2025 Conference Keynote Speakers

Alex brooker

Since 2012, Alex Brooker has co-hosted Channel 4’s comedy panel show The Last Leg. He is also the host of Let’s Be Having You! The 00s Football Podcast, co-hosted with Chris Scull and Nick Lustig, which embarks on a series of 00s based football adventures.

Having graduated with a BA/Hons in Journalism from Liverpool John Moores University, Alex began his career as a sports journalist, first at the Liverpool Echo and then at the Press Association.

Alex then successfully auditioned for Channel 4 after seeing their advert for the Half Million Quid Talent Search to find new disabled talent for the 2012 Paralympics. He joined Channel 4 fully in March 2012 and reported at the Paralympics Opening Ceremony, interviewing Boris Johnson and then Prime Minister David Cameron in front of a TV audience of 11 million people.

The Last Leg has been a popular TV favourite ever since. Alex and his co-presenters Adam Hills and Josh Widdecombe won three RTS Awards in a row between 2017 and 2019, most recently for Best Entertainment Programme.

In 2020 and 2021 Alex co-presented C4’s show One Night in… with Josh Widdecombe. The show documented Alex and Josh spending nights with unlimited access to Britain’s theme parks and museums, including Alton Towers and the Natural History Museum.

Lord Craig Mackinlay of Richborough

Craig is a Chartered Accountant and was the Member of Parliament for South Thanet between May 2015 and May 2024. After standing down as an MP Craig was nominated for a life peerage in the 2024 Dissolution Honours.  In September 2023, Craig developed a very rapidly progressing case of Sepsis and was placed in an induced coma for 16 days. He was not expected to survive. He underwent a quadruple amputation on 1st December 2023 at St Thomas' Hospital in London.  Craig was appointed a Justice of the Peace on the North Kent bench in 2006. A freeman of the City of London, he served as a trustee of three Kent charities: Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust, Foord Almshouses in Rochester, and Medway Sculpture Trust. Craig is married to Kati and they have a young daughter, Olivia.

Dr. Gabrielle Hanley-Mott

Gabrielle Hanley-Mott is a Resident Associate at SUNY Binghamton, USA.  Her work combines Critical Medical Anthropology and Disability Studies. Her dissertation project Reimagining Body and Self worked with American civilian amputees regarding their experiences in clinical spaces, with prosthetic technology, and their ideas around disability. She is interested in how social beliefs around technology and medical systems shape and inform the experiences of prosthetic wearers and creators. She is currently working on expanding this work to examine civilian experiences, post earthquake in Turkey.