Liberty team

Akiko was previously CEO of NSUN, the National Survivor User Network, a mental health charity led by and for people with lived experience. There, she worked alongside grassroots groups and campaigners to shift power and resource in mental health.

Previous roles include Director of Mental Health Europe, and leading a service at Mind in Camden for people who hear voices, working in the community, youth services, forensic settings, and Immigration Removal Centres.

She has a background in rights-based campaigning and policy work in racial justice, criminal justice, and mental health, and has written widely on these issues.

Akiko is a Professor in Practice at the Institute of Medical Humanities at the University of Durham, and has extensive board-level experience.

Sam joined Liberty at the start of 2018 as a Policy and Campaigns Officer and was Head of Policy and Campaigns until October 2022. He has worked on ending immigration detention, protecting the Human Rights Act, reforming mental health law and the criminalisation of poverty among other Liberty projects.

Before joining Liberty, Sam was Campaigns Manager at René Cassin where he engaged and mobilised the British Jewish community on a range of human rights issues. He was a founding trustee of the Advocacy Academy in South London and holds a Masters in Human Rights from the LSE.

Sam joined Liberty because he wanted to play his role in trying to make society a more fair and just place.

Nazmul works with the Advice and Information team to advise and deliver projects on human rights and civil liberties to members of the public and community organisations.

Before joining Liberty, Nazmul trained as a solicitor at Bhatt Murphy where he worked on a number of public inquiries, inquests and private and public law claims involving domestic and overseas state violence and failures, and breaches of the Human Rights Act.

Nazmul also worked as a youth worker and project co-ordinator at Shadow Youth Alliance, where he planned and delivered educational and recreational provisions for at-risk young people in Tower Hamlets.

Nazmul joined Liberty to contribute to its work to empower marginalised and overlooked communities, and fight for a fairer society built on solidarity.

Callum provides legal advice on a range of human rights issues to members of the public and drafts legal information articles for the Advice and Information Hub. He also develops collaborative projects with grassroots organisations, including protest bust cards for racialised and migrant protesters, and ‘I Know My Rights’ trainings.

Callum is an LLB Law and LLM International Human Rights Law graduate. He has previously volunteered, interned and worked within numerous human rights organisations, including Right to Remain, Prisoners’ Advice Service, Detention Action, REDRESS, the Human Dignity Trust, and Black Protest Legal Support.

He is a former Chair of the Young Lawyers’ Committee of the Human Rights Lawyers Association and member of their Executive Committee. He organises with Lambeth Cop Watch to challenge discriminatory and oppressive policing in his community, as well as regularly acting as a legal observer at protests with Black Protest Legal Support. He is also a Trustee with Right to Remain and Brixton Advice Centre.

Callum came to Liberty because it challenges the oppression of marginalised communities, and because its work speaks to the imagining and realisation of a better world.

Folusho gives information on human rights issues to members of the public. They have published information on Liberty’s website helping people to understand their rights. They are especially passionate Disabled people’s rights.

Folusho came to Liberty because they believe that we should all be able to understand human rights law, not just people who have studied it.

Louise joined Liberty in June 2020, having practised as a solicitor in the NGO sector and in private practice for over 20 years.  Previously she worked at the Public Law Project, and Deighton Pierce Glynn, specialising in judicial review and discrimination cases. She is one of the leading practitioners on the public sector equality duty and has worked closely with the women’s sector and Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations on a number of human rights issues affecting them and their service-users.

Louise joined Liberty to help lead their strategic litigation working collaboratively across the organisation, and to build relationships with other organisations using the law to speak truth to power.

Katy returned to Liberty in August 2020, having previously worked as an Advice and Information Officer in 2013. In between, she qualified and practised as a solicitor at the Public Law Project, where she specialised in strategic judicial review litigation concerning access to justice and migrants’ rights.

At Liberty, Katy’s work focuses on technology, privacy and protest.

Katy joined Liberty in order to be part of a multidisciplinary organisation protecting human rights and holding the government to account.

Lana Adamou joined Liberty in July 2020, having worked in private practice since 2009.

Lana specialises in challenging police powers, and unfairness in the criminal justice system. She has helped a wide-range of clients to uphold their human rights and civil liberties, including bereaved families, protestors, over-policed young people, and victims of serious crime.

Prior to joining Liberty, she co-chaired the Police Action Lawyers’ Group, a national organisation of lawyers committed to holding the police to account.

Lana joined Liberty to use the law to protect fundamental rights and freedoms at both individual and systemic levels.

Meg returned to Liberty in April 2018, having worked here during 2016 and 2017. Meg is a lawyer in Liberty’s Legal team, running our litigation in privacy and technology.

