Boston Lectures, Talks & Symposia

Tue Oct 6 · 7:30pm

Half-Baked Stories About My Dead Mom: Ira Glass & Etgar Keret

Emerson Colonial Theatre (presenter TBC) · Theatre District · Boston

This American Life's Ira Glass and Israeli writer Etgar Keret share a stage for an evening of storytelling built around Keret's title piece — grief, absurdity and the half-fictions families tell — in the intimate register both are famous for.

Tue Oct 6 · 12:45pm

New Voices: Julia Gutiérrez

Wellesley College · Green Hall · Newhouse Center (Rooms 237/239/240) · Wellesley

An installment of New Voices, the emerging-scholars lecture series at Wellesley's Newhouse Center for the Humanities, featuring Julia Gutiérrez. The college's event page lists the room and date but no abstract yet; topic detail is to be posted closer to the talk.

Tue Oct 6 · 6:30pm

Chasing Beauty: A Conversation with Natalie Dykstra and Curator Meg Winslow

Mount Auburn Cemetery · Mount Auburn Cemetery · 580 Mount Auburn St. · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Natalie Dykstra presents the research behind Chasing Beauty, her life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, which reads Gardner's museum and its holdings “as a kind of memoir” and won the Marfield Prize for arts writing. She talks with Meg Winslow, Mount Auburn's senior curator of historical collections, about their collaboration and what makes a biography come alive. Dykstra, emerita professor of English at Hope College, also wrote Clover Adams.

Tue Oct 6 · 5:15pm

Knighthood and the Realities of War in Medieval Germany

MIT · MIT Building E51 · 70 Memorial Dr · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

David S. Bachrach, a historian of medieval warfare, challenges the picture of German warfare as the business of a few mounted warrior aristocrats. His paper, for MIT's Ancient and Medieval Studies Colloquium, takes up "knighthood" as a problem of military history, the reality of pre-crusade warfare, the centrality of sieges and fortifications, and what that implies about the scale of war and of government.

Tue Oct 6 · 3:00pm

Fall 2026 Education Policy Seminar Series: Dr. Seth Gershenson

Boston University · Boston University (Wheelock) · Boston · MA · Boston

Seth Gershenson, an economist of education at American University, takes the second of BU's autumn education policy seminars. His research covers teacher expectations, the effects of matching students with same-race teachers, and absenteeism. The series is aimed at an academic audience and includes detailed discussion, but the department has opened it to the public.

Tue Oct 6 · 12:30pm

The Ministry of Minority Affairs and the Status of Israel's Palestinian Citizens, 1948-1949

Brandeis University · Mandel Center for the Humanities · Room 328 · Waltham · MA · Waltham

Anat Ovadia-Rosner, a Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Law School, examines Israel's short-lived Ministry of Minority Affairs, set up to deal with the Palestinians who remained inside Israeli territory during the 1948 war, and argues that the institution shaped how their citizenship is understood today.

Tue Oct 6 · 4:15pm

Feore Family Lecture Series on Jesuit Studies

Boston College · Gasson Hall · Boston College · Chestnut Hill · MA · Boston

Ines Županov, senior research fellow emerita at the CNRS, receives the 2026 George E. Ganss SJ Award and gives a lecture called 'Truth and Storytelling'. Županov works on the Jesuit missions in South Asia and early modern Catholic missionary writing. The Feore series brings leading Jesuit Studies scholars to the university.

Tue Oct 6 · 5:30pm

Brennan Symposium: From Self Doubt to Authentic Leadership with William Ajayi

Boston College · Fulton Honors Library · Boston College · Chestnut Hill · MA · Boston

William Ajayi, a clinically trained psychologist who has advised senior executives at Netflix, Google and YouTube on organisational health, runs the Brennan Symposium on moving from self-doubt to authentic leadership. His work spans mental health provision, benefits strategy, crisis response and workforce performance at large scale.

Tue Oct 6 · 6:30pm

Lectures on Tap — What Is a Number? A History of a (Seemingly) Simple Idea

Lectures on Tap · Somerville · MA (bar; exact address emailed after ticket purchase) · Somerville

Andy Schultz, Professor of Mathematics at Wellesley College, traces how the idea of number has changed through key moments in mathematical history, from counting to the abstract structures behind modern science, and asks what a number is, what rules it must obey and who decides them. Schultz has taught and researched for nearly 25 years, working on Galois theory, algebraic combinatorics and the mathematics of voting.

Tue Oct 6 · 3:30pm

BC-MIT Number Theory Seminar: Vesselin Dimitrov (Caltech)

MIT · Building 2 449 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Vesselin Dimitrov of Caltech reports on work with Frank Calegari and Yunqing Tang extending André's algebraicity criterion to arithmetic Gevrey series, which settles a problem Mahler raised: the distance from log n to the nearest integer is bounded below by a polynomial in 1/n. Hélène Esnault of FU Berlin follows with an overview of the arithmetic of complex local systems, which Simpson's conjectures predict are motivic.

Tue Oct 6 · 2:30pm

Physical Math Seminar: Nicholas Zolman (University of Washington)

MIT · Building 2 449 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Nicholas Zolman of the University of Washington speaks on extreme events such as earthquakes and coronal mass ejections in high-dimensional chaotic systems. Standard reductions like PCA discard the structures that instabilities amplify into rare events; Zolman shows how gradients of a quantity of interest reveal a sensitive subspace, used to build early-warning systems and controllers, with results on turbulent bursts, oscillator synchronization and ocean rogue waves.

Tue Oct 6 · 7pm

Tuesday Night Lecture Series: Akemi Martin

Boston University · Room 410/411 · Boston

Akemi Martin, a master papermaker with 20 years of collaborating with artists on limited editions in handmade paper, speaks at the invitation of BU’s MFA Painting program. Formerly Creative Director of Pace Paper and Artistic Collaborator at Dieu Donné, she has worked with Robert Ryman, Shepard Fairey and Derek Fordjour, and on over 100 projects with sculptor Leonardo Drew. She runs her own studio in Lincoln.

Tue Oct 6 · 7:30pm

Alice Edwards: Whose Suffering Counts? Sexual Torture, Hostage-Taking and Survivors' Justice in a Divided World

Brandeis University · Mandel Center for the Humanities · G03 · Waltham · Waltham

Alice Edwards, the first woman to serve as UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, asks why some survivors are believed while others are doubted, and why sexual violence and torture remain so hard to investigate. As rapporteur she documented the October 7 attacks, called for the release of all hostages and asked Israel to investigate alleged torture of Palestinian detainees. It is the Diane Markowicz Memorial Lecture.

Tue Oct 6 · 6:30pm

Perspectives on Performance: Peter Mills Weiss

Harvard University · Farkas Hall · Room 203 · 12 Holyoke St. · Cambridge · Boston

Peter Mills Weiss, a theatre maker who creates work with his collaborator Julia Mounsey, speaks for both of them under the title "authenticity as material," a discussion of how their theatre wrestles with cruelty, authenticity, deception, entertainment and power. Part of the Perspectives on Performance series from Harvard's Theater, Dance & Media program, supported by the Theodore Spencer Memorial Fund.

Tue Oct 6 · 6pm

The Press and the President with Don Lemon & Chris Whipple

Harvard University · JFK Jr. Forum · Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School · 79 JFK St. · Cambridge · Boston

Don Lemon, who spent thirty years at CNN, NBC and MSNBC before leaving network television to build his own media company, joins Chris Whipple, a Fall 2026 resident fellow at the Institute of Politics, to discuss media access to the White House ahead of the midterm elections. Whipple is the author of The Gatekeepers, a history of White House chiefs of staff. In-person registration requires a Harvard email address.

Tue Oct 6 · 4pm

East of Eden: Adaptation and Representation

Harvard University · Farkas Hall · 12 Holyoke St. · Cambridge · Boston

Zoe Kazan, co-showrunner, writer and executive producer of Netflix's limited-series adaptation of Steinbeck's East of Eden, and cast member Hoon Lee ’94 join Ju Yon Kim, professor of English at Harvard and author of The Racial Mundane, for a conversation on reimagining American classics and Asian American representation on screen. Kazan's grandfather Elia Kazan directed the 1955 film of the novel.

Tue Oct 6 · 4:30pm

HGSE Askwith Education Forum | The Modern Superintendent

Harvard University · Harvard Graduate School of Education · Longfellow Hall · 13 Appian Way · Boston

Jennifer Cheatham, former superintendent of the Madison, Wisconsin, schools, moderates a conversation with three former superintendents, Russell Booker, Kyla Johnson-Trammell and Michael Matsuda, on the changing job of running a school district: building broad coalitions, partnering with families and students, navigating polarization and misinformation, and leading schools as democratic institutions. The forum launches HGSE's Initiative on Superintendent as Civic Leader.

Tue Oct 6 · 7:30pm

The Bullying Myth: Why Social Media Isn't the Real Problem

Binge Thinking · Upstairs at Bow · Somerville

Sarah Miller, an assistant professor of sociology at Boston University, draws on two years inside a high school to argue that social media is “less of a villain and more of a pressure cooker” in teen bullying. She takes up active bystanders, inequality and whom the anti-bullying industry serves. Her book is The Tolerance Generation: Growing Up Online in the Anti-Bullying Era.

$32.95

Tue Oct 6 · 6:00pm

The Fugitive Slave Who Wrote to the President

Boston Athenaeum · Beacon Hill · Boston

Regina Mason, William Grimes’s third great-granddaughter, tells of finding an inscription in Grimes’s own hand in the Athenaeum’s copy of his 1825 narrative, the first fugitive slave narrative published in the United States, showing he presented the book to President John Quincy Adams in 1826. Mason co-edited the Oxford University Press edition of Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave with William L. Andrews.

$20

Tue Oct 6 · 4:30pm

Butch Heroes: An Artist Talk by Ria Brodell

Davis Museum at Wellesley College · Collins Cinema · Wellesley College · Wellesley · MA · Wellesley

Ria Brodell discusses More Butch Heroes (MIT Press, 2025), 15 paintings and biographies styled as subverted Catholic holy cards, portraying people assigned female at birth who presented as masculine. Brodell, a queer and trans artist and author based in Boston, holds an MFA from SMFA at Tufts, has received an Artadia Award and a Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowship, and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist.

Wed Oct 7 · 6:00pm

The Mary Eliza Project

Nichols House Museum · Nichols House Museum · 55 Mount Vernon Street · Boston · MA · Beacon Hill · Boston

Over 54,000 Boston women registered to vote in 1920, as ratification of the 19th Amendment approached, and clerks recorded them in more than 160 handwritten volumes. The Mary Eliza Project, a team of archivists and historians, turned those registers into a searchable dataset and talks about the Beacon Hill women it found among a new electorate that included women of color, immigrants and wage workers.

$10

Wed Oct 7 · 6:00pm

American Art Curators in Conversation

Harvard Art Museums · Harvard Art Museums · Menschel Hall · 32 Quincy St · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

The 2026 Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge Lecture is a discussion of what is at stake in curating American art now, with Candice Hopkins (Tlingit), executive director and chief curator of The Forge Project; Ilona Katzew, head of Latin American art at LACMA; and Stephanie Sparling Williams, head of American art at the Brooklyn Museum. Horace D. Ballard, the museums' curator of American art, moderates with the student Frances Yee.

Wed Oct 7 · 6:00pm

Hidden History of Black Boston with Joel Mackall

by Joel Mackall

Boston Public Library · Boston Public Library · Central Library · Copley Square · Back Bay

The educator Joel Mackall walks through four hundred years of African-American Boston: Faneuil Hall and Long Wharf and the city's place in the Atlantic world, the Black community on Beacon Hill in the early republic, and the South End and Roxbury in the early twentieth century. He builds the session around activism, religion, civil rights and economics, and runs it as a discussion.

Wed Oct 7 · 10:30am

Reconnecting in a Burned-Out Academy

Framingham State University · Alumni Room · McCarthy Center · Framingham State University · Framingham · MA (hybrid · Zoom link offered) · Framingham

Rebecca Pope-Ruark, who studies burnout among academics, distinguishes individual strain from the institutional habits that produce it, and argues that rebuilding relationships and holding clearer boundaries interrupts the cycle. The talk is aimed at university staff but is open, and Framingham State holds it in the McCarthy Center.

Wed Oct 7 · 4:00pm

How to Become Bilingual and Stay Bilingual Throughout Your Life: The Adopted Language Method, Steve Leveen

Brandeis University · Mandel Center for the Humanities · Room 303 · Waltham · MA · Waltham

Steve Leveen, who founded the America the Bilingual Project, argues that adults well past college can become bilingual and stay that way, using what he calls the Adopted Language Method — built on living in a language rather than studying it. The talk is aimed at people outside formal language courses.

Wed Oct 7 · 12:15pm

Friedman Speaker Series: Black Longevity

Tufts University · Jaharis Family Center · Tufts University School of Medicine · Boston · MA · Medford

Demond Martin speaks on Black longevity in the Friedman School's series, which brings people working in nutrition and agriculture — from universities, government, industry and the non-profit sector — to talk in person about their work. The school is Tufts's graduate school of nutrition science and policy.

Wed Oct 7 · 6:00pm

Pépin Lecture Series: American Bacon with Mark A. Johnson

Boston University · Boston University · 808 Commonwealth Ave · Room 124 · Boston · MA · Kenmore

Mark A. Johnson discusses American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon, which follows bacon from early modern Britain through the Civil War, fad diets and today's craft producers, tying it to race, class and gender. Johnson, a historian of the U.S. South and African American history, also wrote An Irresistible History of Alabama Barbecue and Rough Tactics. Part of BU's Pépin Lecture Series, and also streamed on Zoom.

Wed Oct 7 · 6:30pm

Lectures on Tap — Nature's Nemeses: The Epic Battle Between Ants & Termites

Lectures on Tap · Everett · MA (bar; exact address emailed after ticket purchase) · Somerville

Harvard-trained biologist Kat Angier describes the evolutionary arms race between ants and termites, two insects that independently evolved colonies of queens, workers and soldiers numbering in the millions. She covers cement-hard termite mounds, soldiers that spray acid from nozzles on their faces, raiding Singing Ants with their own field medicine, ants that defend termites for food and shelter, and the pangolins, anteaters, aardvarks and aardwolves that eat both.

