Professor Anjali Goswami will deliver the 2023 Darwin Day Lecture, taking place on Wednesday 8 February 2023. The Darwin Day Lecture, a highlight of the humanist calendar, will take place as a hybrid event, and will be chaired by Humanists UK Vice President Professor Alice Roberts. Professor Goswami’s talk is titled ‘The Speed of Life: A Deep Time Perspective’.
A limited number of in-person tickets are available for those looking to attend the February event at London’s Conway Hall, a historic home of humanism. Early Bird tickets were pre-released to Humanists UK members on Monday and are running very low.
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Professor Anjali Goswami is a Research Leader in Palaeobiology and Dean of Postgraduate Education at the Natural History Museum and an Honorary Professor of Palaeobiology at University College London. She currently serves as President of the Linnean Society of London, the first person of colour elected to this role in its 235-year history. Anjali completed a joint BSc with High Honours in Geological and Biological Sciences from the University of Michigan and a PhD in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Chicago, before moving to the UK to take up a US National Science Foundation research fellow at the NHM. She then spent ten years as a faculty member first at the University of Cambridge and then University College London before returning to the NHM in 2017.
The Darwin Day Lecture is always the biggest and most popular event in the Humanists UK calendar – commemorating the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin Day has grown to become a major national event, with the Humanists UK lecture – next year celebrating its 20th anniversary – the centrepiece, attended by upwards of 2,000 people.
Humanists UK Chief Executive Andrew Copson said:
‘We are absolutely thrilled to have Professor Anjali Goswami deliver the Darwin Day Lecture in 2023, the twentieth anniversary year of this prestigious event. Professor Goswami is a leading figure in the field of evolutionary biology, and her work on the evolution of mammals has been groundbreaking. We are delighted to recognize her contributions to science with the Darwin Day Lecture Medal, and we can’t wait to hear her insights in this important lecture.’
Notes:
Early Bird Tickets are available from humanists.uk/darwinday2023, priced at £10 per household for an online ticket (normally £12), or £13 per person (normally £15) for in-person.
About Professor Anjali Goswami
Professor Goswami’s expertise is in vertebrate evolution and development, particularly using high-resolution 3D images of specimens to quantify and reconstruct the evolution of biodiversity and understand how development, ecology and large-scale environmental effects have shaped animal evolution through deep time. She has published more than 130 scientific articles on the evolution of different groups from insects to dinosaurs, but her main interest is in the evolution of mammals. She has searched for fossils all over the world, from Svalbard to Madagascar, and currently leads expeditions in Argentina and India. Anjali also created and manages Phenome10k, a free online database for 3D biological images for research and education.
About Professor Alice Roberts
Professor Alice Roberts is Vice President of Humanists UK, and Chair of the Darwin Day Lecture series. She is Professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham, Director of Anatomy for the NHS Severn Deanery School of Surgery, and holds honorary fellowships at Hull, York Medical School, and the University of Bristol.
She is an honorary fellow of the British Science Association, a member of the Advisory Board of the Cheltenham Festival of Science, Patron of the Association of Science and Discovery Centres, and a member of the Council of the British Heart Foundation.
She combines her academic career with one as a science presenter on television. She has appeared as a human bone specialist on Channel 4’s Time Team and in various projects on BBC2, including Coast, Don’t Die Young, The Incredible Human Journey, Wild Swimming, Digging for Britain, Horizon, and Origins of Us.
About the Darwin Day Lecture Series
The Darwin Day Lecture explores humanism and humanist thought as related to science and evolution, Charles Darwin, or his works. The Darwin medallist has made a significant contribution in one of these fields.
The lecture and medal are named and held to mark the annual global celebration of the birth of Charles Darwin, held every 12 February.
For further comment or information, media should contact Humanists UK Director of Public Affairs and Policy Richy Thompson at press@humanists.uk.
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