Previously, Meg worked as a solicitor in private practice. She has also volunteered with The AIRE Centre, The Connection, and a children’s charity, and is determined to continue to work with the more vulnerable groups in our society.

Meg joined Liberty to use the law to strengthen and protect vital rights and freedoms.

Nikki is a LLB Law with a Year Abroad graduate. After graduating, Nikki worked at Duncan Lewis Solicitors. She has also done a variety of voluntary work, including for SIFA Fireside, Birmingham Pro Bono and Shelter, and has volunteered in Ghana. She has been awarded a Scholarship from Middle Temple to fund her Bar Course.

Nikki first joined Liberty as an Advice and Information Intern and then went on to become Liberty’s Legal Team Paralegal. Nikki came to Liberty because of her commitment to protecting human rights and combating inequality and discrimination, and Liberty’s dedication to this.

Stephanie is an LLB and LLM graduate, with special interest in social welfare law, including racial discrimination, policing in communities and more!

After graduating, Stephanie has done a lot of community organising work with The Advocacy Academy and is also an alumnus of their social justice flagship fellowship programme, graduating in 2016. She is the co-founder The Halo Collective, a social justice campaign which aims to dismantle the problematic attitudes toward Black hair and styles, tackling the issue of racialised hair discrimination – since launching the campaign in 2020, her team have influenced the creation of guidance formed by the Equality and Human Rights Commission concerning hair discrimination in school’s dress code policies, in October 2022. Stephanie is also a 2022 graduate of the UN Fellowship for People of African Descent, where she gained an interest in international human rights mechanisms and applying this to the concept of community lawyering in grassroots spaces.

Stephanie came to Liberty based on her long-founded passions towards how Liberty does its work and what it has been founded on – ordinary people, standing up to power. Stephanie feels Liberty’s work is incredibly necessary in order to protect the human rights of those whose voices are often ignored or more vulnerable in such spaces and would like to use and challenge the law as a resource for the better and to create a more understanding and equitable society.

Ruth is the Head of Policy & Campaigns at Liberty and supports the team to deliver their work across all our campaigning and policy areas.

Before joining Liberty in November 2022, Ruth was a Policy Manager at housing and homelessness charity Shelter, where she led on private renting policy. Prior to this, she worked in frontline housing services, supporting households who were facing homelessness.

She joined Liberty to fight back against the erosion of our human rights and to campaign for a more just and equitable society.

Emmanuelle is a Policy and Campaigns Manager at Liberty. She works across policing, protest and surveillance technology.

Prior to joining Liberty, Emmanuelle worked in research and policy at Kaleidoscope Trust, advocating for the rights of communities across the globe persecuted because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. Emmanuelle was a founding member of the Free Black University and a researcher-in-residence at the South London Gallery where she worked with young people on responding to a colonial anthropological archive. She is also a reframing consultant for Runnymede Trust’s racial justice project and sits on the board of trustees at the Public Interest Research Centre.

Emmanuelle holds a BA in Anthropology and Law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and an MA in Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice from the University of British Columbia (on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam people).

She came to Liberty to join the work of re-imagining what community safety looks like, and to stand up against the assumption that criminalisation, punishment and surveillance can ever be a part of that vision.

Jodie is a Policy and Campaigns Officer at Liberty. She works across policing, protest and scrutinising the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Previously, Jodie was Campaigns Officer at Women in Prison, working on campaigns to halt prison expansion and increase support for community-based women’s centres that provide support to women affected by the criminal justice system. She organises with Abolitionist Futures and co-founded Our Empty Chair, a collective bringing together the experiences of families separated from their loved ones by prisons and detention, in April 2020.

Jodie holds a BA in Politics from King’s College London and an MSc in Criminal Justice Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She joined Liberty to be part of the resistance to state policies of coercion and surveillance and the work towards building a society where everyone has what they need to live safe lives.

Charlie is a Policy and Campaigns Officer. He co-leads Liberty’s campaign to protect the Human Rights Act, while also focusing on labour rights, military accountability, disability, judicial review, human rights frameworks and the constitution.

Charlie came to Liberty in September 2019, most recently from a background in theatre production in London and New York, having previously spent time at human rights and criminal justice organisations in the UK. He holds a Masters in US History & Politics from UCL.

Miriam supports the Policy and Campaigns team across all our work, including protecting the right to protest, resisting facial recognition technology, and saving the Human Rights Act.

Before joining Liberty in 2021, Miriam worked in campaigning and fundraising for various charity organisations, where she helped to launch an initiative to support people living with invisible disabilities in the workplace. She has also previously worked at a food bank service, and as a freelance tutor, writer and translator.