Wed Oct 7 · 4pm

SCSB Colloquium: Tom Nowakowski on Building a Brain, One Cell at a Time

MIT · Building 46 46-3002 · Singleton Auditorium · Cambridge · Cambridge

Tom Nowakowski, associate professor at UCSF, describes how his lab tags individual neural stem cells with genetic barcodes and uses single-cell sequencing to reconstruct the family trees of hundreds of thousands of brain cells in mouse and human tissue. The work maps where excitatory and inhibitory neurons originate, how the human cortex expands, and, through a modified rabies virus, the brain's earliest transient wiring before birth.

Wed Oct 7 · 4:15pm

Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: Ada Stelzer (University of Michigan)

MIT · Building 2 132 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Ada Stelzer of the University of Michigan speaks on Gröbner crystal structures. When a reductive group acts on an embedded variety, its coordinate ring is a representation, recorded by an equivariant Hilbert series or K-polynomials, and combinatorial rules for their coefficients are sought. For generalized determinantal varieties, where pipe dreams and the RSK correspondence arise, Stelzer presents joint work with Abigail Price and Alexander Yong computing these series, and open problems.

Wed Oct 7 · 4pm

Lie Groups Seminar: Shenghao Li (University of Maryland)

MIT · Building 2 142 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Shenghao Li of the University of Maryland speaks on the base change fundamental lemma, which produces matching functions, with equal stable orbital integrals, between Hecke algebras of an unramified p-adic group over a field and over an unramified extension. Tracing results by Kottwitz (1986), Clozel (1990) and Haines (2009 and 2012), Li extends them to general principal series blocks through explicit constructions of types.

Wed Oct 7 · 3:30pm

PPSM Seminar: Kyra Yap on Ion Transport in Solid State Battery Electrolytes

MIT · Building 56 114 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Kyra Yap, a researcher in Nitash Balsara's group in the chemical engineering department at the University of California, Berkeley, speaks on ion transport in solid-state battery electrolytes. The talk is part of the fall seminar series of MIT's Program in Polymers and Soft Matter, which brings on- and off-campus speakers to the polymer community at MIT and beyond.

Wed Oct 7 · 9am

Brandeis-Bar Ilan Conference on Conflict Related Sexual Violence and the Legacy of October 7

Brandeis University · Rapaporte Treasure Hall · Waltham · Waltham

The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and Bar-Ilan University's Dinah Project convene a conference on holding perpetrators of conflict-related sexual violence accountable under international law, applying those tools to women in Israel subjected to it on October 7, 2023 and as hostages, and setting the Israeli experience beside Kosovo, Rwanda and Ukraine. Panels cover international perspectives; silence and denial; radical ideologies and joint responsibility; and the Dinah Project's findings and recommendations.

Wed Oct 7 · 5pm

Beyond the Battlefield: Maryna Er Gorbach's Klondlike and the remaking of war cinema

Harvard University · CGIS-Knafel Building | Room K-354 · 3rd Floor · 1737 Cambridge St. · Cambridge · Boston

Yuliya V. Ladygina opens the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute's three-part Petro Jacyk Seminar series arguing that cinema has become an expanded battlefield beyond combat. Through Maryna Er Gorbach's Klondike (2022), she shows how centring a pregnant heroine's embodied experience reveals unseen violence and resistance, widening the war genre and shaping international understanding of the conflict. The film is set in the Donbas in July 2014, as MH17 is shot down.

Wed Oct 7 · 1:15pm

Muslim Transnationalism in Modern China: Debates on Hui Identity and Islamic Reform

Harvard University · CGIS-South 050 · 1730 Cambridge St. · Cambridge · Boston

Z. Hale Eroğlu, assistant professor of history at Boğaziçi University, discusses her book Muslim Transnationalism in Modern China, a portrait of “under recognized reformists who aimed to turn Muslim subjects into active Chinese citizens and revive ‘true’ Islam.” Drawing on Republican and early Communist-era journals, Chinese translations of Islamic sources, memoirs and travelogues, she traces how Hui intellectuals adapted currents from Egypt, Britain, India, Turkey and the Soviet Union.

Wed Oct 7 · 1pm

The Parties, the Voters and the Road Ahead: A Discussion with Tim Miller, Host of The Bulwark Daily

Harvard University · Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School · 79 JFK St. · Cambridge · Boston

Tim Miller, host of The Bulwark Daily and a former Republican campaign and party communications strategist, talks with the Institute of Politics about the forces reshaping both parties ahead of the 2026 midterms, from shifting voter coalitions and candidate strategy to the tensions inside each movement. Miller was communications director for Jeb Bush's 2016 presidential campaign and wrote the 2022 memoir Why We Did It. Lunch is served.

Wed Oct 7 · 4pm

PIER Public Seminar: Phone-Free Schools and Achievement Growth

Harvard University · Eliot Lyman Room · Longfellow Hall · 13 Appian Way · Cambridge · Boston

Douglas Staiger, an economist at Dartmouth College, presents a student-level analysis of how phone-free school policies relate to growth in achievement. The talk belongs to the Partnering in Education Research (PIER) public seminar series of Harvard's Center for Education Policy Research. Staiger's earlier research, much of it with the center's founder Thomas Kane, has examined teacher effectiveness and how schools measure it.

Wed Oct 7 · 3pm

Democracy and Its Critics — Germany's 2026 Regional Elections: The AfD's Breakthrough Year?

Harvard University · Adolphus Busch Hall at Cabot Way · 27 Kirkland St. · Cambridge · Boston

A panel in the Center for European Studies' Democracy and Its Critics series on Germany's 2026 regional elections, whether this is the Alternative für Deutschland's breakthrough year, and what the results mean for Europe. Speaking are Cerstin Gammelin, spokesperson of the German Federal President; Anna Mayr, political correspondent at Die Zeit; and Fabio Ellger of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Daniel Ziblatt, co-author of How Democracies Die, chairs.

Wed Oct 7 · 7pm

The Science Behind Smoking, Vaping & Nicotine: Can We Protect Young People While Helping Adult Smokers Move Away from Cigarettes?

Binge Thinking · Lamplighter Brewing Co. - Broadway · Cambridge

Vaughan Rees, director of the Center for Global Tobacco Control at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, starts from the tobacco-science saying that “people smoke for the nicotine, but they die from the smoke.” He weighs how vapes might move adult smokers off cigarettes without drawing in teenagers, and what harm reduction has achieved elsewhere. The Chan School’s Zhu Center for Global Cancer Prevention co-sponsors.

$32.95

Wed Oct 7 · 6:30pm

Steve Edson: Bizarroland

Griffin Museum of Photography · Winchester

Steve Edson, a local documentary and fine art photographer, discusses Bizarroland, his first book, published by 89books in Palermo and drawn from a 30-plus-year project photographing flea markets, where “a cracked porcelain doll might sit beside a box of rusted wrenches.” He shows images from the book and new work toward a follow-up, and talks through hiring a book designer, finding a publisher and negotiating the deal.

$65.00

Thu Oct 8 · 7:00pm

The First Five: Parenting with Confidence in the Early Years

Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis · BGSP · Brookline · Brookline

The first of three moderated conversations in the Therapy Center at BGSP's fall series "Am I the Worst Parent in the World?" takes up the years from birth to five, and how understanding a child from the earliest days can build a parent's confidence. The psychoanalysts Tara Goldberg and Lynn Perlman, BGSP's dean of graduate studies, lead it with Julina Rundberg. Hybrid, in person or on Zoom.

Thu Oct 8 · 5:30pm

Leadership Forum: An Evening with Chris Cassidy

USS Constitution Museum · USS Constitution Museum · Building 22 · Charlestown Navy Yard · Charlestown (Boston) · MA · Charlestown · Boston

AN EVENING WITH CHRIS CASSIDY, Navy SEAL, former NASA astronaut, and national civic leader in conversation with Ben Simmoneau, WCVB NewsCenter 5 Anchor/Reporter. We are pleased to welcome Chris Cassidy, whose career has spanned some of the most demanding environments on Earth and beyond.

$60

Thu Oct 8 · 6:00pm

MIT Architecture Lecture: TAKK — Mireia Luzárraga

MIT · MIT Building W41 · 265 Massachusetts Ave · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Mireia Luzárraga, co-founder with Alejandro Muiño of the Barcelona and New York practice TAKK, presents research and built work under the title Unlearning the Anthropocene: Architecture after Human Exceptionalism, drawing on feminist thought, political ecology and low-embedded-carbon materials. She teaches at Columbia GSAPP, co-edited 100 Words for Water and co-curated the Catalan Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. Presented with MIT's Morningside Academy for Design.

Thu Oct 8 · 5:00pm

Jeffrey Burds Memorial Speaker Series: Jared McBride

Northeastern University · 909 Renaissance Park · 1135 Tremont St · Boston · MA · Fenway · Boston

Jared McBride, a historian at UCLA, presents The Returns of Summer 1941: Perpetrators and Pogroms in Western Ukraine, on the violence against Jews that accompanied the German invasion of the Soviet Union that summer. Northeastern's history department and its College of Social Sciences and Humanities hold the series in memory of Jeffrey Burds, the university's late historian of Russia and the Soviet Union.

Thu Oct 8 · 6:30pm

27th Annual Rappaport Art Prize Artist Lecture with Sky Hopinka

deCordova Sculpture Park · deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum · Lincoln · MA · Lincoln

Sky Hopinka, this year's Rappaport Prize recipient, talks about his work. Hopinka is Ho-Chunk and Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, studied and taught the Chinook Jargon language in Portland, and makes film and video that works through Indigenous language, landscape and personal memory. A reception precedes the lecture.

Thu Oct 8 · 4pm

Fall Colloquium 2026: Democracy at Scale

Boston College · 2101 Commonwealth Ave. · Boston College · Chestnut Hill · MA · Boston

The Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy opens its 2026–27 theme, Democracy at Scale, which asks which problems democracies should solve locally, nationally or supranationally, “and, crucially, who decides?” The featured speaker is Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund from 2013 to 2022, now a professor at Howard Law School and author of On the Courthouse Lawn. Registration required; reception follows.

Thu Oct 8 · 12:00pm

[ENVS] How to Tell Environmental Stories for the Ear

Tufts University · Joyce Cummings Center · Tufts University · Medford · MA · Medford

Hannah Loss, a producer for GBH's Boston Public Radio and The Curiosity Desk, works through two environmental radio features to show how the reporting and writing get done — how complex science fits a three-minute spot, what language listeners actually follow, and how you tell a story about things that do not speak.

Thu Oct 8 · 9am

15th Annual Tufts Neuroscience Symposium & Shucart Lecture

Tufts University · Behrakis Auditorium · Jaharis Building · Tufts University School of Medicine · 150 Harrison Ave · Boston · Chinatown · Boston

The symposium is a day of research talks aimed at neuroscientists, on the theme “Neural Metabolism Across Scales: From Cellular Bioenergetics to Systemic Energy Homeostasis.” Speakers include Gulcin Pekkurnaz of UC San Diego, Sabrina Diano of Columbia and Bradford Lowell of Harvard Medical School. At 3:45 Dana Small of McGill gives the Shucart Lecture, “Gut-brain Learning and Memory in Humans,” honoring William Shucart, former chair of Neurosurgery at Tufts.

Thu Oct 8 · 6:30pm

Lectures on Tap — How We Read People: The Psychology of Social Cues

Lectures on Tap · Downtown Boston · MA (bar; exact address emailed after ticket purchase) · Boston

Developmental psychologist Sarah Lynch looks at how the mind turns small, ambiguous social cues, such as a delayed text, an odd look or a strange tone, into stories, emotions and actions, and how attention, memory, expectation and attribution bias let two people leave the same moment with different versions of it. Lynch holds a PhD in developmental science from Boston University and has taught at Harvard.

Thu Oct 8 · 6:30pm

The Point: The Performance of Commemoration: Who Gets Remembered?

ArtsEmerson · Jackie Liebergott Black Box · Emerson Paramount Center · Theatre District · Boston

Part of ArtsEmerson's America 250 programming, this conversation asks who gets remembered in public life and who decides, looking at monuments, public art, civic ritual and the stories a city teaches. The speakers are Emerson political scientist Mneesha Gellman, who writes on memory politics and founded the Emerson Prison Initiative; street artist Cedric Douglas; and Joseph Zeal-Henry, Boston's Chief of Arts and Culture. A reception follows.

Thu Oct 8 · 7:00pm

Israeli Elections 2026: What's at Stake?

JCC Greater Boston · Riemer-Goldstein Theater · Leventhal-Sidman JCC · 333 Nahanton Street · Newton · MA · Newton

A Hot Buttons, Cool Conversations panel explains how Israel's electoral system works, the parties and issues in the coming election, and what the result could mean for Israeli society, U.S.-Israel relations and the Middle East. The panelists are Anwar Mhajne of Stonehill College, Barak Sella of the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center and Shayna Weiss of Brandeis's Schusterman Center for Israel Studies; Jonathan Golden of OpenDor Media moderates.

Thu Oct 8 · 4:00pm

1st NESACS Radiopharmaceutical Sciences Symposium

Northeastern Section, American Chemical Society · Dante Alighieri Society of Massachusetts · 41 Hampshire Street · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

The Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society holds its first symposium on radiopharmaceutical sciences, bringing together academic and industry researchers in radiochemistry, molecular imaging and drug development. Michelle James of Stanford gives the keynote on PET tracers that track immune responses in central nervous system diseases. Talks follow from Mohammad Rashidian of Dana-Farber, Hua Ma and Nicole Zurcher of MGH's Martinos Center, and Brendon Cook of Biogen.

Thu Oct 8 · 12pm

MLK Scholar Presentation: Justus Ndukaife on Optical Nanotweezers

MIT · Building 10 105 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Justus Ndukaife, a visiting professor at MIT through its Martin Luther King Jr. Scholars program, presents “Capturing the Invisible, Building the Future,” on the optical nanotweezers his lab uses to trap and characterise particles without labels, from nanoplastics studied under the ARPA-H STOMP program to drug-delivery nanomedicine. He also describes work with MIT teams placing quantum emitters precisely onto nanophotonic devices, and his approach to mentorship.

Thu Oct 8 · 4:30pm

Symplectic Geometry Seminar: Georgios Dimitroglou-Rizzell (Uppsala)

MIT · Building 2 449 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Georgios Dimitroglou-Rizzell of Uppsala University speaks at MIT's Symplectic Geometry Seminar, a research seminar in the mathematics department. His work in symplectic and contact topology concerns Lagrangian submanifolds, Lagrangian cobordisms and Legendrian knots.

