Global Advisory Board

Judith Faessler

Judith Faessler (born in 1971 in Geneva) is a historian, Orientalist, and expert on political and religious ideologies and their impact on democratic societies. After completing her secondary education in France, she studied Oriental Studies, history, and philosophy at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

Her academic interests include the Middle East, the history of political ideas, and the philosophy of science. Since 2001, she has worked as a research associate at the Bavarian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, where she focuses on issues related to the democratic rule of law, political extremism—particularly right-wing extremism—and societal threats to liberal orders.

Faessler speaks several modern and historical languages, including German, English, French, Persian, Arabic, and Turkish. In addition to her professional work, she is publicly committed to defending democracy, human rights, and an open society. Her convictions are also shaped by her family history: her grandfather, Max Mannheimer, was a Holocaust survivor, and her grandmother was active in the resistance against National Socialism.

Leo Igwe

Dr Leo Igwe is a Nigerian philosopher, scholar of religion, and internationally recognised human rights and education advocate. He earned his PhD in the Study of Religions from the University of Bayreuth, Germany, in 2017, focusing on witchcraft accusations in Ghana. Most recently, he served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He currently leads the Critical Thinking Social Empowerment Foundation and Advocacy for Alleged Witches in Nigeria.

His work focuses on critical thinking, religion, humanism, human rights, and the challenge of superstition and witchcraft accusations in Africa. He has taught at the Central European University in Budapest, the Catholic University of Applied Sciences in Munich, and the University of Cape Town.

Dr Igwe is the author of numerous academic publications and book chapters, including contributions to The Cambridge History of Atheism. He has served in several international leadership roles, including as Vice-President of Humanists International, and is widely known for promoting reason, education, and human dignity across Africa.

Narendra Nayak

Narendra Nayak (born 1951) is an Indian biochemist, educator, and one of the country's leading advocates of scientific temper, critical thinking, and secular humanism. After studying chemistry at Loyola College in Madras and medical biochemistry at Kasturba Medical College in Manipal, he pursued a career in research and academia. He worked at Kasturba Medical College from 1978 to 2006, during which time he was promoted to Assistant Professor. He then left academia to devote himself full-time to public outreach and rationalist activism.

In 1976, he founded the Dakshina Kannada Rationalist Association, and he later became involved in consumer education, human rights and science communication. Since 2004, he has served as president of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations (FIRA), India's national umbrella organisation for rationalist groups.

Through lectures, teacher training programmes, science workshops, and public demonstrations that expose so-called miracles and supernatural claims, Nayak has reached audiences across India. His lifelong commitment to evidence-based thinking, science education and public awareness has earned him numerous national and international awards in recognition of his contributions to humanism, human rights and the promotion of a scientific mindset.

Rainer Rosenzweig

Dr Rainer Rosenzweig holds a degree in mathematics and a PhD in the psychology of perception; he is a lecturer in the psychology of perception at Nuremberg Tech and, amongst other roles, the founder, director and managing director of the Kortizes Institute for Popular Science Discourse (kortizes.de). He is a board member of the Central Council of People without a denomination (konfessionsfrei.de), president of the Humanist Press Service (hpd.de), an internet portal covering free-thinking and humanist topics, and a member of the Scientific Council of the Society for the Scientific Investigation of Parasciences (GWUP) (gwup.org/wissenschaftsrat). Website: rainerrosenzweig.de.

Anna Veronika Wendland

Anna Veronika Wendland is an assistant professor born in 1966. She grew up in Cologne and earned her Bachelor's and Doctoral degrees in History and Political Science in Cologne and Kyiv (Ukraine). She completed her habilitation in Marburg, where she now teaches modern and contemporary history. Her research focuses on Ukrainian studies and the study of science, technology and society, particularly nuclear safety. She worked as an industrial anthropologist in the European nuclear industry for several years.