The centrepiece of this year is ‘NEUROlogue’ , a new monthly talk series hosted at lecture venues across London institutions, each bringing together 50–100 students, alumni, active researchers, and clinicians for discussion that is both academically rigorous and accessible to a broad audience. We are developing the series in partnership with the British Neuroscience Association and drawing directly on King's research community, with the long-term aim of establishing NEUROlogue as a recognised fixture on the London neuroscience calendar.

I'm writing to formally invite you to join our panel for the inaugural NEUROlogue event, "Destigmatising Mental Disorders," on the 15th of  October 2026.

The language we use to describe mental illness shapes how society responds to it. Despite significant advances in clinical neuroscience and psychiatry, public understanding of mental disorders remains entangled with stigma, misconception, and outdated frameworks — contributing to delayed help-seeking, underfunded research, and real harm to the people these disciplines exist to serve. The gap between what the science now tells us and what the public conversation reflects is widening, and we believe that closing it requires voices from across the clinical, research, and forensic landscape speaking directly to the next generation of neuroscientists and mental health professionals.

The format is modelled on a TEDx-style structure. Each panellist would deliver a 10–15 minute presentation on their own work as it relates to the broader theme — whether that's clinical practice, research, public policy, forensic application, or lived professional experience of how stigma operates in their field. This would be followed by a moderated panel discussion, chaired by a member of our committee, exploring the intersections between each speaker's perspective. We are happy to work with you on shaping your presentation and preparing discussion questions well in advance, and we will ensure you have everything you need to feel fully prepared.

Our audience will be drawn primarily from our membership base — undergraduate and postgraduate neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry students at King's — alongside KCL alumni and early-career researchers. These are precisely the people entering the fields where stigma does the most damage, and hearing directly from practising professionals and researchers at this stage in their training has a formative impact that lectures and textbooks alone cannot replicate.