Thu Oct 8 · 5pm

Quantum Connections Dinner: The Past, Present and Future of Quantum

MIT · ENDICOTT · Dedham · Dedham

A reception, dinner and panel discussion at Endicott House revisit the 1981 Physics of Computation Conference held there, a gathering that helped lay the ground for quantum information science. The evening honours Charles H. Bennett, a 1981 participant and co-recipient with Gilles Brassard of the 2025 Turing Award. Ian Waitz, MIT's vice president for research, moderates Bennett, Danna Freedman, Aram Harrow, Paola Cappellaro and IBM's Jamie Garcia.

$129.00 plus tax - MIT Rate

Thu Oct 8 · 5pm

The Vibrant Center: An Urgent Consciousness For Our Divided Times

Boston College · Devlin Hall 101 · Newton · Newton

Kirk J. Schneider, an existential-humanistic psychologist, makes the case for the “vibrant center,” an “awe-based alternative” to both the polarization and the “deadening moderation” of the times, the subject of his new book The Vibrant Center: A New Consciousness for Our Broken Age. Schneider, president of the Existential-Humanistic Institute and adjunct faculty at Saybrook University, also wrote The Polarized Mind and The Spirituality of Awe.

Thu Oct 8 · 6pm

Global Competitiveness and the Path Forward with Senator Andy Kim

Harvard University · JFK Jr. Forum · Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School · 79 JFK St. · Cambridge · Boston

Senator Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat, talks about the United States, China and the state of global economic competition. Kim is ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee's subcommittee on national security and international trade and finance; before winning his seat in 2024 he served three terms in the House, and earlier worked on national security at the State Department and the National Security Council.

Thu Oct 8 · 12pm

The Next Generation Republican Operatives: A Panel Discussion with Doug Sosnik, Casey Contres, & Jessica Anderson

Harvard University · Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School · 79 JFK St. · Cambridge · Boston

Doug Sosnik of the Brunswick Group moderates a conversation with Casey Contres, chief of staff to Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri, and Jessica Anderson, president of the Sentinel Action Fund. They discuss the future of the Republican Party, shifting electoral coalitions, the priorities of conservative voters, and how emerging leaders approach campaigns and policymaking. The lunch talk is part of the Institute of Politics' Food for Thought series.

Thu Oct 8 · 1pm

Grief, loss, and trauma: A hidden toll

Harvard University · The Studio · 10th Floor · Kresge Building · Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health · Boston

Rachel Zimmerman, a reporter and the author of Us, After: A Memoir of Love and Suicide, joins researchers in trauma, grief and mental health to discuss the science and lived experience of loss and resilience. With her are Karestan Koenen, professor of psychiatric epidemiology at the Harvard Chan School; Matthew Nock, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard; and Christy Denckla, an assistant professor at the Chan School.

Thu Oct 8 · 1pm

Ikenobo Lecture and Demonstration

Medford Public Library · Bonsignore Hall · Medford Public Library · Medford

Teresa Silverman, a member of the Ikenobo Ikebana Society of Boston, lectures on the history and symbolism of the Ikenobo school of ikebana, Japanese flower arranging, and builds an arrangement in front of the audience as she talks. Ikenobo is the oldest school of the art, tracing its origins to Buddhist priests at the Rokkakudo temple in Kyoto. Registration is required, with 30 places.

Fri Oct 9 · 7:00pm

An Evening with Mark Dion

Concord Museum · Concord Museum · Concord · MA · Concord

On the opening day of Mark Dion: Eccentric Collectors Like Us, join us for a unique Forum with renown artist Dion in conversation with Ruth Erikson, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, to discuss Dion’s collaboration with the Museum for his newest special exhibition.

Fri Oct 9 · 5:00pm

Talk and Artist Showcase | Rapid Prototyping: Beyond 3D Printing

MIT Museum · MIT Museum · 314 Main St · Cambridge · MA · Kendall Square · Cambridge

Jessie Liu, president of the desktop laser-fabrication company xTool, talks about how laser engraving and printing have come to complement 3D printing. In five years xTool has gone from one laser source to four (blue diode, infrared, CO₂ and ultraviolet), each suited to different materials such as wood, metal, glass and leather. MIT researchers and artists who use the tools show their work, and a reception follows.

Fri Oct 9 · 9am

2026 Healthy Aging Symposium: From Cells to Society - The Science of Extending Healthspan

Harvard University · The Rotunda at Joseph B. Martin Conference Center · 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur · Boston · MA · Cambridge

The inaugural symposium of the Healthy Aging Initiative at the Harvard Chan School is a full day spanning biology, nutrition, environmental health, epidemiology and policy. Daniel Promislow of Tufts' USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging gives the keynote, and Frank Hu, Vadim Gladyshev, Wendy Garrett and Laura Kubzansky are among the Harvard speakers. Short talks from early-career researchers and an evening poster session close the day.

Fri Oct 9 · 3pm

MIT.nano Seminar: Mark Allen on Magnetics in MEMS

MIT · Building 34 401 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Mark Allen, chair of electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, surveys magnetic materials in microelectromechanical systems: laminated iron-alloy cores that suppress eddy currents in compact power converters, permanent-magnet circuits that tune yttrium iron garnet filters in the gigahertz range with zero DC power, and a magnetic optical relay that shuts converters off during a fault. Allen co-founded Cardiomems and belongs to the National Academy of Engineering.

Fri Oct 9 · 12pm

The Politics of Belonging: Political Identity, Coalition Building, and the Future of American Politics ft. Whitley Yates

Harvard University · Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School · 79 JFK St. · Cambridge · Boston

Whitley Yates, a political strategist and public affairs executive who was director of diversity and engagement for the Indiana Republican Party, talks about how political identity, partisan affiliation and institutional trust interact. With both parties courting emerging voting blocs before the 2026 midterms, she looks at how a sense of belonging shapes coalitions, voter behavior and the realignments that could decide control of Congress.

Fri Oct 9 · 10am

Coffee & Conversation: Dorcas Hoar & the Beverly Witch Trials

Historic Beverly · John Cabot House · Beverly · Beverly

A talk over coffee on Beverly’s part in the 1692 witchcraft crisis, when five townspeople were accused and many more drawn into the trials. It centres on Dorcas Hoar, the convicted witch sometimes called the “mob boss of Beverly,” and the Reverend John Hale, who took part in the trials and later criticised them, with accounts of accusers, confessions and attempts to fight witchcraft with witchcraft.

Free – $5.00

Sat Oct 10 · 5:00pm

Victorian Hair Jewelry Lecture & Workshop

Gibson House Museum · Gibson House Museum · 137 Beacon Street · Boston · MA 02116 · Back Bay · Boston

Dr. Nora Carleson, Historic New England's Curator of Fashion and Decorative Arts, lectures on Victorian hair jewelry: the earrings, brooches, bracelets and necklaces made of human hair that were once commonplace across the United States. She covers the craft's history in New England, how the pieces were made and why they were popular, and artists who have taken it up again. Afterward participants make their own, with supplies and artificial hair provided.

Sat Oct 10 · 11:00am

Deeper Dialogues: Conversations on Living with Purpose

New Acropolis Boston · New Acropolis Boston · 2000 Massachusetts Ave · Cambridge · MA · Boston

A discussion circle on the old injunction “Know Thyself,” taking up how a person finds some certainty about who they are in an age that feels unusually uncertain. The group looks for an answer in what it calls the essential, unchanging part of the self, “in that ‘other’ world some refer to as ‘spiritual’,” and the session runs as an open conversation rather than a lecture.

Sun Oct 11 · 7:00pm

Simple Too: An Evening with Yotam Ottolenghi

Emerson Colonial Theatre (presenter TBC) · Theatre District · Boston

The chef who taught home cooks to hoard za'atar and preserved lemons talks vegetables, flavor-building and the new Simple Too — a single Colonial evening of stories and cooking wisdom from Yotam Ottolenghi, in his only Boston appearance of the tour.

Wed Oct 7 – Sun Oct 11

Translational Longevity Summit

Harvard University · Harvard Enterprise Research Campus · 1 Milestone St. · Boston · Boston

Part of Boston Longevity Week, this five-day summit gathers clinicians, researchers, patients, advocates and innovators working where discovery meets deployment. Sessions cover translational science, clinical implementation, patient advocacy, lifestyle and behavior, and policy, with the aim of “translating cutting-edge research and scientific breakthroughs into real-world care.” Attendance can be booked for one day or several, and Harvard students, trainees, faculty and staff receive a 50% discount.

Harvard Students: $98.50

Thu Oct 8 – Sun Oct 11

Revelation, Hermeneutics, and Phenomenology

Boston College · Corcoran Commons The Heights Room · Boston

Thu Oct 8 · 9:30am / Fri Oct 9 · 9:30am / Sat Oct 10 · 9am / Sun Oct 11 · 9am

A four-day conference on how revelation might be recognised: whether experiences of God can be told apart from aesthetic or other “transcendent” phenomena, and what hermeneutic and phenomenological approaches add to the propositional accounts of contemporary religious epistemology. Sessions run at Boston College and the Dover Retreat Center, co-sponsored by BC's theology and philosophy departments, Fordham University and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich. Registration is required.

Mon Oct 12 · 6:30pm

Lectures on Tap — Playing God: Who Gets To Decide Who Lives Or Dies?

Lectures on Tap · Downtown Boston · MA (bar; exact address emailed after ticket purchase) · Boston

Aditya Pawar, a transplant nephrologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School faculty member, traces how authority over life-and-death decisions has moved, from gladiatorial arenas and absolute kings to juries, the “God Committees” and today’s transplant selection teams. He then examines organ transplantation now, where scarcity forces choices between fairness, utility and compassion. His own work concerns patient participation, transparency and trust in medical decision-making.

Mon Oct 12 · 12:00pm

Half-Earth Day 2026 | Half-Earth at Ten: Honoring a Legacy of Hope

Harvard Box Office · Sanders Theatre · Harvard University · Cambridge · Cambridge

Marking ten years since E.O. Wilson's book Half-Earth and the first Half-Earth Day, this afternoon program mixes science, film, Indigenous testimony, poetry and music. Photographer Florian Schulz presents his Alaska wilderness work; Bert Hölldobler, who shared the Pulitzer with Wilson for The Ants, joins Naomi Pierce in a tribute; and the Gorongosa Restoration Project receives the E.O. Wilson Legacy Award. Adrienne Keene (Cherokee Nation) emcees.

Tue Oct 13

The Tobacco Takers: Puritans, Pipes, and Bodily Care

Harvard Museums of Science & Culture · Geological Lecture Hall · 24 Oxford Street · Cambridge

Peabody Museum curator Diana DiPaolo Loren draws on her new book to reexamine tobacco use in Puritan New England, using clay pipes from 17th-century Massachusetts sites as evidence of tobacco as a tool of bodily care despite religious condemnation. Archaeologist Stephen W. Silliman joins the conversation. Offered in person and online.

Tue Oct 13

Odysseus Returns: Reflections on Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey

Mahindra Humanities Center (Harvard) · Fong Auditorium · Boylston Hall · Harvard Square · Cambridge

Classicists David Elmer, Emily Greenwood and Jie Li, moderated by Robin Kelsey, take apart Christopher Nolan's blockbuster reworking of Homer — how his IMAX Odyssey adapts the ancient epic, what its cinematic choices do to the story, and what the film's reception says about us now.

Tue Oct 13 · 6:00pm

An Ocean (Re)Introduction

MIT Museum · MIT Museum · 314 Main St · Cambridge · MA · Kendall Square · Cambridge

Emmy Award-winning storyteller and explorer Richard Vevers invites you to see the ocean in a completely new way. Best known for his work on the Netflix documentary Chasing Coral and for pioneering Google Street View underwater, Vevers now leads Room 71 at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, an initiative transforming how we understand and communicate ocean science.

$15

Tue Oct 13 · 6:00pm

Pınar Öğrenci: _Good Luck in Germany_

Harvard Art Museums · Harvard Art Museums · Menschel Hall · 32 Quincy St · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

The 2026 Busch-Reisinger Museum Lecture. Berlin-based artist and filmmaker Pınar Öğrenci will discuss her 2024 film Glück auf in Deutschland (Good Luck in Germany), which is featured in her first major exhibition in the United States, here at the Harvard Art Museums.

Tue Oct 13 · 6:30pm

Lectures on Tap — Neuroscientist Explains: The Modules of the Mind

Lectures on Tap · The Rockwell · 255 Elm St · Somerville · MA · Somerville

Michael Cohen, Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at Amherst College and a research scientist at MIT, argues that the brain is less a general-purpose computer than a set of specialist modules, each with a narrow job. He draws on cases where one fails after a stroke, accident or disease, leaving people unable to recognize faces, even their own, or without fear while every other emotion stays intact.

Tue Oct 13 · 12pm

Public Research Talk: Frederick Douglass and Jesus Christ

Center for the Study of World Religions · Common Room · Center for the Study of World Religions · 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Abolitionists all claimed to follow Jesus but disagreed about who he was. Columbia's Ryan Carr argues that Frederick Douglass's Jesus, fully human yet speaking with a special authority, took shape in conversation with the Transcendentalists, and that Douglass claimed that same authority to speak about slavery from his own experience of it. Carr is the author of a study of the Mohegan minister Samson Occom.

Tue Oct 13 · 4pm

Dertouzos Distinguished Lecture: Sir Michael Brady

MIT · Building 32 G449 (Patil-Kiva Seminar Room) · Cambridge · Cambridge

In “Applications of Image Analysis & AI in the Understanding of Cancer and Metabolic Syndrome,” Sir Michael Brady reviews systems built to study breast, lung and liver cancer and metabolic syndrome, including work from three companies he founded: ScreenPoint Medical, Optellum and Perspectum. Brady, a member of MIT's AI Lab from 1980 to 1985, is emeritus professor of information engineering at Oxford and was knighted in 2004.

Tue Oct 13 · 2:30pm

Physical Math Seminar: Nicolas Romeo (University of Chicago)

MIT · Building 2 449 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Nicolas Romeo of the University of Chicago presents “Mechanical canalization of chiral morphogenesis,” a theory-experiment study of how the fruit fly midgut reliably coils with the same handedness. An early constriction biases the symmetry breaking, with handedness set by molecular cues relayed between organs; elongation under anatomical confinement then drives a buckling instability that amplifies and stabilises the coil, pointing to tissue mechanics as a source of developmental robustness.

