Speaker: Naomi Oreskes
(Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University)
Title: Science on a Mission: American Oceanography from the Cold War to Climate Change

Does compression have a history?

Alongside a cognitive challenge of “too much to know,” information overload poses a physical challenge of “too much to store.” Indeed, the possibilities of “big data” today are predicated on technologies that compress data into ever “smaller” sizes. On the one hand, major libraries such as the NYPL, coping with spatial shortage, have increasingly emphasized the provision of digital resources – shifting physical collections off site, and in the process sparking heated debates with researchers. On the other hand, the possibilities of digital...

How have people thought about mental illness in different cultures, and are there positive aspects associated with it, thinking historically and scientifically? Should we think of mental illness as categorically different or as deviations from the normal healthy state? What measures other than pharmaceutical medicines can be helpful for maintaining positive mental health? Join us as we take a deep dive into the biological, historical and psychological aspects of mental illness.

A panel featuring: Prof. Anne Harrington (History of Science),
Prof....

Nominated for three Oscars, including Best Picture, Hidden Figures is the incredible untold story of Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe)—brilliant African American women working at NASA, who served as the brains...

Brendan J. Meade, Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences; Daniel Gilbert, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology, and Scott Kuindersma, Assistant Professor of Engineering & Computer Science, will talk about natural disasters, how to predict them, why we aren't properly concerned about risks of this...

Title: “AIDS Origins: Can Stories that Don’t Tell Well Still Become History?"

Speaker: Naomi Oreskes
 
Scientists are often reluctant to speak in public on contested issues, for fear that this will “politicize” their science and have a negative impact on their credibility.  In this talk, I examine these concerns, by exploring historical...

Race, Representation, and Museums Lecture Series

J. Lorand Matory, Lawrence Richardson Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Director, Sacred Arts of the Black Atlantic Project, Duke University

Since the early-modern encounter between African and European merchants on the Guinea Coast, the term “fetish...

Speaker: David Paternotte (Lecturer in Sociology at the Université libre de Bruxelles)

Panelists

Peter L. Galison
Joseph Pellegrino University Professor, Harvard University
Title: What Are Technical Lands?

Caroline A. Jones
Professor, Department of Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
...

Roy Scranton
Assistant Professor of English, University of Notre Dame
Author of Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization (2015)

The Environment Forum at the Mahindra Center is convened by Robin Kelsey (Dean of Arts and Humanities,...

Global Food+ 2017 is an event open to all that will feature an afternoon of “speed talk” presentations by two dozen top scholars in the Boston area. This event will highlight current research findings at the important nexus between food, agriculture, health, society, and the environment.

The twenty-four presenters include scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, economics, political science, history, sociology, engineering, biology, and environmental sciences. Each will deliver a seven-minute summary of his or her most recent research...

Title: On a World Climate Assembly and the Social Cost of Carbon

Speaker: Martin Weitzman (HKS)

Panelists

Carrie Lambert-Beattie, Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies and History of Art and Architecture; Director of Graduate Studies, Film and Visual Studies, Harvard University

Christina Seely, Artist and Assistant Professor of Studio Art, Dartmouth College

Ross Virginia, Myers Family Professor of Environmental Science; Director, Institute of Arctic Studies, The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, Dartmouth College

Moderated by Edward Morris,...

Speaker: Daniel Wikler (HSPH, Ethics and Population Health)