She joined Liberty to be a part of a likeminded team who are working hard to protect everybody’s human rights and challenge those in power.

Emma works closely with our donors. Before joining Liberty in 2015, she worked in fundraising and communications for Canon Collins, an education and legal assistance NGO with its roots in the struggle against apartheid.

Emma holds a master’s in human rights law and a degree in human rights and journalism. She has previously worked as journalist in West Africa and taught English in Russia and South East Asia, where her passion for fundraising and human rights was born.

Katharine joined Liberty in January 2022 in the role of Philanthropy Officer focussing on Trusts & Foundations fundraising. She previously worked at Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity where she specialised in Special Event fundraising. Katharine joined Liberty to be part of a team that holds the Government to account and with a long track-record of achieving real, lasting change.

Katharine holds a masters degree in Human Rights from the London School of Economics where she focussed on women and children’s rights. Katharine won the British Council ‘Scholarship of Excellence’ which enabled her to spend a year of her Sociology undergraduate at the City University of Hong Kong. In Hong Kong she witnessed the beginnings of the ‘Umbrella Revolution’ which sparked her passion for Human Rights and Civil Liberties. Katharine is currently undertaking the Graduate Diploma in Law via part time study and hopes to go on to study the Bar Practise Course.

Matt is Liberty’s Communications Director. He’s responsible for overseeing Liberty’s external positioning; reaching new audiences; influencing public discourse on human rights and maintaining and growing Liberty’s high-profile and brand.

Prior to joining Liberty in 2022, Matt held a range of senior leadership roles within the charity sector, including Media Trust, akt (The Albert Kennedy Trust) and Terrence Higgins Trust. He has over a decade of experience in communications roles and is currently Chair of the Board of Trustees for LGBTQ+ health and wellbeing charity London Friend.

Larry oversees our public-facing digital presence and works with departments across Liberty to help coordinate our campaigns.

Larry has worked for Liberty since 2011, previously editing our newsletter and redeveloping the website in 2014. Before joining us, Larry worked in communications for an international development NGO.

Farheen joined Liberty’s Communications team in 2022, working on the digital side of the team to help create content for Liberty’s social media channels and website.

Previously Farheen worked in digital communications for Greenpeace and Shelter, as well as interning with Liberty’s Advocacy and Policy team in 2019.

Amarinder is Media Manager at Liberty, where he oversees our press office and helps communicate Liberty’s work to the public.

Amarinder joined Liberty in September 2021, having previously worked in the comms team at an international development NGO. He joined Liberty to help raise awareness of human rights issues in the UK and create long-lasting change.

Polly joined Liberty’s media team in 2019 after holding a similar role at the Green Party of England and Wales. Before that Polly trained and worked as a local journalist.

She came to Liberty to be part of an organisation with a track record of defending human rights and holding those in power to account.

After volunteering with Liberty in several roles, Dave joined the Operations team in 2013 before moving into the Communications team a year later.

Dave previously worked in careers education in East London. He joined Liberty to play his part in a human rights NGO with a long track-record of achieving real, lasting change across society.

Andrew joined Liberty in September 2017 to manage the organisation’s membership programme and fundraise from individual supporters.

Andrew has worked in fundraising for ten years and prior to working for Liberty was a freelance fundraising consultant. He has worked for organisations in the social justice, homelessness and international development sectors and is currently a member of Global Justice Now’s board.

He joined Liberty due to his passion for human rights and social justice and a desire to work for a campaigning organisation again.

Matthew joined the Liberty team in 2022, and works as a Development Officer on member recruitment and engagement. He has previously worked in fundraising at a variety of campaigning organisations in the UK.

Matthew believes passionately in the power of supporter-led campaigns to make change and hold the powerful to account.

Jodie joined Liberty in January 2022 as a Development Assistant, working primarily in the Memberships team. She previously worked at the loneliness charity, South London Cares, as their Development Coordinator. Jodie joined Liberty to bring her fundraising experience to team that works to protect the rights of the most marginalised, as well as increasing awareness and accessibility of UK legislation. Alongside working at Liberty, Jodie has recently completed her Graduate Diploma in Law.

Jessica joined Liberty in 2021 as a Development Assistant, handling all things membership. Before this, she worked in Communications at the Royal Society of Literature after finishing her Politics degree.

Jessica came to Liberty to join a team of like-minded people, committed to holding those in power to account and standing up for those most marginalized in society.

Jen is Liberty’s Finance and Operations Director and joined Liberty in Spring 2024. Jen is a qualified chartered accountant who has worked in senior Finance and Operations roles in membership organisations across the not-for-profit sector over the last 17 years, in organisations focusing on disability, mental health and racial justice.  Jen has held trustee treasurer roles across her career and is shortly due to join the board of You Make It, a race and inclusion charity based in London, which she has worked alongside for a number of years.