Tue Oct 13 · 12:45pm

Jewish Studies Colloquium: Marc Herman on Maimonides's Book of Commandments

Brandeis University · Lown · 302 · Waltham · Waltham

Marc Herman presents “The Lives and Afterlives of Maimonides's ‘Book of Commandments,’” on the work in which Maimonides enumerated the 613 commandments of the Torah, written in Judeo-Arabic as groundwork for his legal code, the Mishneh Torah. The Tauber Institute's Jewish Studies Colloquium is a forum for Brandeis faculty, graduate students and visiting scholars to present research in progress. It is also streamed on Zoom.

Tue Oct 13 · 12:20pm

Olmstead About-Face: Implications of the U.S. Department of Justice’s new stance on persons with disabilities’ right to community integration

Harvard University · Wasserstein Caspersen Center · Room 1015 · 18 Everett St. · Cambridge · Boston

In June a Justice Department legal memo effectively reversed the department's approach to defending disabled people's right to community integration under Olmstead v. L.C. (1999). Michael Ashley Stein of Harvard Law's Project on Disability, Steven J. Schwartz of the Center for Public Representation, Dianna Hu of the Boston Center for Independent Living and Alex Green of the Kennedy School discuss its practical effects and how the disability community can respond.

Tue Oct 13 · 12pm

Canada Seminar

Harvard University · Bowie Vernon Room (K262) CGIS Knafel · 1737 Cambridge St. · Cambridge · Boston

Janis Thiessen, professor of history at the University of Winnipeg, takes as her starting point Sugar Farmers of Manitoba, a 1968 institutional history published by the Manitoba Beet Growers Association that gives inadvertent and disturbing insight into racism and settler colonialism in Canada. Her talk is a step toward a fuller history of sugar in the province. Mary Jane McCallum, Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies at Harvard, chairs.

Tue Oct 13 · 7:30pm

Pandemic Politics: Governors, Power, and Public Policy

Binge Thinking · Upstairs at Bow · Somerville

Peter Federman, assistant professor of public policy at UMass Boston, looks at how COVID-19 shifted power from legislatures to governors, who issued more than 1,200 pandemic-related executive orders between February and June 2020. He asks why some states locked down hard while others barely did and whether the orders saved lives. His research on pandemic decision-making has appeared in Public Administration Review and Publius.

$32.95

Tue Oct 13 · 7pm

Assessing AI: A Discussion of Its Individual and Societal Impact

Newton Free Library · Druker Auditorium · Newton Free Library · Newton

Rob Greenfield, a history and social science teacher and digital literacy coordinator at Newton North High School, leads a seminar on AI’s effects on individuals and society, the tradeoffs between its benefits and costs, and frameworks for judging it as it grows more powerful. A doctoral student at Northeastern researching AI education, he wrote a 23-part digital media curriculum for the Hulu series Social Studies in 2024.

Tue Oct 13 · 12:00pm

Misinformation Speaker Series: Tackling the Misinformation Research Landscape With Integrity and Urgency

Northeastern University · 216 Massachusetts Ave · Boston · MA (hybrid) · Boston

Wen-Ying Sylvia Chou, a health communication scholar who resigned from the National Institutes of Health in January 2026 after 18 years, reflects on the pressures on health misinformation research, including researchers' self-censorship and growing censorship at the NIH, and closes on research priorities such as countering major misinformation spreaders. Chou, a co-author of the Bethesda Declaration, is now a Harvard Shorenstein Center Fellow.

Wed Oct 14 · 7:00pm

Revolutionary War Heroes in Marblehead Cemeteries

Marblehead Museum · Abbot Public Library · Marblehead · MA · Marblehead

Pam Peterson walks through what Marblehead's burial grounds record of the town's Revolutionary War dead — a town that supplied Glover's regiment, the fishermen who rowed Washington across the Delaware. The Marblehead Museum runs the talk at the Abbot Public Library as one of a four-part autumn series on the Revolution in the town.

Wed Oct 14 · 7:00pm

Gallery Talk: Christina Michelon

Boston University · 808 Gallery · Boston University · Boston · MA · Boston

Christina Michelon, the Museum of Fine Arts' curator of prints and drawings, speaks in the 808 Gallery as part of the Boston Printmakers 2026 North American Print Biennial. The talk is free and drop-in, with no booking, and takes the works currently hanging in the biennial as its subject.

Wed Oct 14 · 11:00am

Lifelong Learning Lecture: Why Our Country Should Split Up (And How To Do It Peacefully)

Boston College · Boston College · Chestnut Hill · MA · Boston

A lecture making the case for secession — that the divisions in the United States now run deep enough to make national politics unworkable, and that a negotiated separation between blue and red states would do less damage than continuing. The argument is presented as provocative by the university's own billing.

Wed Oct 14 · 5:00pm

Political and Cultural Refractions in Music: Moving Hearts, Reflecting Minds, Ireland 1981

Boston College · Connolly House · Boston College · Chestnut Hill · MA · Boston

Méabh Ní Fhuartháin gives the Dalsimer Lecture on Moving Hearts, the band whose first album appeared in 1981, reading it against the political, social and environmental pressures in Ireland at the opening of a decade that turned out to be a violent one. She is an alumna of the programme hosting her.

Wed Oct 14 · 7:00pm

Emily Knox: Book Banning in the 21st Century

Boston College · Devlin Hall · Boston College · Chestnut Hill · MA · Boston

Emily Knox, interim dean of the School of Information Sciences at Illinois, on book banning in American public schools and libraries — who brings the challenges, what happens procedurally once one is filed, and how the current wave compares with earlier ones. She researches information access, intellectual freedom and censorship.

Wed Oct 14 · 7:00pm

The Happiness Lab Live with Dr. Laurie Santos and Ali Truwit

Museum of Science · William and Charlotte Bloomberg Public Science Common · Museum of Science · Boston · MA · Science Park · Boston

Yale psychologist Laurie Santos records a live episode of her podcast The Happiness Lab, which grew out of her Yale course on well-being, described as the most popular in the university's 300-year history. Her guest is Ali Truwit, a Yale graduate and Division I swimmer who lost her foot to a shark attack days after graduating in 2023 and went on to become a medal-winning Paralympian.

Wed Oct 14 · 6:30pm

Lectures on Tap — Neutrinos: The Origin of Everything?

Lectures on Tap · Everett · MA (bar; exact address emailed after ticket purchase) · Somerville

Joseph Howlett, a senior reporter at Scientific American who spent a decade as a particle physicist at Columbia and Stanford, describes the DUNE experiment, the largest underground science project attempted in the United States. Its $5 billion “tin-can telephone” runs from Chicago to a detector in a former gold mine beneath South Dakota’s Black Hills, built to catch neutrinos that may explain why matter exists at all.

Wed Oct 14 · 5:00pm

WIT SoAD Public Lecture Series: Anas Soufan

Boston Society for Architecture · CEIS Lobby · Wentworth Institute of Technology · 555 Parker St · Boston · MA · Seaport · Boston

Anas Soufan, an assistant professor, artist, architect and urban planner who specializes in managing historic towns and world heritage sites, speaks in the Wentworth School of Architecture and Design’s public lecture series, whose fall 2026 theme is “Design Futures: From Fictions to Environments.” The listing, cross-posted by the Boston Society for Architecture, gives no topic for the talk beyond the speaker’s biography.

Wed Oct 14 · 4pm

Lie Groups Seminar: Daniel Litt (University of Toronto)

MIT · Building 2 142 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Daniel Litt of the University of Toronto speaks on “Exceptional motives and exceptional local systems,” taking up a question Serre posed in 1996. Motives with exceptional motivic Galois group are now known for every exceptional group, but families of them were missing for E6 until recently; Litt surveys the story and explains joint work with Krämer and Maculan building such E6 families from the classical geometry of cubic threefolds.

Wed Oct 14 · 9am

Molecular Machine Learning Conference

MIT · Building 76 Luria Auditorium · Cambridge · Cambridge

The MIT Jameel Clinic, the research centre behind Boltz, the open-source series of biomolecular structure-prediction models, hosts its annual Molecular Machine Learning Conference (MoML), a gathering of academic and industry researchers applying machine learning to molecular modelling, molecular interactions and therapeutic design. The day combines talks with poster presentations, and students and postdocs attend free; registration is otherwise $300 early or $500.

Wed Oct 14 · 6pm

Aristotle and AI: Insights from The Lyceum Project

Harvard University · Barker Center · 110 Thompson Room · Mahindra Humanities Center · 12 Quincy St. · Boston

A panel on The Lyceum Project, an annual gathering in Athens of philosophers, scientists, technologists and policymakers, considers what Aristotle's ethics and politics, with their attention to human flourishing, intelligence and virtue, can offer thinking about the development, governance and purposes of AI. Panelists are Vangelis Karkaletsis and Maria Dagioglou of Greece's Demokritos research center, Alexandra Mitsotaki of the World Human Forum, and Harvard's Sergio Imparato; Nicolas Prevelakis moderates.

Wed Oct 14 · 11:30am

Tufts in Translation: Dr. Madeleine Oudin

Tufts University · Off-campus · Medford

Madeleine Oudin, a Tufts biomedical engineer, presents her work on splice-switching antisense oligonucleotides for SCN8A-related neurological disorders, a case study in getting mutation-specific genetic medicines to patients whose numbers run to dozens rather than thousands. Her talk, “From n=1 to n=few,” covers the scientific, clinical and development hurdles of rare-disease therapies. The Tufts in Translation event is held at LabCentral in Kendall Square.

Wed Oct 14 · 12pm

K'uuyemugeh: An Ancestral Tewa Center Place

Tufts University · Medford/Somerville campus · Medford

Pueblo people often call their home village their center place, and apply the idea to ancestral sites. Scott Ortman combines Tewa traditional knowledge with archaeological evidence to show how K’uuyemugeh, an ancestral Pojoaque village, was one for the people living there between Tewa origins and Spanish colonization. Ortman is professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado Boulder and directs its Center for Collaborative Synthesis in Archaeology.

Wed Oct 14 · 7:30pm

Secrets of the Centenarians: Lessons for Healthy Aging

Binge Thinking · Democracy Brewing · Boston

Stacy Andersen, a behavioral neuroscientist, co-directs the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University, the largest study of centenarians and their families in the world. She talks about what people who thrive past 100 are teaching researchers about healthspan; her work has found that centenarians’ cancer diagnoses came 17 years later than in a national database, and that their children had 46% lower odds of cognitive impairment.

$32.95

Wed Oct 14 · 7pm

Dybbuks and Beyond: Possession and Exorcism in Yiddish Folk Culture with Rokhl Kafrissen

Winchester Public Library · Study Room 1 · Winchester Public Library · Winchester

Journalist and educator Rokhl Kafrissen traces the dybbuk, the wandering, sinful soul of Eastern European Jewish folklore that takes refuge in a living body, through Yiddish stories written over several centuries, from its little-known “birth” in the mid-16th century to its taking hold in the early 17th. The talk is a virtual presentation shown in the library, part of the Yiddish Book Center’s Between Two Worlds Public Libraries Program.

Thu Oct 15 · 7:00pm

The Artist's Voice: Tony Oursler

Institute of Contemporary Art · Seaport · Boston

A conversation revisiting the Contemporary Art Television Fund, the 1983 ICA and WGBH collaboration that commissioned experimental video art for broadcast. The video artist Tony Oursler joins GBH president Susan Goldberg, ICA director Nora Burnett Abrams and curator Meghan Clare Considine on video art in Boston and the future of public broadcasting.

Thu Oct 15 · 3:00pm

Reporting the Middle East After 9/11

Brandeis University · Rapaporte Treasure Hall · Waltham

The second of three Crown Center for Middle East Studies events on the long-term consequences of 9/11 asks how the years of war after 2001 changed the way the Middle East is reported. Hannah Allam, a ProPublica national security reporter and former McClatchy bureau chief in Baghdad and Cairo, joins C.J. Chivers, a two-time Pulitzer winner of The New York Times Magazine. Neil Swidey, who directs Brandeis's Journalism Program, moderates.

Thu Oct 15 · 6:00pm

MIT Architecture Lecture: Studio Ossidiana — Giovanni Bellotti and Alessandra Covini

MIT · MIT Building W41 · 265 Massachusetts Ave · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Giovanni Bellotti and Alessandra Covini lead Studio Ossidiana, a Dutch practice making spaces, objects, exhibitions and installations between architecture, design, art and landscape: experimental playgrounds, floating gardens inhabited by birds, outdoor kitchens and land-art pavilions on water. The studio won the Prix de Rome in 2018, was nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award in 2024 and 2026, and has shown at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Thu Oct 15 · 7:00pm

Bathsheba Spooner: A Revolutionary Murder Conspiracy

Lexington Historical Society · The Depot · 13 Depot Square · Lexington · MA 02420 · Lexington

In 1778 a woman from the New England elite conspired with American and British soldiers to murder her husband — the most sensational criminal case of the American eighteenth century, and one still largely unknown outside Worcester County. The talk works through what happened and why the story has stayed so difficult to explain.

Thu Oct 15 · 12:00pm

[ENVS] Pipeline Pedagogy: Prioritizing American Indian Peoples in Addressing Environmental Crisis

Tufts University · Tufts University · Medford · MA · Medford

Non-Indigenous Americans describe environmental danger from inside the privileges of stolen land. Drawing on research in the Lumbee community, around MIT and increasingly in Maine, the speaker sets out what he calls pipeline pedagogy — putting American Indian peoples first in the communication and policy processes that address environmental poisoning.

Thu Oct 15 · 5:00pm

Celebrating QR Connections Series: Andrew Ho

Wellesley College · Pendleton East 225A Knapp Atrium · Wellesley College · Wellesley · MA · Wellesley

Andrew Ho, the Charles William Eliot Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, lectures on quantitative reasoning and education. A psychometrician, Ho works on how test scores are designed, used and interpreted in educational policy and practice, and is known for methods of measuring educational progress and educational inequality. The Celebrating QR Connections series pairs quantitative reasoning with a different discipline.

