Kemi Badenoch is the Member of Parliament for the Saffron Walden constituency in Essex, winning her seat at the General Election in the summer of 2017. 

She sits on both the Justice Select Committee and the 1922 Executive Committee. Before being elected to Parliament she was a Conservative member of the London Assembly, acting as the GLA Conservatives’ spokesperson for the economy, and was a member of both the Transport and Policing Committees. Prior to the Assembly, Kemi was a director at the Spectator magazine and worked in the financial services sector as associate director at Coutts & Co. Kemi spent some time living in the US and Nigeria as a child, returning to the UK at the age of 16. 

She studied Computer Systems Engineering at the University of Sussex and went on to study law at Birkbeck, gaining her degree in 2009. 

Keith was a government adviser from 2006-2009 and the lead writer on the Curriculum Review Diversity and Citizenship, which made a series of recommendations aimed at promoting diversity across the school’s curriculum.  

His report concluded that all young people should be able to feel that the ethnic, religious and cultural aspects of their identity are recognised and understood and also gave way to the Who Do We Think We Are? project, which explored subjects including belonging, faith and Britishness. 

Keith received an OBE for services to education in 1996 and was knighted in 2007; and graduated with two degrees at Birkbeck in MA Culture, Diaspora and Ethnicity and Contemporary Literature and Culture. 

He served as Head of Deptford Green School for 20 years and is now Chair of Blueprint for All (formerly the Stephen Lawrence Trust) and Trustee of APIE, a small education charity working in Rwanda. 

Sami Zubaida is Emeritus Professor of Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck, and also holds posts as Professorial Research Associate at the Food Studies Centre at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and Research Associate at the London Middle East Institute at SOAS. 

His research involves the religion, culture, politics and law of the Middle East, with particular attention to Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Turkey. His other research interest is food history and culture, ranging comparatively over Europe, the Middle East and India. 

Born in Iraq, Sami Zubaida went to school in Baghdad before studying at the Universities of Hull and Leicester.  

William Mattieu Williams was born in 1820 and apprenticed to a mathematical and optical instrument maker in Lambeth. After working from seven to eight, he ran over two kilometres to Southampton Buildings to attend classes at the London Mechanics’ Institute. He was also a painter, operatic singer and traveller.  

Williams contended that his classes were of “great value in training their members in independent and vigorous habits of thought, and fitting them to communicate to others any knowledge they possessed.” He exemplified this, eventually giving lectures himself at the Institution and becoming a long-term member of the management committee. He admitted to an “ever-increasing conviction of the solid truth of the great natural laws” of phrenology, a now-debunked early Victorian science on how the shape of the human skull influenced the personality of the individual.  

The disability service at Birkbeck is an essential team working to support students with both visible and invisible disabilities. They ensure students can get reasonable adjustments, test for specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia, put study support plans in place to help students achieve their full potential and have also introduced Ability, a scheme that helps students with disabilities go on to their chosen career after graduation.  

Mark Pimm knows about the challenges faced by students with disabilities, being registered blind. He has written that before the passing of the Disability Discrimination Act in 1995, being a disabled student was much more difficult, something he experienced first-hand – there was no support or funding at all.  

Pimm’s work with the disability service is facilitated by his assistance dog and a sighted assistant who enable Mark to carry out his vital work day-to-day. As well as managing the disability service, he sits on the College’s Equality and Diversity Committee and voluntarily co-chairs the staff Disability Network, an inclusive forum offering talks and informal networking for disabled and non-disabled staff at Birkbeck. The network also advocates for disability rights and recognition, something Pimm has been assiduously passionate about since he first joined Birkbeck. 

Samir El-Youssef is a writer, commentator and peace activist who graduated with an MA Philosophy from Birkbeck in 2000. The Palestinian writer and critic was born in 1965 in Rashidia, a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, emigrated to Cyprus in 1989 and since 1990 has lived in London.  

He writes in both Arabic and English, and some of his work has been translated into German, Italian, Greek and Norwegian. Among his books is one co-written with the Israeli writer Etgar Keret, Gaza Blues: Different Stories. 

Julio Bruno is an international media, travel and entertainment executive with global leadership roles including as the former CEO for Time Out Group. He is also an award-winning advocate for diversity and inclusion. 

Julio studied for an International Business degree at Birkbeck and is an Advisory Board member for the Birkbeck/Central Saint Martins MBA. 

Julio founded his company, BR1 creative, at the end of 2021, working with the start-up community as an investor and board director, and as strategic advisor for a number of international companies. 

For his Diversity, Equity and Inclusion work, he has been selected in the 2021 Heroes Advocate Executive list, celebrating the Top 35 global leaders championing and advocating for women in the workplace; Top 50 EMpower Advocate Executive 2021 list of global leaders advocating for ethnic minorities; and Top 100 OUTstanding LGBT+ Role Model global list 2021. 

World-renowned computational chemist and drug designer Juswinder Singh received his PhD in computer-based drug design from Birkbeck shortly before moving permanently to the USA to pursue opportunities in experimental drug design. He is the founder and chief scientific officer of Ankaa Therapeutics, pioneering the development of targeted therapies to address drug resistance. 

In 2016, Juswinder was given the George and Christine Sosnovsky Award for Cancer Research by the American Cancer Society for leading the development of targeted covalent drugs, a transformative treatment for cancer patients. He also founded Avila Therapeutics in 2006, a company that won the 2013 New England Venture Captial Award. He has been cited over 3000 times in the field of rational drug design. 

Juswinder has said of Birkbeck that it is a great institution that “gives people opportunities through education.” 

Dr Kojo Koram is a Lecturer in Law at Birkbeck School of Law, University of London. He joined Birkbeck in September 2018. Prior to taking up this role, he was a Lecturer at the School of Law at the University of Essex between 2016-2018. Prior to academia, Kojo worked in social welfare law, as well as youth work and teaching. 

He was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 2011 and then received his PhD in 2017. In 2018, the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities awarded his PhD the Julien Mezey Dissertation Award for the dissertation that most promises to enrich and advance interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of law, culture and the humanities. Alongside his academic work, Kojo has also written for publications as varied as the Guardian, The Washington Post, Nation, Dissent, The New Statesman and Critical Legal Thinking. 

Milica (Mil) Vukovic Smart is a London-based performance artist, writer and choreographer.  

Mil creates theatre-based and site-sensitive works across dance, performance and visual art.  

Memory, emotion and instability are some of her current preoccupations, and her work to date has been described as ‘cinematic’ and ‘strange & uncomfortable watching … in the best way’ (audience members, Rubicon, 2016) and ‘a glorious, fragmented mash up of contemporary, classical and found movement’ (HILT, Resolution Review 2018).