The investigative journalist who first exposed the MPs’ expenses scandal starts a series of lectures on Wednesday evening in London’s East End on how society is being manipulated by propaganda.

Award-winning journalist Heather Brooke holsds the series at the University of East Anglia’s London campus in Spitalfields.

Wednesday’s lecture includes a panel in which author Margaret Heffernan discusses ‘mind control’ and her book ‘Willful Blindness’.

Brooke, a freelance journalist and Freedom of Information campaigner who is a professor of journalism at City University, said: “Willful Blindness shows us just how vulnerable we can be to propaganda and mind manipulation.

“Heffernan goes through the scientific research to explain how our brains work when formulating opinion and how our hard limits on cognition can be used to peddle propaganda and false belief.

“We need to understand better how our brains work and why we think the way we do if we’re not to be fooled or manipulated.”

Her second lecture is February 12 when Guardian journalist Paul Lewis and former News of the World deputy editor Neil Wallis debate the problems of ‘Police, Propaganda and the Press.’

The discussion includes the death of Isle of Dogs newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson during a G20 demonstration in the City in 2009, the Leveson inquiry following last year’s News of the World phone-hacking controversy and the independent panel looking into the 1989 Hillsborough tragedy.

A third lecture is planned in March. All lectures are at 7pm at UEA London, 102 Middlesex Street, near Liverpool Street station. Tickets are free, but have to be reserved by email to s.hoffman-heap@uea.ac.uk or online at www.thoughtoutproject.com/events.