Thu Oct 15 · 6:30pm

Lectures on Tap — The Existentialist Guide to Living Authentically

Lectures on Tap · Back Bay · Boston · MA (bar; exact address emailed after ticket purchase) · Boston

Jeremy Evans draws on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre to ask what living authentically means when so much pushes toward conformity, and how a brief, finite life can be given meaning on purpose. The talk sets the Existentialists' demands of freedom, responsibility and autonomy against the need for social belonging, alongside psychological research linking meaningful pursuits to well-being. Lectures on Tap holds its talks in bars.

Thu Oct 15 · 7pm

Lessons From Electric Lady: Architecture and Acoustics of Recording Studios Analysis to Prediction to Realization

Tufts University Department of Music · Perry and Marty Granoff Music Center · Varis Lecture Hall · Medford · Medford

John Storyk, the architect and acoustician who designed Jimi Hendrix's Electric Lady Studios in New York in 1969, talks about his career in studio design and where the field is headed. Storyk, who founded the firm WSDG with his wife, Beth Walters, has been responsible for more than 3,000 audio and video facilities, among them studios for Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen and Alicia Keys. He teaches acoustics at Berklee.

Thu Oct 15 · 12pm

Applied Math Colloquium: Kui Ren (Columbia)

MIT · Building 45 (MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing) 432 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Kui Ren of Columbia University, an applied mathematician who works on inverse problems and their use in imaging, gives a special session of MIT's Applied Math Colloquium, held jointly with the Center for Computational Science and Engineering.

Thu Oct 15 · 4:30pm

Symplectic Geometry Seminar: Samuel Sottille (Stanford University)

MIT · Building 2 449 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Samuel Sottille of Stanford University speaks at MIT's Symplectic Geometry Seminar, a research seminar in the mathematics department on symplectic and contact geometry.

Thu Oct 15 · 4:30pm

Starr Forum: Anne-Marie Slaughter on What Would the US Do in a Middle Power Order?

MIT · Building E51 115 · Wong Auditorium · Cambridge · Cambridge

Anne-Marie Slaughter, incoming dean of public policy at the London School of Economics, takes up what the United States would do in a middle power order. She was previously CEO of New America and director of policy planning at the US State Department. Three MIT faculty respond: Fotini Christia, who directs the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society; Taylor Fravel, director of the Security Studies Program; and Noelle Selin, director of the Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy.

Thu Oct 15 · 5:30pm

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture at Harvard

Harvard University · Memorial Church · Harvard Yard · Cambridge · Boston

Paula A. Johnson, a physician-scientist and public health leader who became president of Wellesley College in 2016, gives Harvard's 2026 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture, "Awakening the Dream Deferred," on "the character, courage, and civic purpose of higher education, and its role in sustaining democracy." Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's president emerita, then moderates a conversation with her, and a community reception follows.

Thu Oct 15 · 7:30pm

Where Are You From? Where Are You Really From? Media, Belonging, and Creating Home in Unlikely Places

Binge Thinking · Mighty Squirrel Taproom & Kitchen · Boston

Azeta Hatef, associate professor of journalism studies at Emerson College, looks at how the shows, news and characters people see shape the way they answer “Where are you really from?”, what on-screen representation does and does not do, and how media connects people to distant or ancestral homes. Her research centres on media and Afghanistan, including how U.S. news covers Afghan women and how Afghans appear in American pop culture.

$32.95

Thu Oct 15 · 2pm

3 in 30: Cabinet of Curiosities at Hale Farm

Historic Beverly · John Hale House · Beverly · Beverly

For this 3 in 30 program, Historic Beverly moves from the Cabot House collections to Hale Farm and shows three objects: one that has been there for more than 200 years, one filled with feathers and insect wings, and a surprise. The farm was the home of the Reverend John Hale, Beverly’s minister during the 1692 witchcraft trials. RSVP is required, with a suggested $5 donation.

Free – $5.00

Thu Oct 15 · 7pm

Fall Lecture Series: A History of Jazz with Steve Bass

Thomas Crane Public Library · Community Meeting Room · Main Library · Quincy

Steve Bass traces the history of jazz through Miles Davis, playing recordings from bebop, cool jazz, modal jazz and fusion to show how Davis and others reshaped the music, with live piano demonstrations of key improvisation concepts. Bass, artistic director of South Shore Conservatory, co-founded the Sinatra-inspired A Swingin Affair Big Band and wrote Swan Lake in Blue, a jazz ballet he produced in 2020.

Thu Oct 15 · 7pm

Empathy and Exoticism: Rembrandt's Multicultural Society

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum · Calderwood Hall · Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum · 25 Evans Way · Boston · Fenway · Boston

Amsterdam in the 1600s was a trade hub and a refuge for persecuted groups, including a large Jewish population, and Protestant artists such as Rembrandt lived beside neighbours of many faiths whom their work could exoticize or stereotype. Scholars Nazanin Hedayat Munroe, Michele Frederick and Michael Zell of Boston University take up that history, with Gardner curator Diana Seave Greenwald moderating. The MFA’s Center for Netherlandish Art co-presents.

Thu Oct 15 – Fri Oct 16

Encountering the Sacred Image Symposium

Icon Museum and Study Center · Icon Museum and Study Center · 203 Union St · Clinton · MA · Clinton

A two-day international symposium at which scholars present new research on Greek and Russian icons in the Icon Museum's own collection, most of the objects discussed never having been published before. Held in Clinton, about thirty miles west of Boston.

$150 members; $185 non-members

Fri Oct 16 · 12:00pm

Language and Improvisation: Arnold J. Kemp & Mira Dayal in Conversation

Tufts University · SMFA at Tufts · Boston · MA · Medford

Arnold J. Kemp, an artist who teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, talks with Mira Dayal, an artist and senior editor at Triple Canopy, about using language in both writing and visual work — the materiality of text, its legibility, and how it gets produced. Tufts University Art Galleries and the SMFA present it with Triple Canopy.

Fri Oct 16 · 4pm

America at 250 and Beyond: A Well-Informed Citizenry

Harvard University · JFK Jr. Forum · Institute of Politics · 79 JFK St. · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Jill Lepore, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, moderates a panel on why a well-informed citizenry matters to the health of constitutional democracy. With her are David French, opinion columnist for the New York Times; Steve Inskeep of NPR's Morning Edition; and Jameel Jaffer, executive director of Columbia's Knight First Amendment Institute. It is the third event in the Institute of Politics' semiquincentennial series Consent of the Governed.

Fri Oct 16 · 12pm

SCSB Lunch Series: Tatsuya Osaki on the Blood-Brain Barrier in Autism

MIT · Simons Center Conference room · 46-6011 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Tatsuya Osaki, a research scientist in Mriganka Sur's laboratory at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, presents a human stem-cell-derived model of the blood-brain barrier built to study vascular contributions to autism. Starting from Rett syndrome, his work found that MeCP2 mutations impair endothelial function and barrier integrity, and that blocking the microRNA miR-126-3p restored it. The talk is also streamed on Zoom.

Fri Oct 16 · 4pm

Democracy and Society in a Long War of Attrition

Tufts University · Cabot Intercultural Center · Medford · Medford

Yaryna Chornohuz, a Ukrainian poet and senior corporal who served as a soldier and medic, discusses how the prolonged war has shaped Ukrainian society, democracy and civic life, and what the West should learn from it, closing with a reading of her poems. She won the Shevchenko Prize for poetry in 2024 and has published three collections. Tufts political scientist Oxana Shevel moderates.

Fri Oct 16 · 11:00am

Art Study Center Seminar: A Closer Look at the Forbes Pigment Collection

Harvard Art Museums · Harvard Art Museums · 32 Quincy Street · Cambridge · MA 02138 · Cambridge

Alison Cariens, conservation coordinator at the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, leads a close look at the Forbes Pigment Collection, the museums' "library of color," begun by Edward Waldo Forbes while he directed the Fogg. The seminar covers the collection's history, how its materials serve the conservation labs, and the story behind each featured pigment. It is free with registration and open to ages 14 and up.

Sat Oct 17 · 2:30pm

Science Spotlights: An Intergenerational Game of Telephone

Harvard Museum of Natural History · Harvard Museum of Natural History · Classroom B (Third Floor) · 26 Oxford Street · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Speaker: Sasha Post - Graduate Student - Dept. of Human Evolutionary Biology. Meet up-and-coming scientists and learn about questions at the forefront of research today in this series of short talks. 2:00-2:30 pm. Let's play a game of telephone! One player whispers a message to the next.

Sat Oct 17 · 3:00pm

Artist Talk: Molly Hatch

Fuller Craft Museum · Fuller Craft Museum · 455 Oak St · Brockton · MA · Brockton

Ceramic artist Molly Hatch discusses her work at the opening of her new site-specific exhibition, Molly Hatch: Agency. Hatch is known for large wall installations assembled from hundreds of hand-painted plates, among them Physic Garden (2013), made for the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and much of her work reworks patterns from historical porcelain and textiles. She has also designed tableware for Anthropologie.

Sat Oct 17 · 12:30pm

Building Bridges & Big Ideas: Miguel Rosales

Museum of Science · William and Charlotte Bloomberg Public Science Common · Museum of Science · Boston · MA · Science Park · Boston

Miguel Rosales, the architect of Boston's Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge and author of Bridges as Structural Art, anchors a day of programs on how architecture and engineering meet, built around a fireside conversation with Museum of Science President Tim Ritchie. The day also includes hands-on activities for families and visitors of all ages, and is included with exhibit halls admission.

Fri Oct 16 – Sun Oct 18

Relational-Cultural Theory Conference

Wellesley College · Diana Chapman Walsh Alumnae Hall · Wellesley

A three-day conference marking fifty years since Toward a New Psychology of Women (1976), the book by psychiatrist Jean Baker Miller from which relational-cultural theory grew. Miller became the first director of Wellesley's Stone Center, where she, Judith Jordan, Irene Stiver and Janet Surrey developed the theory's account of psychological growth through connection. The college lists the sessions as lectures, panels and a symposium.

Sun Oct 18 · 11:00am

“Worthy to be Any Man’s Friend”: Lecture on Henry David Thoreau

Mount Auburn Cemetery · Story Chapel · Mount Auburn Cemetery · 580 Mount Auburn St. · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Concord historian Richard Smith talks about Henry David Thoreau and his friendships with figures now commemorated at Mount Auburn, among them Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Charles Sumner and Margaret Fuller. Thoreau is not buried there, but the “Hermit of Walden Pond” knew many of the cemetery's literary and political figures and was less of a recluse than the label suggests. Afterward Smith leads a walk to some of their monuments.

Sun Oct 18 · 6:30pm

Misunderstood Monsters with Paul Rosolie

Museum of Science · William and Charlotte Bloomberg Public Science Common · Museum of Science · Boston · MA · Science Park · Boston

Conservationist, explorer and wildlife filmmaker Paul Rosolie gives two programs on the Amazon's feared and misunderstood creatures, anacondas and tarantulas among them. An afternoon family stage presentation and meet-and-greet come with exhibit halls admission; the ticketed evening program is a fireside chat using the Science Common's immersive screens and sound. A pre-signed copy of his book Junglekeeper: What It Takes to Change the World can be added.

Sun Oct 18 · 2:00pm

3 Centuries of a Black Family in JP, from Slavery to Freedom

Jamaica Plain Historical Society · First Church in Jamaica Plain · 6 Eliot Street · Jamaica Plain · MA · Jamaica Plain · Boston

Researchers from Hidden Jamaica Plain tell the story of a Black family whose history in the neighbourhood spanned three centuries and was bound up with local Black and Indigenous communities. Peter Bridgham, enslaved in the 1700s, gained his freedom and established a Centre Street homestead that "nurtured four generations." The Historical Society's program is free and hybrid, with a Zoom webinar alongside the in-person talk.

Mon Oct 19 · 6:30pm

Lectures on Tap — The Possibility of Democracy: A Mathematical Argument

Lectures on Tap · Downtown Boston · MA (bar; exact address emailed after ticket purchase) · Boston

Ismar Volić, Professor of Mathematics and Director of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy at Wellesley College, uses the 18th-century Condorcet Jury Theorem and modern social choice theory to argue that democracies work best when citizens take part directly in decisions. He covers citizens’ assemblies and participatory budgeting, and how artificial intelligence and algorithmic design might scale them up. He is the author of Making Democracy Count.

Mon Oct 19 · 12pm

Public Research Talk: The Reformist Language of Plants: Marianne Dwight’s Botanical Watercolors with Alice de Galzain

Center for the Study of World Religions · Common Room · CSWR · 42 Francis Ave. · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

At the Brook Farm utopian community in 1844, Marianne Dwight joined the “Fancy Group,” women hand-painting goods for sale in Boston in pursuit of independence and equality. Sorbonne researcher Alice de Galzain reads Dwight's botanical watercolors, bound into flower “books,” as a language for Fourierist reform that joins the Transcendentalist search for harmony with nature to early feminist and labor politics.

Mon Oct 19 · 3pm

Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: Zilin Jiang (Arizona State University)

MIT · Building 2 143 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Zilin Jiang of Arizona State University speaks on “Unbalancing unit vectors,” a reversal of the vector-balancing problem behind the Komlós conjecture: rather than keeping a signed sum of vectors small, it asks how large one can be guaranteed. For n unit vectors in d dimensions, some choice of signs yields length at least √(2n − d), settling a conjecture of Ambrus and Nietert when n = d + 1.

Mon Oct 19 · 6:00pm

Creating an Icon: The Making of the New Collegiate Dictionary

Boston Athenaeum · Beacon Hill · Boston

Peter Sokolowski, Editor at Large at Merriam-Webster, tells the history of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, the bestselling hardcover after the Bible, and how its new Twelfth Edition was revised using two decades of online data on which words are looked up most and least. Sokolowski writes definitions and has served as a spelling-bee pronouncer worldwide; his forthcoming book is By Definition: The Surprising History of the English Dictionary.

$20

Mon Oct 19 · 7pm

Tavern Talk: A Growing Black Community: Life and Labor in West Somerville, 1900-1920

Somerville Museum · Somerville

Maddie Short traces the Black community that lived for much of the 20th century just west of Davis Square. Inexpensive land and new homes drew Black migrants and immigrants from the American South, Nova Scotia and the West Indies, who settled alongside Italian immigrants. Short follows early families on Cameron Avenue, Elmwood Street and Harrison Street, in a tavern talk held at Aeronaut Brewing.

