prof. Anil Seth

Humanists UK is delighted to announce the appointment of its newest patron, Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience Anil Seth. He joins a stable of over 200 Humanists UK patrons with notable careers in arts, literature, science, academia, politics, and community and civic activism.

With more than two decades of research and outreach experience, Anil’s mission is to advance the science of consciousness and to use its insights for the benefit of society, technology, and medicine. An internationally leading researcher, Anil is also a renowned public speaker, best-selling author, and sought-after collaborator.

Anil is Director of the Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex as well as Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Program on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness and a European Research Council Advanced Investigator. He has published more than 200 research papers and has been recognised by Web of Science, over several years, as being in the top 0.1% of researchers worldwide. His 2017 TED talk, Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality, has been viewed over fifteen million times. He was awarded the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize in 2023 and in 2014 he was listed by Prospect magazine as one of the top 25 global thinkers. His book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness was an instant Sunday Times bestseller and a 2021 book of the year for the Economist, New Statesman, Bloomberg Business, Guardian, and Financial Times.

He delivered the 2025 Humanists UK Voltaire Lecture, exploring the nature of consciousness in living organisms and related questions about whether artificial consciousness could ever exist. As part of the event, he was awarded Humanists UK’s inaugural Rationalist Press Lecture Medal.

More details here: New patron for Humanists UK: Professor Anil Seth – Humanists UK