Marxism brings together activists, radicals, rebels, students, unionists and revolutionaries from across the world for a weekend of debate and discussion of contemporary radical politics, history and theory.

Speaker Index

Rathy Uthayakumari is a refugee who fled the genocide in Sri Lanka and arrived in Australia by boat in 2013. Despite being in the country for over a decade, she has been denied a permanent visa. She has dedicated herself to campaigning for visa rights and is the founder of Refugee Women Action for Visa Equality, as well as a member of the Tamil Refugee Council.

Over the past three years, Rathy has led two major campaigns. She walked from Melbourne to Canberra alongside 22 other women, demanding justice for refugees. She also spearheaded a 100-day protest, where refugees set up an encampment outside the Department of Home Affairs in Docklands, facing off against the state, police, government departments, and far-right groups—all in the fight for permanent visas and basic rights.

Rathy Uthayakumari

Danica is an NTEU delegate and branch committee member at the University of Melbourne, where she is a professional staff member. In 2023 she was a key organiser the first ever week-long strikes at an Australian university.

Danica Cheesley

Declan Furber Gillick is an Aboriginal writer, international socialist and trade unionist from Alice Springs (Central Arrernte country). He is a member of Victorian Socialists and the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance.

Declan Furber Gillick

Dave is a worker who was part of the epic strike which paralysed Woolworths’ distribution network for 17 days last year. He is a union delegate with the United Workers Union and a Health and Safety Representative.

Dave will be speaking at the “Inside the Organising” session on Sunday, discussing how to build industrial power in Australian unions and workplaces today.

Dave

Charlie Hore is a retired bookseller living in London. He joined the International Socialists in 1974, and was a member of the Socialist Workers Party until 2013. In 2014 he became a founder member of Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century (rs21). He has written on China and other subjects for many publications and websites including International Socialism, International Socialist Review, Jacobin, rs21, Socialist Review, Socialist Worker (Britain) and Socialist Worker (US).

Charlie Hore

James is the 2025 Education Officer at the National Union of Students and a self-described landlubber

James McVicar

Willi is a member of Workers Power Germany (Section of the League for the Fifth International)

Willi Schulz is a revolutionary Marxist based in Berlin, Germany. He's been involved in various political movements in the past and has written on different aspects of class war, including the rise of populism and the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) in Germany.

Willi Schulz

Jordan van den Lamb AKA purplepingers is a 28 year old lawyer, unionist and advocate for renters. He also makes silly little videos on tiktok and uses his platform to passionately contribute to political discourse (and Married at First Sight — equally important).

He’ll be running with Victorian Socialists for parliament in the next federal election.

Jordan van den Lamb

Mariano Rosa is a leader of the Movimiento Socialista de los Trabajadores (MST) and a member of the National Coordination of the Left Unity Front (Frente de Izquierda Unidad).

Mariano Rosa

Louisa is a socialist, unionist and housing activist who has worked in tenancy law for more than 15 years.

Louisa Bassini

Martin Barker is a socialist and long time housing activist. He works in Sydney as a tenants advocate and has written for Red Flag on Australia's housing crisis.

Martin Barker

Mathis Aversenq is a revolutionary student activist from France. His comrades and him played a key role in the foundation of a National Student Coordination during the last pension reform strike of 2023. Mathis is part of the national leadership of the NPA-Révolutionnaires.

Mathis Aversenq

Bashana Abeywardane entered journalism in 1992 through Lakdiva newspaper. Later in 1993, he joined Hiru weekly, a newspaper owned by journalists and funded by public donations. In 2001 he became its chief editor and later served as its consultant editor. His articles against the war provoked the regime and forced him into exile in November 2006. In Germany, he stayed as a guest writer at the Heinrich Boell Haus and later stayed under the "Writers in Exile" program, hosted by the German P.E.N. Currently he serves as the convener of the exiled journalists’ organization, Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka.

Abeywardane will be speaking on Sri Lanka after the elections. This session will look at the state of class struggle in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of mass anti-austerity protests and the election of the JVP. Will the new government be able to introduce any meaningful change given the challenges facing Sri Lankan capitalism? And what are the implications for the oppressed Tamil community in Sri Lanka, who were subjected to a genocide in 2009 which was supported by the JVP?

Bashana Abeywardane

Muzan is a Sudanese socialist who participated who in the revolution of 2018/19 and resistance against the military. She will be helping make sense of how such revolutionary hope was crushed both from within Sudan and from the wider world.

