LSE Festival 2025: The future of Truth

Join the LSE Philosophy panel on ‘The Future of Truth’ at the LSE Festival 2025.

Date: Saturday 21 June 2025

Time: 3:30pm-4:30pm

Venue: Marshall Building, LSE Campus

The event is free and open to all. Register for your ticket via the official LSE event page.

In a world of mass information, and misinformation, truth seems both easier and harder to find than ever before. As trust in traditional media erodes and social media blurs the line between fact and fiction, with authoritarian regimes weaponising disinformation and post-truth world leaders taking centre stage, how do we defend and promote knowledge, evidence and informed debate?

Our panel will explore the relationship between truth, the media, politics and society in the digital age.

Meet our speakers and chair

J. McKenzie Alexander is Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at LSE. His research interests include evolutionary game theory, the philosophy of social science, and the philosophy of society. His first book, The Structural Evolution of Morality, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007. His second book, Evolutionary Game Theory, published by Cambridge University Press as part of its series Elements in Decision Theory and Philosophy, appeared in 2023. His most recent book The Open Society as an Enemy: A critique of how free societies turned against themselves was published by LSE Press in 2024 and is available Open Access. His article on evolutionary game theory in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has been viewed over 100,000 times and competes for first place in the Google search returns with the Wikipedia article on the same subject.

Charlie Beckett (@charliebeckett.bsky.social) is Professor of Practice in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE, and the founding director of Polis, LSE’s think-tank for research and debate around international journalism and society. Polis runs events for journalists and the public as well as a programme of fellowships and research. Charlie leads the Polis JournalismAI project and was Lead Commissioner for the LSE Truth, Trust & Technology Commission (T3). Charlie is the author of SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save The World (Blackwell, 2008) and WikiLeaks: News In The Networked Era (Polity, 2012). He also published research on journalism and emotions, journalism and Artificial Intelligence, and reporting on terrorism. Prior to joining LSE, Charlie was a programme editor at ITN’s Channel 4 News. Before that he was a senior producer and programme editor at BBC News and Current affairs for ten years.

Hardeep Matharu (@Hardeep_Matharu, @hardeepmatharu.bsky.social) is a journalist, writer, and speaker. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Byline Times – the independent investigative news site and monthly print newspaper covering ‘what the papers don’t say’. Her work focuses on the forces that shape us: identities, politics, culture, the media. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a John Schofield Trust Senior Fellow. Hardeep sits on the board of the ‘Values in the Media’ project established by the Common Cause Foundation. She is a judge of the annual Orwell Society/NUJ Young Journalists Award. Hardeep started her career as an award-winning local news reporter and has more than a decade’s worth of experience working across regional, national, and independent media.

Abi Whistance (@abi_whist) is an investigative reporter for The Post in Liverpool. She specialises in long-form investigations, from corruption within local authorities and charities to political deep dives. In 2025, she was nominated for the Paul Foot Investigative Journalism Award, and in 2024 she won Young Journalist of the Year at the Regional Press Awards.

Paola Romero is a political and moral philosopher from the Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Method at LSE. Her research has developed in the areas of political philosophy, moral philosophy, and the history of political thought. She currently explores Immanuel Kant’s theory of the state and his account of a political will.

About the LSE Festival

What are the possible worlds to come? Join us from Monday 16 to Saturday 21 June to explore the threats and opportunities of the near and distant future, and what a better world could look like. The full programme is now live and tickets will be available from Monday 19 May.

Link to the 2025 Programme.