learn from people living and thriving in the most remote parts of our world.

John Parry treats us to his powerful and soulful voice, singing his version of the folk song Wayfaring Stranger and one of his own songs.

Mixing melody and spoken word and showing us his soul through his music, Infecta performs two of his songs.