| Contact |
Dustin Luca
|
|---|
SALEM, MASS. – The Darwin Festival arrives at Salem State University next week, bringing with it conversations spotlighting everything from climate justice for species affected by sea level rise, to how indigenous perspectives can inspire ecological discussions.
The 47th annual Darwin Festival will run at Salem State from Monday, Feb. 9 to Friday, Feb. 13. The festival this year includes five in-person lectures in the Ellison Campus Center’s Vets Hall, and five webinars that will connect attendees in Salem with lecturers from around the world.
A long-standing tradition in the biology department that sees classes curtailed so students can attend the talks, the Darwin Festival “covers the span of evolutionary biology,” said Ryan Fisher, chairperson of the biology department. “We’ve had everything from 21st century molecular talks to going back to one of the first places Darwin started to think about evolutionary change: the Galapagos Islands.”
The week kicks off Monday at 11 am, with a webinar from London’s Natural History Museum, where a curator of the museum’s British and Irish Herbarium will give this year’s Founder’s Lecture on Darwin’s relationship with the museum.
The festival takes off from there, with two to three events planned for each day remaining in the week. Talks include “Sea Level Rise and Multispecies Climate Justice,” which will dive deep into how climate change and sea-level rise impacts nonhuman species, and “Evolving Worldviews and their Impacts: Bringing in Indigenous Perspectives,” a talk exploring resiliency by spotlighting that of indigenous culture persisting for millennia.
The week also includes an Alumni-Student Social on Thursday, Feb. 12 from 6:30 to 9 pm in the Ellison Campus Center’s commuter lounge.
The festival is made possible by support from the Charles Albert Read Trust and Thermo Fisher Scientific, as well as on-campus sponsorships from the biology department and the College of Arts and Sciences. This year’s festival was coordinated by Jason Brown and Ethel Gordon, two faculty in the biology department.
For details on each lecture and links to register for those being held online, please visit the official Darwin Festival webpage at salemstate.edu/darwinfestival.