Tue Oct 20 · 12:45pm

New Voices: Aanchal Saraf

Wellesley College · Green Hall · Newhouse Center (Rooms 237/239/240) · Wellesley

An installment of New Voices, the emerging-scholars lecture series at Wellesley's Newhouse Center for the Humanities, featuring Aanchal Saraf. The college's event page lists the room and date but no abstract yet; topic detail is to be posted closer to the talk.

Tue Oct 20 · 3:00pm

Fall 2026 Education Policy Seminar Series: Dr. Christina Weiland

Boston University · Boston University (Wheelock) · Boston · MA · Boston

Christina Weiland studies early childhood education and has evaluated Boston's public pre-kindergarten programme over many years. She takes the third seminar in BU's autumn education policy series, run by the Wheelock Educational Policy Center. The sessions are built for an academic audience with extended discussion, and are open to anyone who wants to attend.

Tue Oct 20 · 5:00pm

Tuesday Night Lecture Series: Between the Bylines Panel

Boston University · Faye G. · Jo · and James Stone Gallery · Boston University · Boston · MA · Boston

Artists Mickey Smith, Anne Eastman, Clare Strand and Toni Pepe discuss Between the Bylines with Susan Bright moderating. The exhibition, in BU's Stone Gallery, gathers fourteen artists who take the newspaper as material and subject — a form whose physical daily existence is now largely behind it.

Tue Oct 20 · 4:30pm

Women in Leadership Forum: Keeper of the Record: Lessons in Leadership and Resilience with Colleen Shogan '97

Boston College · Fulton Honors Library · Boston College · Chestnut Hill · MA · Boston

Colleen Shogan was the eleventh Archivist of the United States and the first woman appointed by a president and confirmed by the Senate to run the National Archives. A political scientist and author, she talks about leading the institution that holds the country's records, and about civics education.

Tue Oct 20 · 6:30pm

Lectures on Tap — Making Food for Mars

Lectures on Tap · Jamaica Plain · Boston · MA (bar; exact address emailed after ticket purchase) · Boston

Food is the limiting resource for long missions to places like Mars, and Taylor Lanosky, a chemical biology PhD student in George Church’s lab at Harvard, works on one answer: closed-loop biomanufacturing, in which yeast and bacteria grown on recycled resources produce nutritious, palatable food. She covers the particular problems of bioengineering for space. Lanosky is an aspiring astronaut working toward a private pilot license.

Tue Oct 20 · 6:00pm

The Crises of Liberal Democracy and the Response of Theopolitical Visions

GBH · Boston University · Photonics Building · 9th Floor · 8 St. Mary's Street · Boston · MA · Brighton · Boston

D. Stephen Long, Cary M. Maguire University Professor of Ethics at Southern Methodist University, gives a Lowell Lecture for Boston University School of Theology asking whether liberalism caused today's democratic crises or failed to prevent them, and whether a postliberal, theopolitical vision is a hope or a danger for people of faith. Long has published twenty books, including Divine Economy: Theology and the Market.

Tue Oct 20 · 6:30pm

Democracy & Voting Rights with ACLU & MassVOTE

Thomas Crane Public Library · Richardson Building · Thomas Crane Public Library · 40 Washington Street · Quincy · MA · Quincy

Traci Griffith, racial justice program director at the ACLU of Massachusetts, and Marisol Santiago, policy and organizing director for MassVOTE, trace the history of the struggle for voting rights, the policy questions raised by a recent Supreme Court ruling, and what citizens can do to protect access to the ballot. Audience questions are taken in writing during the discussion.

Tue Oct 20 · 12:00pm

Art + Science: Papermaking

Harvard Art Museums · Harvard Art Museums · 32 Quincy Street · Cambridge · MA 02138 · Cambridge

Penley Knipe, the Philip and Lynn Straus Senior Conservator of Works on Paper and head of the Straus Center's Paper Lab, talks about the history of paper, how it is made and what it reveals about a work of art. The session is part of a free monthly series in the Lightbox Gallery in which conservation staff bring out tools and materials of their labs for visitors to handle.

Wed Oct 21 · 6:00pm

Artist Talk | From Brooklyn to the North Pole: An Illustrated Journey with Photographer Leonard Sussman

MIT Museum · MIT Museum · 314 Main St · Cambridge · MA · Kendall Square · Cambridge

Experience the polar regions through the lens of photographer Leonard Sussman. What does it take to create a photograph at the edge of the world? Join photographer Leonard Sussman for an illustrated talk exploring the extraordinary landscapes and experiences of the polar and sub-polar regions.

$5

Wed Oct 21 · 12:30pm

Gallery Talk: Charlotte Moorman, Nam June Paik, and Their Avant-Garde Circle

Harvard Art Museums · Harvard Art Museums · 32 Quincy St · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Ken Hakuta, nephew of the video artist Nam June Paik, shares memories of the multimedia performances Paik made with the cellist Charlotte Moorman and others in their avant-garde circle. He talks with Vuk Vuković, the museums' Hakuta Family Nam June Paik Curatorial Fellow, and Mitra Abbaspour, Houghton Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. The museums hold Moorman and Paik's Blue Cello, a gift of the Hakuta family.

Wed Oct 21 · 6:00pm

Lowell Lecture: AI and Civic Engagement

Boston Public Library · Boston Public Library · Rabb Hall · Copley Square · Back Bay

Nathan Sanders, Dr. Avijit Ghosh and Jessica Chapel discuss what artificial intelligence is doing to civic life, moderated by BPL President David Leonard. Chapel is the library's Chief of Digital & Online Services and runs Digital Commonwealth, the repository linking more than 270 Massachusetts libraries, archives and museums. Part of the 2026 Lowell Lecture Series.

Wed Oct 21 · 7:00pm

Spies in Plain Sight: How a Botched Mission Led to Lexington and Concord

Dedham Museum and Archive · Dedham Museum & Archive · 612 High St · Dedham · MA · Dedham

In February 1775 three British officers went out to map colonial supply routes disguised as surveyors. Locals in Waltham and Cambridge saw through them almost at once; Framingham's Buckminster Tavern was the exception. Part of the Dedham Museum's autumn speaker series.

Wed Oct 21 · 7:30am

The WBUR Breakfast Club with Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks

WBUR CitySpace · WBUR CitySpace · 890 Commonwealth Ave · Boston · MA · Allston

Tiziana Dearing, host of WBUR's Morning Edition, talks with Hasbro's chief executive Chris Cocks about the more than 100-year-old games, toys and entertainment company in “the competitive and disruptive attention economy”, its “Playing to Win” strategy and the move of its headquarters to Boston from its longtime home in Rhode Island. Cocks ran Hasbro's Wizards of the Coast division before becoming chief executive in 2022.

Wed Oct 21 · 7:00pm

Tuesday Night Lecture Series: Tam Ochiai

Boston University · Boston University College of Fine Arts · Boston · MA · Boston

Tam Ochiai, born in Yokohama and working in New York since the early nineties, speaks in BU's Tuesday Night Lecture Series, organised by the MFA Painting programme. He has shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions over three decades, with a further one-person show opening at Ulrik in New York.

Wed Oct 21 · 5:00pm

The Rise of the Far Right in Ireland: North and South

Boston College · Yawkey Athletics Center · Boston College · Chestnut Hill · MA · Boston

A talk on far-right mobilisation across Ireland, north and south — anti-immigration protests, disinformation campaigns, online radicalisation and the targeted harassment of public figures — and on how closely those developments track the wider European pattern rather than arising from anything specifically Irish about the two jurisdictions.

Wed Oct 21 · 7:00pm

Arline Geronimus: Weathering, Then and Now

Boston College · Gasson Hall · Boston College · Chestnut Hill · MA · Boston

Arline Geronimus coined the term 'weathering' for the physical toll that systemic racism and class disadvantage take on the body. Her book Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society draws on more than thirty years of research to argue that how a society treats people shapes their health and ageing.

Wed Oct 21 · 6:30pm

Maria Claudia Clemente and Francesco Isidori, "The Architecture of Public Space"

Harvard University · Harvard Graduate School of Design · Piper Auditorium · Gund Hall · 48 Quincy St. · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Maria Claudia Clemente and Francesco Isidori founded Labics, an architecture and urban-design practice, in Rome in 2002; its built work includes the MAST complex in Bologna. Drawing on their book The Architecture of Public Space (Park Books, 2023), they present recent Labics projects where the connection between architecture, the city and public space is most evident.

Wed Oct 21 · 6:30pm

Film Screening & Mill Talk: Destination Watertown - the Armenians of Hood Rubber

Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation · Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation · 154 Moody St · Waltham · MA · Waltham

Roger K. Hagopian screens his documentary on the Hood Rubber Company, which opened in Watertown in 1896 and drew Armenian laborers who had fled the Hamidian massacres and, later, the 1915 Genocide. Former workers and descendants of the Hood family recall piecework and chemical exposure alongside the neighborhood "sneaker test"; the factory, closed in 1969, gave rise to Watertown's Armenian community. Hagopian, whose father survived the Genocide, discusses the film.

Wed Oct 21 · 6:30pm

Lectures on Tap — How Scientists Identify What Neurons Do in the Brain

Lectures on Tap · Jamaica Plain · Boston · MA (bar; exact address emailed after ticket purchase) · Boston

Biophysicist Didar Ciftci, who holds a Cornell PhD and co-developed light-based molecular barcoding for visualizing RNA as a postdoc at Harvard, explains how scientists move from seeing a neuron “light up” to knowing what kind of cell it is. The talk centers on MIDAS, a new method that matches neurons imaged during behavior with their molecular identities afterward, linking what a neuron is to what it does.

Wed Oct 21 · 5:00pm

WIT SoAD Public Lecture Series: Ignacio Cardona

Boston Society for Architecture · Beatty Hall · Room 426 · Wentworth Institute of Technology · 550 Huntington Ave · Boston · MA · Seaport · Boston

Ignacio Cardona gives the Faculty Spotlight lecture in the Wentworth School of Architecture and Design’s public lecture series, which runs this fall under the theme “Design Futures: From Fictions to Environments.” His practice and scholarship center on urban and environmental planning built on Spatial Opportunities, Restorative Community Design and self-production as a form of development. The listing names no specific topic for the talk.

Wed Oct 21 · 6:00pm

The Many Lives of Theban Tomb 16

Harvard Museums of Science & Culture · Geological Lecture Hall · 24 Oxford Street · Cambridge

Egyptologist Suzanne Onstine, who directs the University of Memphis mission to Theban Tomb 16, presents new research on its painted plaster scenes. Built under Ramesses II around 1250 BCE for the priest Panehsy and his wife Tarenu, a chantress, the tomb was reused by the Theban elite for over a thousand years, looted around 1900 and again in the 1970s, and has been documented and conserved by her team since 2008.

Wed Oct 21 · 4:15pm

Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: Jonathan Boretsky (McGill)

MIT · Harvard Science Center 232 · Boston

Jonathan Boretsky of McGill University speaks on totally positive skew-symmetric matrices. Since such matrices always have nonpositive entries, they cannot be totally positive in the classical sense, so the talk calls one totally positive when it lies in the totally positive orthogonal Grassmannian. Boretsky gives a positivity criterion in terms of a fixed set of minors and describes the sign pattern of their Pfaffians.

Wed Oct 21 · 4pm

SCSB Colloquium: Jason Lerch on Biologically Informed Subgroups in Neurodevelopmental Disorders

MIT · Building 46 46-3002 · Singleton Auditorium · Cambridge · Cambridge

Jason Lerch, professor of neuroscience at the University of Oxford's Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, combines brain scans from 135 mouse models with two human MRI cohorts of more than a thousand people each to sort neurodevelopmental conditions by shared brain anatomy. The resulting subgroups cut across diagnoses such as autism, ADHD and OCD, aligning instead with a few molecular pathways, among them synaptic function and chromatin regulation.

Wed Oct 21 · 4pm

Lie Groups Seminar: Guy Shtotland (Ben-Gurion University)

MIT · Building 2 142 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Guy Shtotland of Ben-Gurion University speaks on a relative version of the Kazhdan–Lusztig isomorphism for the spherical variety GL2n\Sp2n. The original isomorphism, linking the affine Hecke algebra of a p-adic group to the equivariant K-theory of the Steinberg variety of its Langlands dual, was central to proving the Deligne–Langlands conjecture. Shtotland compares two Hecke-algebra modules built from such a variety and applies the relationship to distinguished representations.

Wed Oct 21 · 3:30pm

PPSM Seminar: Adam Caparco (Northeastern)

MIT · Building 56 114 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Adam Caparco, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Northeastern University, gives a seminar for MIT's Program in Polymers and Soft Matter, the interdepartmental graduate program in polymer science and soft materials.

Wed Oct 21 · 12pm

The Presidency Unbound? The Evolution of Emergency Presidential Power & the Rise of Authoritarianism

Tufts University · Barnum Hall · Medford · Medford

Chris Edelson, a constitutional scholar and political science lecturer at UMass Amherst, discusses how emergency presidential power has evolved, how the framers meant to balance it against limits, and why that balance has eroded. Edelson taught for 16 years in American University's government department and is the author of three books on presidential power, most recently Above the Law? The Evolution of Emergency Presidential Power.

Wed Oct 21 · 7pm

The L-Word, Watertown Edition

Watertown Free Public Library · Watertown Savings Bank Room (1st floor) · Watertown Free Public Library · Watertown

Historian Robin Bernstein gives a fast-paced slide show on Watertown’s lesbian history, telling stories of love affairs, rivalries, mischief, betrayals, breakups and friendships. Its central figure is Harriet Hosmer, a sculptor, tomboy and lover of women who grew up in Watertown and whose name is on a town elementary school. Bernstein, a professor of American history at Harvard, is the author of Racial Innocence and Freeman’s Challenge.

Thu Oct 22 · 7:00pm

From Playdates to Peer Pressure: Parenting Ages 6-12

Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis · BGSP · Brookline · Brookline

The second conversation in the Therapy Center at BGSP's fall parenting series, "Am I the Worst Parent in the World?", turns to elementary and middle school, when new friends, outside influences and wider access to technology bring parents "a newfound loss of control." Leah Alexander, BGSP's assistant dean of curriculum, leads it with the clinicians Melis Germeyan and Luke Goldring. Hybrid, in person or on Zoom.

