Speaker Index

Anand Gopal is an award winning investigative journalist and expert on the conflicts in the Middle East. He was embedded in refugee camps and war zones throughout the past decade, reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria for a wide range of publications including the New York Times and The Atlantic. His book 

No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban and the War Through Afghan Eyes 

was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize in 2015. It was also awarded the 2014 National Book Award, the 2015 Helen Bernstein Award, and the 2015 Ridenhour Prize. His work has ruthlessly and systematically exposed the lies of Western governments in relation to their bloody wars for empire.

An expose of the numbers of civilians killed in the wars

The roots of ISIS: Imperialism, class, and Islamic fundamentalism

An interview on the background to his book

Anand Gopal

Thanush Selvarasa is a refugee who fled Sri Lanka and was imprisoned under the Australian government’s barbaric detention regime for 8 years. In 2020 he was brought to the Australian mainland for medical treatment, and was detained in Melbourne. In February of 2021, he was granted freedom thanks to a tireless campaign led by refugees and refugee activists. Thanush is a member of socialist group Podhuvudamai Iyakkam and continues to fight for the freedom of his friends in detention. He will be at our session 

'Inside Australia's Torture Regime: Refugees Speak out'

Thanush Selvarasa

Jacqueline Blackburn

Jess Lenehan

Chris di Pasquale

Vinil Kumar

Eleanor Morley

Kerri Parke

Dougal McNeil

Omar Hassan 

Jordan Humphreys

Sadia Schneider

Ryan Stanton 

Ben Hillier

James Vigus

Liz Ross

Jehiel Lomaz

Nick Everett

Chloe Rafferty

Moira Leahy

Kim Bullimore

Lewis Todman

 Phoebe Kelloway

Lian Jenvey

Katie Wood

Liam Ward is a Melbourne-based revolutionary socialist, a lecturer and fim-maker. Most recently he has been a founding member and key activist in 'NTEU Fightback', a rank-and-file centre that waged an electrifying opposition to the national union's agenda of pay cuts, concessions and capitulations amid the deep crisis in the higher education sector.

Liam Ward

James Plested

Alexis Vassiley

Jamiel Deeb

Tom Gilchrist

Daniel Taylor

Hersha Kadkol

Mick Armstrong

Tess Lee Ack

Maddie Powell

Jack Crawford

Grace Hill

Luca Tavan

Lily Campbell

Revan Oluklu

Kath Larkin

Rebecca Barrigos

Louise O’Shea

Sagar Sanyal

Darren Roso

Duncan Hart

Jasmine Duff

Ella Gutteridge

Kim Stern

Sarah Garnham

Emma Norton

Cormac Ritchard

Michael Brown, an independent socialist based in Long Beach, California, has been engaged in activism-organizing for a decade. Brown is a co-founder of a Black Lives Matter chapter in Long Beach, along with being a co-founder of the Long Beach May Day Coalition. As a revolutionary socialist activist, Brown has taken part in struggles against police terror in southern California; solidarity work alongside both Teamster truckers and warehouse workers at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach; in addition to doing picket support for the week-long strike by United Teachers Los Angeles. He has also participated in immigrants rights marches, along with working with UNITE-HERE Local 11 in Long Beach to help secure safety regulations for hotel workers in Long Beach.

Michael Brown

April Holcombe is a long-standing activist in Sydney and currently the co-convenor of Community Action for Rainbow Rights. She recently published the following extended article on Marxism, gender oppression and trans liberation: https://marxistleftreview.org/articles/the-freedom-to-be-marxism-gender-oppression-and-the-struggle-for-trans-liberation/

April Holcombe

Rick Kuhn is a Marxist economist and socialist activist based in Canberra, Australia. He won the 2007 Deutscher Memorial Prize for his biography of Polish Marxist economist and activist Henryk Grossman. Kuhn has translated much of Grossman's work, in addition to publishing books on the Australian Labor Party, and class struggle in Australia. He has been involved in many social justice campaigns in Canberra, and is on the National Committee of Socialist Alternative. 

Rick Kuhn

Katerina Kallergi, active in Committee of Support of the Lavrio Refugee Camp, member of the feminist collective «8th of March Assembly», member of the editorial board of “Workers’ Left”.

Katerina Kallergi

Corey is a member of Socialist Alternative's National Executive, and an editor of the newspaper Red Flag. 

