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TEDxUCLWomen is a movement celebrating the remarkable achievements of women at UCL and in the wider community, while looking at the barriers preventing women and girls worldwide from achieving their full potential.

People's Palace
Queen Mary, University of London
327 Mile End Road
London, Tower Hamlets, E1 4NS
United Kingdom

Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff

Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff is a news and features writer, editor and creative with focuses on race, feminism, media, youth culture and social politics. The print editor at gal-dem, weekend editor at Dazed and a Guardian freelancer, she won the 2017 Georgina Henry Award for Innovation in Journalism at the British Press Awards.

Dr. Ashleigh Boyd

Dr Ashleigh Boyd is a Senior Lecturer at UCL, where she teaches stem cell biology to undergraduates and postgraduates and leads a research group focussed on the applications of stem cell biology to disease and cell therapy. Research in her lab utilises induced pluripotent stem cells which can in principle produce all tissues in the body, and might eventually impact disease treatments by providing a new source of tissue for transplantation. She also speaks at conferences, and participates in public outreach and policy meetings for research funders.

Dr. Catherine Rhodes

Dr Catherine Rhodes is a researcher and project manager at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. Her work broadly focuses on interactions between and respective roles of science and governance in addressing global challenges. In the context of extreme risks, Catherine’s interested in the intersection and combination of risk stemming from technology and risk stemming from governance (or lack of it). She has particular expertise in international governance of biotechnology and biological risks.

Dr. Olesya Myakonkaya

Dr Olesya Myakonkaya is an Innovation and Service Design Strategist. She is a founder of Mars Nation, a programme which brings together novices and experts to solve grand space exploration challenges. She believes that anybody passionate about space travel can create meaningful solutions to Mars colonisation problems with a little bit of help from experts. Olesya’s expertise lies in the cross-section of scientific research, design, and communication. She has a decade of innovation experience – from designing immersive educational workshops for non-profits such as the Royal Aeronautical Society to creating new products and services at a healthcare giant, GSK. Olesya developed research skills and a mindset of experimentation as a Senior Innovation Scientist with a PhD in Nanotechnology and creative confidence as a designer, science presenter, and swing dancer.

Grace Victory

Grace Victory is an award-winning Vlogger and presenter, with her videos attracting over 23 million total views on her official YouTube channel. Grace shares her story on problems that all young people face, as well as topics that are perceived taboo, by speaking openly about depression and other personal battles. She also regularly attends inspirational meetings with young women to give advice, guidance and a chance to share each other’s stories.

Guilaine Kinouani

Guilaine Kinouani is an intersectional feminist, an equality consultant, a therapist and writer. Her analyses are rooted in her social location as a Black French woman, a migrant, and a (proud) child of the Banlieue with solid roots in Africa. She aspires to promote more sociopolitical understandings of psychological distress and of being in the world. She is currently completing her doctorate in Clinical Psychology.

Halima Gosai Hussain

Halima Gosai Hussain is chair of the Inclusive Mosque Initiative (IMI). IMI is radical women-led organisation that creates alternative spaces for Muslim prayer that centre the voices of those who are often marginalised in mainstream mosques. Since its founding in 2012, Halima has been leading prayers as one of their female imams. She has a degree in Philosophy & Theology from King’s College London and an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from SOAS, where her research focused on feminist readings of the Quran.

Jules Orcullo

Jules Orcullo is a Filipina Australian theatre maker and freelance producer with the newly formed The Joy Offensive, championing global solidarity through performance. As a theatre maker she has made work at, with and for Theatre Absolute, the Lyric Hammersmith and The North Wall Arts Centre.

Lauren Bowker

Lauren is a material alchemist and founder of T H E U N S E E N, an innovation, product development and technology licensing company comprised of talent across design, science and technology. Having graduated from the Manchester School of Art with the award winning pollution-sensing compound PdCl2, Lauren went on to study printed textiles at the Royal College of Art London, her graduate collection was shot by Tim Walker and modeled by Kate Moss. Over ten years Lauren created several additional colour-change compounds responsive to various invisible elements while consulting in material innovation and user experience for automotive, aeronautics, technology, healthcare, retail, textiles and couture.

Liv Little

Liv Little is a curator, filmmaker and the editor-in-chief of gal-dem, a fledgling media empire ran exclusively by women of colour. Born and raised in South East London, Little has written for the Guardian, Wonderland Magazine and gal-dem on a range of topics – from women seeking asylum in the UK, to interviews with women breaking down barriers in politics and the arts. She works in TV and is currently developing her first scripted comedy pilot. Little founded gal-dem, which operates as an online and print magazine as well as putting on talks, events and workshops, in 2015. It aims to empower and support the creative work of young women of colour through breaking down tired stereotypes and thrusting their work and thoughts into mainstream discussion in a whitewashed media environment.

Professor Shelley Sacks

Shelley Sacks is a social artist, cultural activist, performance artist, writer and thinker exploring the connection between imagination and transformation and paradigm shift in practice. She has worked in many countries and contexts, involving thousands of people in ‘capacity building practices’ for ‘coming to our senses’. This includes young ‘change makers’ in Africa, India, Europe and China. She develops social sculpture projects and processes that focus on imaginal thought, experiential knowing and developing new imaginaries. She is Professor of Social Sculpture and Director of the Social Sculpture Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University. Recent projects like Earth Forum and University of the Trees: Lab for New Knowledge and an Eco-Social Future are frameworks that see the human being as the artist of a humane and ecologically viable future.

Subhadra Das

Subhadra Das is a historian, history of science communicator, writer and museum curator at UCL where she works with the UCL Pathology and Science Collections to tell decolonial stories in engaging and enlightening ways. She regularly talks to diverse audiences in classes, seminars, lectures, public talks and stand-up comedy about all aspects of her work from collections management to working with human remains. Her main area of research is the history of science and medicine in the 19th and 20th Centuries, specifically the history of scientific racism.