Speakers

Kate Forde      Kate Forde is Curator of Temporary Exhibitions at Wellcome Collection, and lead Curator of the Dirt exhibition. Recently she has worked on exhibitions examining the mysteries of sleep, the relationship between war and medicine, and the history of anatomical waxworks. Kate is particularly interested in the display of fine art within scientific institutions and the role museums play in the shaping of cultural memory.  
       
Steven Connor   Steven Connor is a writer, critic and broadcaster, and the Academic Director of the London Consortium. He is the author of books on Dickens, Beckett, Joyce, ventriloquism, skin, flies and other topics in literary and cultural history. His most recent books are The Matter of Air: Science and art of the ethereal (2010) and Paraphernalia: The curious lives of magical things (2011). His website includes lectures, broadcasts, unpublished work and work in progress.  
       
Maureen Bloom   Maureen Bloom has worked on the book review section of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute since 2000. She studied Hebrew at the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) and gained both her Master’s in Medical Anthropology and PhD from Brunel University. She taught medical anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London and has published papers on Durkheim and the ‘sacred’ and on dementia, disability and dignity. Her book, Jewish Mysticism and Magic, was published by Routledge in 2007.  
       
  Brooke Magnanti is a researcher and author better known for pseudonymously writing the blog Belle de Jour: Diary of a London Call Girl. The blog was developed into a series of books, which were adapted for the ITV show Secret Diary of a Call Girl, starring Billie Piper. Dr Magnanti’s main research interests are forensic science, biostatistics, and aetiology of disease.  
       
  Elizabeth Pisani  has worked for the Ministries of Health of China, Indonesia, East Timor and the Philippines, and has provided analysis and policy advice to UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, the World Bank, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and many others. She is the author of The Wisdom of Whores, published by Granta Books in 2008. In 2010, she founded the public health consultancy Ternyata. Watch Pisani's TED talk or read her blog.  
       
  Meena Varma has been Director of the Dalit Solidarity Network UK (DSN-UK) since 2007. DSN-UK campaigns against the atrocities, humiliation and poverty that over 260 million Dalits suffer due to caste discrimination – one of the biggest human rights abuses in the world today. DSN-UK lobbies political leaders nationally and internationally, as well as putting multinationals working in the Indian subcontinent under pressure to acknowledge their responsibility to help tackle caste discrimination.  
       
Brian Dillon   Facilitator Brian Dillon is an Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Fellow at the University of Kent. He is the author of Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives, which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize. His first book, In the Dark Room, won the Irish Book Award for non-fiction. He is UK Editor of Cabinet, a quarterly magazine of art and culture based in New York, and writes regularly for such publications as the Guardian, the London Review of Books, the New Statesman, frieze, Artforum and Tate etc. His novella Sanctuary was published in 2010. He lives in Canterbury.  
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