Corey Oakley

Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Infectious Disease, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science

Rob Wallace

Lavanya Thavaraja is a Melbourne-based refugee activist and unionist. She is part of the Tamil Refugee Council, an organisation which advocates for Tamil refugees like herself who have fled genocide at the hands of the Sri Lankan government.

Lavanya is also an organiser at the Migrant Workers Centre. She helps refugee and migrant workers to organise against exploitation and intimidation from bosses. 

Lavanya will be speaking on the session "

Inside Australia's torture regime: refugees speak out"

Lavanya Thavaraja

China Panic: Australia’s Alternative to Paranoia and Pandering

David regularly writes on the oppression of the Uyghur people of Xinjiang and how the socialist left should understand and show solidarity with the struggle of workers and the oppressed within China. He is a senior lecturer on modern Chinese history at the University of Sydney and a union activist in the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU).

David Brophy

Kevin Lin is co-editor of the Made in China labour journal.

His activism focuses on labour rights and civil society in China and he’s a programme co-ordinator for International Labor Rights Forums in Washington DC. Along with his activism and writing on Chinese domestic politics he’s a left-wing commentator on the growing imperialist tensions between the US and China.

Kevin Lin

Mike is a founding member of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM). LGSM was formed to support miners during the 1984-85 miners’ strike – the longest strike in British history. Miners were fighting Thatcher’s plans to close coal pits, leaving tens of thousands of workers on the scrap heap. LGSM went on to raise more money than any other support group, and the solidarity between lesbian, gay, and bisexual people and the striking miners reverberated through British society. 

Mike Jackson

Nahui is a Mexican-Australian socialist. She has been part of the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (CARF) since 2015 and is currently involved in the campaign to free the Medevac refugees in Melbourne.

Nahui Jimenez

Jerome Small is Socialist Alternative's industrial organiser. He has been a socialist and union activist in the telecommunications, clothing, clerical and construction industries for over 30 years, as well as playing a prominent role in climate, refugee and anti-uranium campaigns.

Jerome Small

Aran Mylvaganam is a longtime activist for refugee rights and a member of Tamil refugee council which has led the campaign to bring Tamil family Priya Nades and their two children home to Biloela. He is also a socialist and a union organiser.

Aran Mylvaganam

Gary Foley is a legendary Aboriginal activist, writer, actor, teacher, storyteller and historian. Foley describes his politicisation after arriving in Redfern in 1967 at the age of seventeen: "Getting bashed by the NSW coppers, and reading the biography of Malcolm X; that transformed my thinking". Foley was soon involved in setting up the Aboriginal Legal Service and the Sydney chapter of the Black Power Movement. In 1972, he was one of the founders of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra.

Foley has been a regular speaker at Marxism conferences over the years, schooling and entertaining hundreds with his lively stories and research into Aboriginal history. This year Foley will be discussing the high points of Aboriginal resistance to racism and state violence over the course of the 20th century, with a particular focus on the impact of Aboriginal activists in the communist movement of the 1930s and the radicalisation and emergence of the Black power movement in the late 1960s.

Dr. Gary Foley

Anneke is the convenor of Uni Students for Climate Justice which organised protests of tens of thousands in response to the 2019-2020 Summer bushfires. She’s also a long term member of Socialist Alternative and student organiser for the group. 

Anneke Demanuele

Panos Petrou is a leading member of Internationalist Workers Left (DEA, by its initials in Greek), a revolutionary socialist organization in Greece.

Panos Petrou

Cele Fierro is a socialist activist based in Buenos Aires, a member of the national leadership of the MST and the national coordinator of its socialist feminist grouping, "Juntas y a la Izquierda".

 Cele Fierro

Frieda Afary is an Iranian-American librarian and translator, producer of the blog Iranian Progressives in Translation and member of the Alliance of Middle Eastern Socialists.

Frieda Afary

Anasse Kazib is a rank and file working-class activist and revolutionary socialist from France. A train guard at the 

train station in the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, on the north-eastern outskirts of Paris, Kazib played a prominent role during the French strike wave of 2019 and has become a well-known figure defending the interests of workers in the French media. He is a member of the Revolution Communist Current (CCR) within the New Anti-Capitalist Party and writes regularly for 

Kazib will be speaking at Marxism 2021 about the political situation in France following the strikes, the pandemic and now the Islamophobic campaign by French President Emmanuel Macron.  

Anasse Kazib

Joaquin Araneda is a part of the leadership of the Movimiento Anticapitalista in Chile. He will be speaking at Marxism 2021 about the student-worker rebellion in Chile last year and the debate over the newly formed Constitutional Convention established in the wake of the rebellion.