Thu Oct 22 · 6:00pm

Memory on Trial: Can We Trust What We Remember?

by Stephanie Tabashneck

Boston Public Library · Boston Public Library · Central Library · Copley Square · Back Bay

Stephanie Tabashneck, a psychologist and attorney at Harvard Law School's Center for Law, Brain & Behavior, walks through how memory is formed and altered by stress, trauma, suggestion and interrogation, and what neuroscience can and cannot say about eyewitness testimony and false confessions. The presentation is interactive.

Thu Oct 22 · 1:00pm

2026 Fall Digital Scholarship Celebration

Northeastern University · Snell Library · Northeastern University · 360 Huntington Ave · Boston · MA · Fenway

Northeastern’s Centers for Digital Scholarship, Digital Scholarship Group and NULab for Digital Humanities and Computational Social Science hold their annual autumn celebration, opening with hybrid lightning talks from researchers across the university, among them archives for the Writing Program and a rural health collaborative, and speakers from history, political science and computer science. An in-person reception follows with tours and zine-making. Free, with registration.

Thu Oct 22 · 6:30pm

The Wireless Operator: with Dr. David Tuch

Larz Anderson Auto Museum · Larz Anderson Auto Museum · 15 Newton St · Brookline · MA 02445 · Brookline

David Tuch, a Brookline technology entrepreneur, tells the story behind his first book, The Wireless Operator, a biography of his cousin Harold Derber. Derber served as a wireless operator in the British navy, ran refugees and arms into Palestine after the war, struck a deal with Castro to ferry Cuban refugees in 1959 and later became a major marijuana trafficker. The talk begins at 7.

Thu Oct 22 · 2:30pm

Algorithms and Indignation in American Political Culture

Framingham State University · Alumni Room · McCarthy Center · Framingham State University · Framingham · MA (hybrid · Zoom link offered) · Framingham

Sarah Sobieraj on twenty years of rising affective polarisation — Americans disliking the other side rather than disagreeing with it — and on what she calls 'emo chambers', where shifts in political information, media habits and social wellbeing combine to turn discomfort into indignation, particularly among young adults.

Thu Oct 22 · 5:00pm

Comparing Antisemitism in the United States and Europe: A Conversation (HYBRID)

Boston College · Walsh Hall Function Room · Boston College · Chestnut Hill · MA (also virtual) · Boston

Pamela Nadell of American University and Flora Cassen of Brandeis, both historians of Jewish life, compare antisemitism in America and in Europe across past and present — whether the rise is the same phenomenon in both places or whether the different histories produce genuinely different things. Attendable in person or online.

Thu Oct 22 · 5:30pm

The Fire That Welcomes: An African Theology of Hospitality

Boston College · Simboli Hall · Boston College · Chestnut Hill · MA · Boston

Fr Litoing SJ begins from a Fulani saying — the fire that cooks for the traveller never goes out — and builds from Sahelian traditions of hospitality toward a theology of welcome, treating African practice as a source for Christian thought rather than an illustration of it.

Thu Oct 22 · 6:30pm

Lectures on Tap — Can Nationalism Be Inclusive? The Case of Scotland

Lectures on Tap · Dorchester · Boston · MA (bar; exact address emailed after ticket purchase) · Boston

Aubrey Westfall, Professor of Political Science at Wheaton College in Norton, uses Scotland as a case study in whether nationalism can be inclusive, looking at how the country handles immigration, belonging and national membership, and at the identity behind the “Tartan Army” of traveling Scotland fans. She is the author of The Politics of Immigration in Scotland and co-author of The Politics of the Headscarf in the United States.

Thu Oct 22 · 9am

Stanley Cavell's Transcendental Etudes Conference

Center for the Study of World Religions · Common Room · Center for the Study of World Religions · 42 Francis Ave. · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Marking the centenary of Stanley Cavell's birth, this conference turns to the least-examined side of the Harvard philosopher's work: its religious dimension, drawn out through his long engagement with Emerson and Thoreau. Four keynote addresses and a closing panel take up what Cavell has to say about selfhood, community, skepticism and moral perfectionism, the Emersonian idea he made his own.

Thu Oct 22 · 5:30pm

Artist Talk: Hao Jingban

MIT · Bartos Theatre 20 Ames Street · Bldg. E15 Atrium level Cambridge · Massachusetts 02139 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Hao Jingban talks with Huirong Ye, a Harvard doctoral student in East Asian film and media, to open I Witness, the List Center's exhibition and her first major US museum solo show; a reception follows. Its centrepiece, a three-channel installation, takes up "the embodied residue of the COVID-19 pandemic." Hao lives between Yunnan and Berlin and has had solo shows at Tokyo's Mori Art Museum and Matadero Madrid.

Thu Oct 22 · 4:30pm

Symplectic Geometry Seminar: Dylan Cant (Université de Montréal)

MIT · Building 2 449 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Dylan Cant of the Université de Montréal speaks on "the spectral diameter of the Grassmannians", a pseudometric built from Floer theory. He shows the diameter is finite for Gr(2, n) when n is prime, a consequence of quantum cohomology, and infinite for Gr(2k, 2n) when k < n, through Lagrangian submanifolds. The work is joint with Habib Alizadeh, Marcelo Atallah and Jianqiao Shang.

Thu Oct 22 · 6pm

MIT Architecture Lecture: Carrie McKnelly

MIT · Building W41 (MET Warehouse) 1216 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Carrie McKnelly, who leads the design team in Nike Innovation's Advanced Digital Creation Studio, works where computational design meets material craft. At Nike she has led computational design for products including DriFit Advanced for the 2024 Paris Olympics. She began at SOFTlab, designing large installations, and at MIT, in the Design and Computation Group that co-presents the lecture, worked on knit textiles as a material system.

Thu Oct 22 · 4:30pm

Applied Math Colloquium: Sheehan Olver (Imperial College)

MIT · Building 2 190 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Sheehan Olver, a mathematician at Imperial College London, speaks at MIT's Applied Math Colloquium. His research is in numerical analysis, particularly spectral methods, orthogonal polynomials and the numerical solution of Riemann–Hilbert problems, and he created ApproxFun, an open-source Julia package for computing with functions.

Thu Oct 22 · 5pm

Mala and Solomon Kamm Lecture in Ethics with C. Thi Nguyen

Harvard University · Thompson Room · Barker Center · 12 Quincy St · Cambridge · Boston

C. Thi Nguyen, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Utah and author of Games: Agency as Art, lectures on moral diversity: whether a good moral world needs different temperaments, the empathic and forgiving alongside “angry warriors for justice.” He weighs arguments from moral exploration and social coordination, and asks whether the unity of the virtues might belong to the community rather than the individual.

Thu Oct 22 · 12pm

Animals + Technology: Designing for Animal Agency, Wellbeing, and Care

Northeastern University · Center for Design Ryder Hall Suite 180 · Boston · Boston

Researchers, designers and animal-care professionals discuss work from Northeastern's INTERACT Animal Lab, made with Zoo New England, the Museum of Science and the New England Aquarium. The projects range from sensing and monitoring systems to interactive enrichment designed for the animals themselves, and the panel takes up the practical, ethical and design problems of building technology that supports animal agency, wellbeing and care.

Thu Oct 22 · 8:30am

Advancing Resilience: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on Constant Disruption

Northeastern University · Curry Student Center 2nd Floor Suites · Boston · Boston

A one-day hybrid conference asks what it takes to keep functioning, not merely recover, when disruption is constant and compounding. Sessions bring leaders from cybersecurity, energy and environmental security, geopolitics and personal resilience, each approaching the question from its own discipline, and the day closes with a fireside conversation that sets those perspectives side by side. Northeastern's Global Resilience Institute presents it.

Thu Oct 22 · 12pm

[ENVS] Community-based scaling for innovations in sustainability

Tufts University · Medford/Somerville campus · Medford

Juliette Rooney-Varga, professor of environmental science at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, uses an interactive model of community-based scaling to show when the strategy is needed, how it works and why it can work better than outreach, advertising or word of mouth in spreading sustainability solutions. Examples come from sustainability education, regenerative agriculture and political movements, drawing on the model she and colleagues described in 2024.

Thu Oct 22 · 6:30pm

Understanding A.I. and Misinformation - A Conversation with Journalist Philip Eil

Brookline Public Library · Hunneman Hall - Brookline Village · Brookline Village · Brookline Public Library · Brookline

Journalist Philip Eil looks at how AI is used to create and spread misinformation, including deepfakes and manipulated photos and video, and at how it is affecting society, whether local or national laws regulate it, and how to spot AI-generated content. Eil, a Providence freelancer and former news editor of the Providence Phoenix, wrote Prescription for Pain, about a once-promising doctor who became the “Pill Mill Killer.”

Thu Oct 22 · 12:30pm

Artful Conversations: “Morning, Gloucester Harbor,” by Frederick J. Mulhaupt

Cape Ann Museum · Downtown Campus · Gloucester · Gloucester

A docent-led look at one painting newly on view: Frederick J. Mulhaupt’s Morning, Gloucester Harbor (c. 1920), a view of the working waterfront where sail, steam and local maritime life meet. The session opens in the Education Room with an introduction before moving into the galleries. The guide, Charles Browne, studied art history, practiced architecture in New England and Texas, and paints in oils and watercolors.

Thu Oct 22 · 7pm

The Salem Witch Trials: What Really Happened

Milton Public Library · Keys Community Room · Milton Public Library · Milton

Dennis J. Curran, a former Massachusetts Superior Court judge, examines the Salem witch trials and the “perfect storm” of conditions behind their injustices, part of his series “Great Trials That Changed History: A Judge’s Perspective.” Curran presided over 450 civil and criminal trials in 15 years on the bench and has received four statewide awards for judicial excellence; he holds a law degree from the University of Virginia.

Thu Oct 22 · 7pm

Panel Discussion on Photographic Practices from Common Ground

Somerville Museum · Somerville

Kristen Gresh, Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Senior Curator of Photographs at the MFA Boston, leads a panel discussion with photographers on the range of their creative practices in Common Ground: Photography, Place, and Community. The exhibition, curated by Ivan Abarca-Torres, brings together 15 photographers who have made Somerville their home, with work ranging from documentary to conceptual on identity, community, gentrification and the urban landscape.

Thu Oct 22 · 6:00pm

History at Play: Rachel Revere Speaks with Judith Kalora as Rachel Revere

Andover Center for History and Culture · Andover Center for History and Culture · 97 Main St · Andover · MA · Andover

Judith Kalaora of History at Play portrays Rachel Revere on May 2, 1775, cut off from Paul by the Siege of Boston and planning how to get his six children and their newborn beyond the reach of the British army, with the audience weighing each plan. The 40-minute performance, commissioned by the Paul Revere Memorial Association, is followed by a Q&A and a half-hour history lesson.

Fri Oct 23 · 1pm

2026 McGovern Institute Symposium - Decoding Addiction: Breaking new ground in research and clinical care

MIT · Building 46 Singleton Auditorium · Cambridge · Cambridge

The McGovern Institute's 2026 symposium brings scientists, engineers and clinicians together on substance use disorders, bridging basic research in humans and animal models with clinical care. Speakers include Patricia Janak of Johns Hopkins, Geoffrey Schoenbaum of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, A. Eden Evins, director of Mass General's Center for Addiction Medicine, and Sarah Wakeman of Mass General Brigham, alongside four early-career researchers from MIT labs.

Thu Oct 22 – Fri Oct 23 · 10am

Capitalism and Economic Justice: Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations at 250

Boston College · Yawkey Athletics Center Murray Room · Boston · Boston

Thu Oct 22 / Fri Oct 23 · 10am

A two-day conference for the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations brings Smith scholars together with experts on Catholic Social Thought. Harvard's Benjamin Friedman, author of Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, gives the first plenary lecture and Jennifer Herdt of Yale Divinity School the second, "The Myth of Endless Growth and the Forfeiture of Happiness." Panelists include Charles Griswold of Boston University and Samuel Fleischacker.

Fri Oct 23 · 12pm

Digital Scholarship Conversations: Sonic Studies

Tufts University · Tisch Library · Medford · Medford

Two Tufts faculty members talk about how they bring sound into their teaching, from podcasts and field recordings to music and sound art, in this installment of Tisch Library's Digital Scholarship Conversations. Noel Heim, associate teaching professor of Earth and Climate Sciences, reconstructs the history of Earth's marine biosphere, including ongoing human-caused change. Riccardo Giacconi is on the SMFA faculty.

Sat Oct 24 · 1pm

Talk: Hygge and Happiness with Anne Ipsen, PhD.

Scandinavian Cultural Center · Scandinavian Cultural Center · West Newton · Newton · MA · West Newton · Newton

Anne Ipsen gives an illustrated talk on hygge, drawing on Meik Wiking's The Little Book of Hygge and on Happier Longevity, the book she wrote with Tami Muller. The Danish term covers the ordinary business of curling up with a book or eating with friends, and has been exported as a wellbeing concept rather than a domestic habit.

Sat Oct 24 · 4:00pm

Live with Mark Rober

Museum of Science · William and Charlotte Bloomberg Public Science Common · Museum of Science · Boston · MA · Science Park · Boston

Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer whose YouTube channel of science builds and pranks has 82 million subscribers, talks through the stories and science behind his favorite creations, with experiments and demonstrations on stage and an audience Q&A. The museum is also presenting him with its 2026 Bradford Washburn Award for science communication. Rober founded CrunchLabs, which sends kids monthly STEM toys and videos.

Sat Oct 24 · 3pm

Artists Speak

Boston University · 808 Gallery · Brookline · Brookline

Artists exhibiting in the Boston Printmakers 2026 North American Print Biennial give a series of short talks about their work. Esther Adler, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, juried the show, choosing 120 prints from 2017 entries: etching, lithography, woodcut, linocut, screenprint, digital printmaking, artists' books and dimensional works by emerging and established artists from across North America. The exhibition runs through November 21.

Sat Oct 24 · 2pm

CAM Talk: From Clay to Bronze, The Making of the Seated Cat, by Robert Shure

Cape Ann Museum · Downtown Campus · Gloucester · Gloucester

Sculptor Robert Shure talks about Seated Cat, his new bronze in the museum’s renovated courtyard, an enlargement of Katherine Lane Weems’s 1941 work of the same name. He discusses his past work with Weems and the dialogue between their two cats. Shure trained at the Cascieri-di Biccari sculpture studio, which he moved to Woburn in 1990 as Skylight Studios, where he makes public monuments and restores historic sculpture.

