Webinar 28 October 2025
In a period of national debate regarding the issue of free speech, the same pressures threaten academic freedom. This has been experienced most acutely by those attempting to research, write or publish on matters related to sex and gender. The panel will describe and discuss their experiences and talk about ways forward.
Speakers
Dr Alice Sullivan is Professor of Sociology at the UCL Social Research Institute. Her background is in quantitative analysis of social and educational inequalities, and she was Director of the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70) between 2010-2020. She is an expert on sex and gender, data collection and academic freedom. Her publications include Sullivan, A., & Todd, S. (Eds.). (2023). Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader. Routledge. She led the government-commissioned Sullivan Review of data, statistics and research on sex and gender. She has been shortlisted for the Maddox Prize.
Dr David Pilgrim is a semi-retired clinical psychologist and medical sociologist. His books include Child Sexual Abuse: Moral Panic or State of Denial? (Routledge, 2018), Critical Realism For Psychologists (Routledge, 2020) and Identity Politics Where Did It All Go Wrong? (Phoenix, 2024). His book A Sociology of Mental Health and Illness (with Anne Rogers), now in its 6th edition, is a past winner of the BMA Medical Book of the Year. He is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Southampton.
Dr Lisa Littman is a physician researcher who conducts research about gender dysphoria, desistance, and detransition. The findings of her 2018 publication, “Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria,” generated hypotheses about the potential role of psychosocial factors in the development of gender dysphoria. Dr Littman is currently the President of Gender Dysphoria Institute (established as: the Institute for Comprehensive Gender Dysphoria Research) and has previously held academic positions at the Brown University School of Public Health and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Dr Daniel Kodsi received his doctorate in philosophy from Trinity College, Oxford, in 2024 and spent the 2024–25 academic year as a lecturer in philosophy at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he taught logic, metaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of mathematics. He is currently editor-in-chief of The Philosophers’ Magazine, which since its founding in 1997 has been one of the leading general-audience magazines in philosophy. As well as writing approximately 200 stories, interviews, reviews and essays for the newspapers and magazines he has edited, and commissioning essays from leading academics at Oxford, MIT and other universities, Kodsi has written for The Critic and Quillette on controversies concerning sex, gender, free speech and academic freedom.
The webinar and discussion was facilitated by Dr Aileen O’Brien who is a consultant psychiatrist and reader in psychiatry and education, and is the membership secretary of CAN-SG, Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender.
Links:
•Sullivan Review: Independent review of data, statistics and research on sex and gender
Sullivan Review Report 2: Barriers to research on sex and gender