Joaquin Araneda 

Tom Bramble is a long-term socialist activist, author and retired academic based in Queensland, Australia. He taught Industrial Relations at the University of Queensland for many years and has authored numerous books and articles on the Australian labour movement. His most recent book, which will be launched at Marxism 2021, is 'Fighting for Worker's Power: Revolution and Counter-revolution, 1917-1956'.

Tom Bramble

Vashti Fox was a founding member of Students for Palestine and the Campaign against Racism and Fascism, and the author of 'The Story of Palestine: Empire, Repression and Resistance'. She will be speaking on 'Fighting fascism in Melbourne in the 1970s' drawing on her original research into anti-fascist organising in Australia. 

Vashti Fox

Michael Roberts worked in the City of London as an economist for over 40 years. He has closely observed the machinations of global capitalism from within the dragon’s den. Since retiring, he has written several books.  The Great Recession – a Marxist view (2009); The Long Depression (2016); Marx 200: a review of Marx’s economics (2018): and jointly with Guglielmo Carchedi as editors of World in Crisis (2018).  He has published numerous papers in various academic economic journals and articles in leftist publications. He will be speaking at Marxism 2021 about the current global economic crisis. 

Michael Roberts

Roz Ward has gained national attention as the founder of the Safe Schools program, an anti-bullying program designed for children and youth. Her dedication to fighting for LGBTI rights has remained throughout relentless attacks on her and the Safe Schools program from conservative personalities and media, and she even faced a  controversial dismissal from her position at La Trobe University in Melbourne. She was only reinstated after a successful public campaign. Roz was of course part of leading the marriage equality campaign, and has said “I will never give up fighting for a more free and joyful world”. She is one of the hosts of the Redflag Radio podcast. 

Roz Ward

Jorge Jorquera is a recently elected Victorian Socialist member of the Maribyrnong City Council. He has been active in socialist politics for many years in Australia and is also a member of Socialist Alternative. Jorge will be speaking at the session "Trabajadores al poder" Chile '73: perspectives on revolutionary strategy and tactics.

Jorge Jorquera

Diane Fieldes has been active since the early 1970s in many campaigns including those for Indigenous and refugee rights. She has written about a range of working-class struggles such as the fight for equal pay and is a member of Socialist Alternative. 

Diane Fieldes

Luis Meiners is a socialist activist and sociologist, and member of the Movimiento Socialista de Trabajadores (MST) in Argentina and the International Socialist League (ISL). 

Luis Meiners

Sandra Bloodworth is a labour historian and socialist activist, based in Melbourne, Australia. She has been involved in radical politics since the 1970s, where she has played roles in the women's, Aboriginal, anti-uranium mining and trade union movements. She is a member of the National Executive of Socialist Alternative and has written on the Russian Revolution, the global financial crisis, women's struggles, working class resistance in the Middle East and Australian imperialism. 

Sandra Bloodworth

Joel Geier has been active in the US socialist movement since the 1960s. He is an associate editor of the International Socialist Review, and has written on many topics, including world crisis, Marxist economics, social movements, and the soldiers' rebellion during the Vietnam War.

Joel Geier

Jairus Banaji spent most of his academic life at Oxford. He has been a Research Associate in the Department of Development Studies, SOAS, University of London, for the past several years. He is the author of Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2007), Theory as History (Haymarket Books, 2011) -- for which he won the prestigious Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize -- and numerous other volumes and articles. At the Marxism 2021 conference he will be discussing his latest book, A Brief History of Commercial Capitalism (Haymarket Books, 2020). 

Jairus Banaji

August Nimtz is Professor of Political Science and African American and African Studies and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough (2000), Marx, Tocqueville, and Race in America: The 'Absolute Democracy' or 'Defiled Republic' (2003), and a number of related articles in edited volumes and journals. He will be speaking at the session 'The ballot, the streets or both: the Marxist approach to elections, from the Bolsheviks to today.'

August Nimtz

Juana Runa is a Bolivian revolutionary and contributor to socialist publication La Izquierda Diario Bolivia. Juana is a member of the Liga Obrera Revolucionaria – Cuarta Internacional (LOR-CI) and Bread and Roses.

Juana Runa

Alessandro Fernandes is a teacher and member of the coordination of Alternativa Socialista-PSOL in Brazil. He will be speaking about the resistance to Bolsonaro's government as apart of a panel on the situation in Latin America.   

Featured Speakers