Kathryn is the Head of HR and Operations, responsible for Human Resource activities as well as Facilities and IT provision. A Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, previously Kathryn held a senior leadership role in HR and Operations within Animal Welfare and brings a wealth of expertise to Liberty.

She has over a decade of experience working in third sector organisations and is currently Chair of the Board of Trustees for a charity supporting and empowering young people to make a positive contribution to society as well as a trustee for an international animal rescue.

Kathryn joined Liberty due to her passion for protecting human rights and freedoms.

John joined Liberty in November 2021. As the Head of Finance, John is responsible for financial management, reporting and the development of finance systems and procedures at Liberty.  He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and has a long career background in senior financial management roles, mainly at organisations operating in health & disability and education.

Mina joined us in 2015 and works as part of our Operations team, ensuring Liberty’s finances are well managed.

Mina was keen to join the Liberty team because she believes that if we fail to take a stand against injustice and abuse, we are as guilty as the perpetrator.

Clair ensures good financial management at Liberty, so that money is safeguarded at all times and used appropriately, economically, efficiently and effectively.

Clair was previously a business mentor at the Prince’s Trust, supporting young entrepreneurs who needed commercial and financial business expertise to help them set up their own business.

She joined Liberty because of its respected reputation and high public profile.

Nicke is our Head of People and Culture. Before joining Liberty in 2013 she worked in operations roles in the media industry. Nicke came to Liberty because she wanted to put her organisational skills to good use supporting great work.

Nicke holds a CMI Level 6 Certificate in Professional Management & Leadership Practice, Leading Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.

Vasuki is our Executive Assistant to Director. She provides administrative support to the Director, Board and Senior Leadership Team.

Vasuki previously worked in the welfare sector and chose to join Liberty in the fight towards protecting and promoting human rights.

Sylvia joined Liberty in 2022 as a HR and Operations Assistant and is responsible for Liberty’s recruitment, onboarding, HR admin and assisting the wider Ops Team.

She previously studied International Human Rights Law at university and joined Liberty to combine her passion for defending our crucial rights with her HR expertise.

Harriet joined Liberty Investigates from the local newspaper company National World, where she was data and investigations editor for their flagship national title, as well as being part of the team that brought public interest data-driven investigations and visualisations to newsrooms across the UK.

At National World she specialised in reporting on violence against women, including an investigation into how police are more likely to charge suspects in gendered violence cases when the victim is white. She also reported extensively on modern slavery, leading the company’s regional investigations team to be shortlisted for the prestigious Paul Foot Award with a project exposing the criminal justice system’s failure to stamp out trafficking.

Previously she worked as a reporter at PA’s local data news agency Radar AI, and as a local news journalist. She is a two-time Royal Statistical Society Statistical Excellence in Journalism Awards winner and has also won a Society of Editors’ Regional Press Award, alongside being shortlisted for a British Journalism Award and the Media Freedom Awards.

Aaron was previously the news editor at independent media outlet EachOther, helping shape its coverage of UK human rights issues ranging from systemic racism to school exclusions. He was also a freelance reporter for the Guardian and the Observer, covering national news and producing exclusive stories on homelessness and disability rights.

In 2019, he won a Google News Initiative-sponsored award for his work leading a year-long newspaper campaign focussing on rough sleeping in while at east London’s Ilford Recorder.

The campaign crowdfunded more than £21,000 for local homelessness services. In coordination with the Bureau Local’s Dying Homeless project, he revealed that at least 10 people had died homeless in the borough of Redbridge in the year to October 2018, six of whom were undocumented Indian migrants stuck in a bureaucratic limbo.

Aaron has a keen interest in migration, homelessness and policing.

Mark joined Liberty Investigates in January 2023 after more than a decade as a freelance investigative reporter, covering issues including criminal justice, drugs policy, migrants’ rights and homelessness.

For eight years he worked as a freelance correspondent for VICE, producing news exclusives, long-form investigations and television documentaries. This work included a long-running series about councils using anti-social behaviour legislation to target rough sleepers, which helped secure a government intervention to prevent the practice and an investigation into the origins of synthetic cannabis that was shortlisted for a Criminal Justice Alliance award for outstanding journalism. His coverage of the UK government’s failure to assist child refugees was prominently cited in an inquiry report produced by the Human Trafficking Foundation.

Mark’s other work has included news exclusives for the Guardian and the Daily Mirror. He has investigated the UK’s flat earth movement for Esquire, marathon cheats for the Observer Magazine, and performance-enhancing drugs for Men’s Health.