We stand for:
A primary function of ASF is to provide a place where Australians who want to help build a healthier, stronger country can generate and test ideas for better institutions that embed respect for freedom and scientific approaches for society’s problems.
We aim to promote intellectual and personal freedom in public debate and public policy, including the application of classic scientific methods to the analysis of scientific questions, and the transparency, contestability and accountability of public decision-making.
General Practitioner
Arief is a general practitioner based in Melbourne, Victoria.
Professor of Economics
Gigi Foster (Professor, UNSW School of Economics; BA Ethics, Politics and Economics, PhD Economics) works in diverse fields including education, social influence, time use, lab experiments, behavioural economics, and Australian policy. Named 2019 Young Economist of the Year by the Economic Society of Australia, she publishes in both specialised and cross-disciplinary outlets, and her innovative teaching was awarded a 2017 Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning. She has filled numerous roles of service to the profession and engages heavily on economic matters with the Australian community, as one of Australia’s leading economics communicators, in the media and at live events. Her books include The Great Covid Panic (Brownstone Institute 2021, with Paul Frijters and Michael Baker) and Do Lockdowns and Border Closures Serve the “Greater Good”? (Connor Court 2022, with Sanjeev Sabhlok).
General Practitioner & Assistant Professor of Medicine
Dr David Richards is an Australian General Practitioner and Adjunct Professor at an Australian University in the faculty of medicine. He graduated from London University in 1984, having also completed an Honours Degree in Human Genetics and Immunology. He has peer reviewed papers for a major European Journal and presented at International Conferences on Genetics and Carotid Ultrasound.
Medical Doctor
Julie Sladden is a doctor and writer with over 25 years clinical experience across multiple disciplines in Australia and the UK. She is a passionate advocate for professionalism, ethics and transparency in healthcare.
Head of Mathematics
Jason has taught for over fifteen years and is the Head of Mathematics. During this time, he established accelerated programs and introduced Cost Benefit Analysis inclusive of wellbeing.
Prior to teaching, Jason held several positions in the IT industry in small to large businesses in private and public ventures. This included responsibility for the largest enterprise management environment in Australia at over a hundred thousand devices.
He presented the challenges and future of education at the ASF national conference in 2023 and had the privilege of moderating the 2024 session on education, which included some of the brightest minds on the topic in the nation.
Jason has authored articles on the effects of government policy, the impact of cultural change and the response of institutions such as the church. He is a contributor to the Spectator magazine and Brownstone Institute and has been interviewed on a variety of platforms.
He was a member of the ASF and People’s submissions to the Australian senate covid inquiry, preparing sections on the impact of lockdowns, mandates and school closures on young people and their education.
Jason feels privileged to have the opportunity to make personal connections which he uses to broaden his understanding and that of his students in the fields of IT, health, indigenous affairs, engineering, economics and global perspectives.
Professor of Economics
Paul Frijters is a long-time Professor of Economics, among the top 1% most cited economists and the 2009 “best economist under 40” as voted by the Economic Society of Australia. He worked as a Professor at the University of Queensland and the London School of Economics (LSE) for over 10 years where he still holds an emeritus visiting professorship. Leveraging his years of experience working for accredited tertiary institutions, in 2023, Paul purchased a castle in Belgium to establish and build a new university called Academia Libera Mentis, “the academy of the free-mind,” with the aim of exposing students to a revolutionary new curriculum and teaching style that would truly support their understanding of the world and their place in it.
Emeritus Professor of Medicine
Dr Wendy Hoy is Emeritus Professor of Medicine at The University of Queensland. She graduated from Sydney University in Immunology and in Medicine and Surgery and is board certified in Medicine and Nephrology in Australia and the USA. She is recognised for her multidisciplinary research into kidney and related chronic disease, particularly in high-risk populations, which include Native Americans in the Southwest USA, US Blacks, US Hispanics and Australian indigenous people. She has helped embed chronic disease management into primary care in Australia and internationally. She, with collaborators Bertram and Hughson, are the world leaders in issues of kidney development and nephron endowment and structure, and their implications for health and disease. They have also comprehensively defined structural features of kidney diseases in Australian Aborigines. Dr Hoy has led the Tiwi Kidney program for 33 years, tracking the epidemiologic transition, documenting the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, mapping the Tiwi genome and designing chronic disease detection, prevention and treatment programs. Research funding with Hoy as a CI has totalled about Aus $64 million. Dr Hoy has about 360 published peer-reviewed papers, 11 book chapters, 650 publications, contributed to 69 working reports and has an H-Index of 65. She is an Expert Advisor Group to the AIHW in the Indigenous Burden of Disease She was awarded the Order of Australia for services to chronic disease in 2010, and elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2015.
Dr Hoy is keen to see objective methods, honesty and ethical conduct restored to science and health care after the regrettable flaws exposed and modelled by Covid-era events, and is pleased to join the Aligned Council of Australia, the Australian Medical Practitioners’ Association and Australians For Science and Freedom towards those ends.
Emeritus Professor
Ramesh Thakur is emeritus professor in Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University.
Educated in India and Canada, Ramesh has held full time academic positions at universities in Australia, Canada, Fiji and New Zealand. He is a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, principal writer of Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s 2002 UN reform report, a Responsibility to Protect (R2P) Commissioner and one of the three lead authors of its 2002 report on R2P. He served for five years as the Editor-in-Chief of Global Governance.
His recent books include: Our Enemy, the Government: How Covid Enabled the Expansion and Abuse of State Power ( Brownstone Institute, 2023), The Group of Twenty (G20) (Routledge, 2013), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy (Oxford University Press, 2013), Nuclear Weapons: The State of Play 2015 (Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, 2015), Nuclear Weapons and International Security: Collected Essays (Routledge, 2015), The United Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge University Press, 2006 and 2017), and The Nuclear Ban Treaty: A Transformational Reframing of the Global Nuclear Order (Routledge, 2022).
Professor of Law
Professor James Allan holds the oldest named chair at The University of Queensland. He practised law in a large Toronto law firm and at the Bar in London before shifting to teaching law and has taught around the Commonwealth, arriving in Australia in 2005. Allan also writes regularly for the Spectator Australia, the Australian and Law & Liberty in the US as well as semi-regularly for British and Canadian outlets. He came out against lockdowns, in print, as soon as they were imposed and never waivered from that position. His core research areas are moral and legal philosophy and anglosphere constitutional law.
Doctor – PhD Cardiology
Dr Chris Christopher Neil has practised medicine for 20 years specialising in cardiology for the past 13. Since obtaining his PhD he has been involved in clinical research in a tertiary hospital context, including supervising multiple higher degree students.
Medical Doctor
I am a Canadian Family Doctor/ GP working Down Under. I believe in individual rights, particularly bodily autonomy and freedom of speech. I think all people should be treated as individuals regardless of their immutable characteristics. I graduated from Ottawa University with an Honors Degree in Biology in 2007, Doctorate of Medicine in 2011 and completed my Family Medicine training at the University of Saskatchewan in 2013. I moved to Australia in 2014 to warm up. In my spare time, I like to fight for freedom and spend time with my two young boys in the beautiful Aussie sunshine.
ASF’s second conference again brings together thinkers and community leaders to share learnings, formulate plans and help establish new and emerging networks and organisations to restore a thriving Australian society founded on science and freedom.
Friday 15 November 6:00PM – 8:00PM – Social drinks
Saturday 16 November 8:30AM – 5:30PM – Conference – panel discussions
Saturday 16 November 7:00 PM to Late – Conference Dinner
Sunday 17 November 8:30AM – 3:00PM – Conference – discussion, news updates and workshops