Muzan al-Neel

A leading scholar of Middle East political economy, Hanieh’s research has particularly focused on the dynamics of class and state formation in the six oil-rich Gulf Arab monarchies, and the profound impact that Gulf capitalism has had on socio-economic and political developments in the wider Middle East. His most recent work is 'Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market'.

Adam Hanieh

Elliot is a socialist activist and trade unionist who has been fighting for LGBTI rights since the marriage equality campaign. More recently, they played a key role in disrupting Posie Parker’s anti-trans speaking tour and organising protests for abortion rights.

Elliot Downes

For over three decades he has been researching and cataloguing workers’ resistance from the start of the Australian colony into the 19th century. This has resulted in three books: The Origins of Worker Mobilisation: Australia 1788-1850 (Routledge, 2017); Contesting Inequality and Worker Mobilisation Australia 1851-1880, (Routledge, 2020) and, with Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, Unfree Workers Insubordination and Resistance in Convict Australia, 1788-1860, (Springer Nature, 2022). Michael is himself a lifelong trade unionist.

Michael Quinlan

Ochievara Olungah is a revolutionary activist, organizer and thinker. He has been organising among the Kenyan masses, youth and university students for nine years and is a member of the Central Committee of the Kenyan Revolutionary Socialist League.

Ochievara Olungah

Eddie Stephenson

Megan Guy

Owen Marsden-Readford

Carter Chryse

Jack Mansell

Shirley Killen

Brendan Laws

Hossam el-Hamalawy is a journalist and member of the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists

Hossam el-Hamalawy

Oskar Martin is a Bundjalung and Kamilaroi socialist and the current Indigenous Representative on the Students' Council at the University of Melbourne Student Union. He is involved in campaigns connecting the struggles of all oppressed and working-class people against capitalism.

Oskar Martin

Kelly Cvetkova

Liz has been a socialist and refugee activist for the last 25 years. She has fought to get refugees out of detention and win them permanent protection through protest and direct action, most recently fighting to free the Park Hotel refugees. She was the Victorian Socialists 2022 state election candidate for the Western Metropolitan region, and organised protests of thousands in solidarity with those who lost abortion rights following the overturning of 

Liz Walsh

Joel Geier has been active in the US socialist movement since the 1960s. He has written on many topics, including world crisis, Marxist economics, social movements, and the soldier's rebellion during the Vietnam War.

Joel Geier

Kevin Lin is an activist and researcher on China's labor movement, and works to build international labor solidarity. He has been writing about labor struggles, Chinese state and capitalism for publications such as Labor Notes, Jacobin, New Politics and Red Pepper. Kevin is also the managing editor of Asian Labour Review, which publishes analysis on workers' struggles across Asia. He is a co-editor of 

The China Question: Toward Left Perspectives

China from Below: Critical Analysis & Grassroots Activism

 (Gongchao 2023), and a co-author of the forthcoming 

China in Global Capitalism: Building International Solidarity Against Imperial Rivalry

Kevin Lin

Cathy Lewis

Student socialist Anneke Demanuele delivering an inspiring pitch for why we need more socialists to get active today (Marxism 2021)

Tom Sullivan

Shovan Bhattarai

Tim Arnot is a longstanding socialist and trade unionist, recently involved in fighting for COVID-safety at work. 

Tim Arnot

Liam Parry

Oula Shihan

Ella Marchionda

Emma Black

Ruby Healer

Monica Sestito

Emma Dynes

Colleen Bolger

Ryan Laws

Briana Symonds-Manne

Janey Stone’s mother sought refuge in Australia from Polish antisemitism in the 1930s. A lifelong socialist, Janey was active in the Women’s Liberation and ant-Vietnam War movements and a committed unionist. Janey is the author, with Donny Gluckstein, of 

Janey Stone

Naomi Farmer

Robert Narai is a longstanding socialist activist and writer. Along with involvement in a variety of campaigns, Robert has written widely for Red Flag and the Marxist Left Review. His recent writing, featuring exhaustive interviews with those involved, has focused on the revolution in Myanmar, and includes the long form article '“Until the end of the world”: Myanmar’s unfinished revolution'.

Robert Narai

Jess Lenehan is a longstanding socialist and anti-fascist activist in Melbourne. She has played a prominent role in the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism and many other groups. She writes often for 

 newspaper and is currently the campaigns coordinator for the Victorian Socialists.

Jess Lenehan

Vinil Kumar

Eleanor Morley

Omar Hassan is a socialist activist and the editor of 

. He has played a prominent role in a wide variety of left-wing campaigns, including the movement against the far right, for refugee rights and the environment. He has written widely on the dynamics of global capitalism, including his latest editorial "Toil and Trouble".

Omar Hassan 

. His articles on Indigenous politics and history have been published in Red Flag, Marxist Left Review, Revolution Socialism in the 21st Century and Arena Quarterly 

Jordan Humphreys

Ryan Stanton 

Losing Santhia: Life and loss in the struggle for Tamil Eelam

The Art of Rebellion: Dispatches from Hong Kong

Ben Hillier

Liz Ross is a long term socialist who has written widely on Australian politics and the Australian labour movement. Her works include 'Revolution is for us: The Left and Gay Liberation in Australia', 'Dare to struggle, dare to win! Builders Labourers fight deregistration, 1981–94' and 'How capitalism is costing us the earth'.

Liz Ross

Nick Everett

Chloe Rafferty

Kim Bullimore is a long-time socialist, political activist and anti-racist campaigner.

A Murri woman and an active campaigner for Australian Indigenous rights, Bullimore is also involved in campaigns for and human rights and other social justice issues.

Kim Bullimore

Lewis Todman

Lian Jenvey

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

Tom Gilchrist

Hersha Kadkol

Mick Armstrong

Grace has organised protests against the transphobic far right, successfully disrupting the speaking tour of anti-trans activist Posie Parker and shutting down a neo-Nazi gym in Melbourne's west. She is a member of Socialist Alternative's National Executive and co-ordinates our group's campus work around the country.

Grace Hill

Luca Tavan

Lily Campbell

Kath Larkin is a socialist and trade union activist, who is the Victorian Socialists candidate for the seat of Cooper. Kath has a long history of organising for workers' rights in the Railway Industry and was the first female delegate in the RTBU. She has also researched and written on Australian labour history.

Kath Larkin

Rebecca Barrigos is a longtime member of Socialist Alternative Brisbane, and a rank and file teacher unionist and convenor of Queensland Teachers Fightback

Rebecca Barrigos

Louise O’Shea

Duncan Hart

Sarah is on the Socialist Alternative National Executive

Sarah Garnham

Emma Norton

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 an Australian Marxist economist, political analyst and honorary associate professor at the Australian National University in Canberra. He is best known for his biography of the Marxist economist Henryk Grossman, for which he won the Deutscher Memorial Prize in 2007. Rick is the author of 

Labor’s Conflict: Big Business, Workers and the Politics of Class

. He is a member of Jews Against the Occupation and Socialist Alternative as well as a life member of the National Tertiary Education Union.

Rick Kuhn

Corey is a member of Socialist Alternative's National Executive, and a founding member of Victorian Socialists. 

Corey Oakley

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

 is a long-time refugee activist, socialist and founder of the Tamil Refugee Council which played a leading role in the campaign to bring the Tamil refugee family of Priya, Nades and their two children home to Biloela.

In 1997 at the age of 13, Aran fled Sri Lanka as a Tamil refugee after his family faced murder and persecution at the hands of the genocidal Rajapaksa regime. Having spent much of the last two decades as a community and union organiser, he is now standing as a candidate for the Victorian Socialists in the upcoming Victorian state election.

Aran knows first hand the experience of Australia’s bipartisan cruelty towards refugees, having been locked up in detention as a child. From the Tampa affair to the Park Hotel detainees, both Liberal and Labor governments have overseen a punitive system designed to pressure refugees into returning to the countries they have fled. This session will be exploring the link between borders, anti-refugee racism and the priorities of capitalism.

Aran Mylvaganam

Dr. 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 quickly came to the attention of ASIO, and as revealed in SBS series "Persons of Interest", was heavily surveilled for years. He continued to be involved in every major struggle for Aboriginal rights, participating in the 1982 Commonwealth Games protest, the 1988 bicentennial demonstrations, the successful campaign to save Northland Secondary College in Melbourne in the early 1990s, and the protests that stopped the Jabiluka uranium mine later that decade. Foley has been a keynote speaker at consecutive Invasion day demonstrations in Melbourne as well as Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and he is also an outspoken supporter of refugee rights.

As well as educating generations of people on the streets, Foley educates his students at Victoria University where he lectures in history. He has a vast body of written work, from his PhD on the history of Aboriginal organisations and struggles in Redfern in the late 1960s and early 1970s through to his website:

 Foley is currently building what will be the biggest ever archive of Aboriginal history. Rather than sitting on dusty shelves, these materials are being compiled as a resource for future generations of radicals.

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. 

Gary Foley: ‘a direct and fiercely intellectual man’

Dr. Gary Foley

Anneke Demanuele

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, with Mick Armstrong, is '“The Fight for Workers’ Power: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in the 20th Century”.

Tom Bramble

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

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

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. 

Featured Speakers