Sat Oct 24 · 9:30am

Faceless Blackness: A Psychoanalytic Investigation of Racism

Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis · Rosen Auditorium · Lasell University · 1844 Commonwealth Avenue · Newton · MA 02466 · Auburndale · Newton

Drawing on Jacques Lacan and Frantz Fanon, Sheldon George reads American racial whiteness as a fantasy that “sutures symbolic and imaginary registers of experience.” Dennis Plant responds with Lacanian accounts of jouissance and repetition to examine how racism forms and endures, and Eben Lasker moderates. The panel aims to keep the theory accessible to newcomers to Lacan. Two CE credits are offered.

Sun Oct 25 · 2:00pm

After the Landslide: New Sculptural Forms from a Sea of Mud

Museum of Fine Arts · Museum of Fine Arts · Boston · MA · Fenway · Boston

Hoshino Satoru, the Japanese ceramic artist, traces how a 1986 landslide caused by torrential rain changed his view of clay from a material for presenting his ideals to one with a vitality of its own, and how his early work, carefully controlled and smoke-black, grew into large-scale installations. He speaks in Japanese with English interpretation, in the Rad Smith Program in Japanese Art.

Mon Oct 26 · 6:30pm

Piece by Piece: Crazy Quilting and Making Memory in 19th-Century Massachusetts, with Tenesha Carter Johnson

Paul Revere House · Smith Commons (5th floor) · Sargent Hall · Suffolk University · 120 Tremont Street · Boston · MA · North End · Boston

Tenesha Carter Johnson, a curator and cultural historian of American quilts and textiles, looks at the crazy quilts popular by the late nineteenth century, pieced from wedding silk, fair ribbons and dress scraps, and at how ordinary women turned them into "personal archives." Johnson studied at Spelman College and Bard Graduate Center. The talk belongs to the 2026 Lowell Lecture Series on craft in Massachusetts and is livestreamed.

Mon Oct 26 · 2:30pm

Exploring Gender and Jewish Identity through Angélica Gorodischer's Literature, Denise Léon

Brandeis University · Shiffman · Room 217 · Waltham · MA · Waltham

Denise Léon speaks on gender and Jewish identity in the work of Angélica Gorodischer, the Argentine writer whose Kalpa Imperial was translated into English by Ursula K. Le Guin. The presentation is given in Spanish rather than English, which the university states plainly in its listing.

Mon Oct 26 · 11:30am

Faculty Speaker Series: Peter De Costa

Boston College · Boston College · Chestnut Hill · MA · Boston

Peter De Costa of Michigan State speaks in the Lynch School's series on care and 'tough love' in the language classroom, and on using technology to teach through discomfort. The framing comes from Paulo Freire's humanising pedagogy, which treats education as oriented toward social justice rather than neutral transmission.

Mon Oct 26 · 6:30pm

Lectures on Tap — Cold War Pen Pals?: American and Soviet Women

Lectures on Tap · Downtown Boston · MA (bar; exact address emailed after ticket purchase) · Boston

Historian Alexis Peri draws on her book Dear Unknown Friend, about letters American and Soviet women exchanged in the late 1940s and 1950s, only recently found in a Moscow archive, in which they shared their lives and began to question why their countries were so divided. Peri is an associate professor of history at Boston University and the author of The War Within: Diaries from the Siege of Leningrad.

Mon Oct 26 · 12pm

Public Research Talk: Passionate Micrology: Thoreau and Nietzsche’s Erotics of the Closest Things with Nicholas Low

Center for the Study of World Religions · Common Room · Center for the Study of World Religions · 42 Francis Ave. Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Philosophers are pictured with their heads in the clouds, but Nietzsche and Thoreau, Emerson's two great heirs, turned instead to what Nietzsche called “the closest things”: the small, squalid, usually ignored matter of embodied life. Nicholas Low borrows Adorno's idea of micrological analysis to set the two side by side, and to ask where a passionate attention to the particular reaches its limits.

Mon Oct 26 · 4:30pm

Innovation on Steroids: What Are We Learning from the Ukraine War?

MIT · Building 3 270 · Cambridge · Cambridge

The Focus on Eurasia series asks what the war in Ukraine is teaching about military innovation. Erik Lin-Greenberg, co-director of MIT's Wargaming Lab and author of The Remote Revolution: Drones and Modern Statecraft, studies how emerging military technology shapes conflict. Gene Keselman, an MIT Sloan lecturer, is a colonel in the Air Force Reserve. Carol Saivetz and Elizabeth Wood, author of Roots of Russia's War in Ukraine, co-chair.

Mon Oct 26 · 4pm

Rama S. Mehta Lecture with Farida Shaheed

Harvard University · Knafel Center · 10 Garden St. · Cambridge · Boston

Farida Shaheed, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to education, delivers Harvard Radcliffe Institute's Rama S. Mehta Lecture, discussing her advocacy for that right and her proposal to treat academic freedom as an autonomous human right. A sociologist and lifelong activist, Shaheed is executive director of Shirkat Gah—Women's Resource Centre in Pakistan and has spent decades working for the rights of women and girls.

Mon Oct 26 · 12pm

Granoff Music Center Colloquium: The “Making Of” the Perry and Marty Granoff Music Center

Tufts University Department of Music · Perry and Marty Granoff Music Center · Varis Lecture Hall · Medford · Medford

A behind-the-scenes colloquium on how Tufts's Perry and Marty Granoff Music Center was designed and built. Professors Jane Bernstein, David Locke, Janet Schmalfeldt and Jeffrey Summit join Michael Rogan, former director of the Lilly Music Library, and Larry Bacow, former president of both Tufts and Harvard. A Music Library exhibit on the building's design and construction, in the library and online, accompanies it.

Tue Oct 27 · 9:00pm

Diplomacy Below the Surface: Science, Cooperation, and the Future of the Ocean Commons

MIT Museum · MIT Museum · 314 Main St · Cambridge · MA · Kendall Square · Cambridge

How do we navigate the future of our oceans through science, policy, and collaboration? Join scientists, diplomats, policymakers, and coastal leaders for an evening exploring ocean diplomacy, from deep-sea research to maritime law. Diplomacy Below the Surface brings diverse voices together to tackle urgent conservation and climate challenges.

$15

Tue Oct 27 · 6:00pm

Picasso: The Revolutionary Artist

French Library · The French Library · 53 Marlborough St · Boston · MA · Back Bay

Claude Cernuschi, Professor of Art History at Boston College and a past chair of its Art, Art History, and Film Department, lectures on Picasso's career and his part in shaping twentieth-century art, in conjunction with the Museum of Fine Arts exhibition Picasso, Miró, Dalí: Unbound. Cernuschi has published studies of Jackson Pollock, Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele and Abstract Expressionism. The lecture has been rescheduled.

Tue Oct 27 · 6:30pm

Paul Revere Makes a Buck: Symbolism & Currency of the Revolutionary War (Talk with Historian Don Slater)

Andover Center for History and Culture · Andover Center for History & Culture · 97 Main Street · Andover · MA 01810 · Andover

Historian Don Slater on the paper money of the Revolution and the imagery engraved on it — Revere among the engravers, which put the same hand behind both the propaganda prints and the currency the new states were trying to make people accept. The Andover Center hosts the talk on Main Street.

Tue Oct 27 · 9:00am

Ethics & The Future of Artificial Intelligence

UMass Boston · UMass Boston · Columbia Point · Dorchester · MA · Columbia Point · Dorchester

A one-day conference held jointly by UMass Boston, the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and the Latin American AI Network for Integral Human Development, bringing policymakers, industry figures, scholars and students together on how ethical frameworks, democratic values and human dignity might shape the development of artificial intelligence.

Tue Oct 27 · 7:00pm

Tuesday Night Lecture Series: Coral Saucedo Lomeli

Boston University · Boston University College of Fine Arts · Boston · MA · Boston

Coral Saucedo Lomeli, born in Mexico City and now working in Brooklyn, talks about work that takes material relationships, labour and failing systems as its subject, drawing on domestic objects, the city, poetry and craft. BU's MFA Sculpture programme organises the lecture in the Tuesday Night series.

Tue Oct 27 · 12:15pm

Pentagon Capitalism: The Humanities Respond (Economics and Humanities), A Panel Discussion

Brandeis University · Mandel Center for the Humanities · Room 303 · Waltham · MA · Waltham

An interdisciplinary panel on A.J. Murphy's Pentagon Capitalism: How the Cold War US Military Modeled Itself on Private Business, with Murphy joined by an anthropologist, a classicist and a political scientist — Elizabeth Ferry, Michael McGlin and Ayumi Teraoka — each taking the military-industrial question from their own field.

Tue Oct 27 · 6:30pm

Lectures on Tap — Gold & Greed: One of Wall Street's Greatest Scandals

Lectures on Tap · Somerville · MA (bar; exact address emailed after ticket purchase) · Somerville

Dan Breen, Professor of Legal Studies at Brandeis University, recounts the September 1869 attempt by Jay Gould, “The Mephistopheles of Wall Street,” and “Jubilee Jim” Fisk to corner the U.S. gold market through their influence with President Ulysses S. Grant. He follows the scheme’s collapse on the day remembered as “Black Friday” and its lasting effect on American finance. Breen’s book on Boston’s public monuments is due in 2027.

Mon Oct 26 – Tue Oct 27

Arthur Miller Lecture on Science and Ethics

MIT · MIT Welcome Center · Cambridge · Cambridge

The annual Arthur Miller Lecture on Science and Ethics is a panel on chatbots in children's toys: whether children, as "first-time learners," can defend themselves against "pretend empathy," or whether embodied AI is "a blank canvas" for good. Sherry Turkle, founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, joins Mimi Ito of UC Irvine's Connected Learning Lab and Mike Rizkalla, founder of Snorble.

Tue Oct 27 · 2:30pm

Physical Math Seminar: Olivia Pomerenk (Brown University)

MIT · Building 2 449 · Cambridge · Cambridge

In "Flocking and floating," Olivia Pomerenk of Brown University presents mathematical models of collective behaviour in fluids at two scales. The first half develops a boundary-element framework for particles that attract, repel and organise at a fluid interface; the second models the wake-vortex interactions of two flapping birds in tandem, finding the follower's most efficient position for northern bald ibises and probing why birds fly in V-formation.

Tue Oct 27 · 7:30pm

New England Forests: Insights From Ancient Pollen Preserved in Lake Sediments

Arlington Historical Society · Arlington

Wyatt Oswald, Professor of Environmental Science at Emerson College and a Research Associate at the Harvard Forest, traces 14,000 years of change in New England’s forests through pollen preserved in ordinary lake sediments. He explains the methods of paleoecology, what decades of New England research have found about forests responding to climate, and the lessons for conservation and forest management under present and future climate change.

$10

Tue Oct 27 – Wed Oct 28 · 8pm

Boston Speakers Series: Boris Johnson

Boston Speakers Series · Symphony Hall · Symphony · Boston

Tue Oct 27 / Wed Oct 28 · 8pm

Boris Johnson, the Conservative leader who as UK Prime Minister from 2019 to 2022 took Britain out of the European Union and through the pandemic, gives a firsthand account of global politics and Ukraine. He was earlier Foreign Secretary and Mayor of London, and published a memoir, Unleashed, in 2024. The Boston Speakers Series is sold by subscription only; tickets to single lectures are not offered.

Wed Oct 28 · 7:00pm

Mill Talk: The Longest, Hardest Race - Henry Ford & the Cross-Country Contest That Changed America

Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation · Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation · 154 Moody St · Waltham · MA · Waltham

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eric Moskowitz tells a riveting, fast-paced story of the first true coast-to-coast automobile race in U.S. history. This is a colorful tale of corporate ambition and subterfuge braided through a gripping account of the gritty drivers who braved hostile terrain, mechanical failure, and, shockingly, sabotage, while chasing victory.

Wed Oct 28 · 4:45pm

Jeffrey Burds Memorial Speaker Series: Peter Richardson

Northeastern University · 310 Renaissance Park · 1135 Tremont St · Boston · MA · Fenway · Boston

Peter Richardson of Northeastern presents No War, No Peace, No Incentives: Political, Economic & Strategic Inertia in Russian-Japanese Reconciliation in the Putin Era. Russia and Japan have never signed a treaty formally ending the Second World War, chiefly because of the dispute over the southern Kuril Islands. The history department and the College of Social Sciences and Humanities hold the series in memory of the late Professor Jeffrey Burds.

Wed Oct 28 · 7:00pm

A Jewish Hero in Glover's Marblehead Regiment

Marblehead Museum · Abbot Public Library · Marblehead · MA · Marblehead

Rabbi David Meyer tells the story of a Jewish soldier in John Glover's Marblehead regiment, the amphibious unit of fishermen and mariners that ferried Washington's army across the Delaware in December 1776. The talk is the second in the Marblehead Museum's autumn series at the Abbot Public Library on the town's Revolutionary history.

Wed Oct 28 · 5:00pm

Sport and Culture in Ireland: The Atlas of Irish Sport

Boston College · Connolly House · Boston College · Chestnut Hill · MA · Boston

A panel marking the first volume of the Atlas of Irish Sport from University College Cork Press, edited by John Crowley, Mike Cronin, Cormack Moore and Charlie Roche. It follows the same press's Atlas of the Irish Revolution and Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, which mapped their subjects rather than narrating them.

Wed Oct 28 · 7:00pm

Poetry Days Presents: An Evening with Victoria Chang

Boston College · Gasson Hall · Boston College · Chestnut Hill · MA · Boston

Victoria Chang reads in the Lowell Humanities Series. Her recent collections include Tree of Knowledge and With My Back to the World, which won the Forward Prize for Best Collection; she also wrote OBIT, built from obituaries written after her mother's death, and Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief.

Wed Oct 28 · 6:30pm

Lectures on Tap — Three Chords and the Truth: The Story of the Blues

Lectures on Tap · Back Bay · Boston · MA (bar; exact address emailed after ticket purchase) · Boston

Delvyn Case, Professor of Music at Wheaton College, traces the blues from its origins in the Jim Crow South into the jazz, country, gospel and rock ’n’ roll it gave rise to, and on into heavy metal, punk and hip-hop. A classical composer and musicologist specializing in popular music, Case has taught its history for 25 years, and songwriting students he mentored have earned two Grammy nominations.

Wed Oct 28 · 5:00pm

WIT SoAD Public Lecture Series: Mingming Zhao

Boston Society for Architecture · CEIS Lobby · Wentworth Institute of Technology · 555 Parker St · Boston · MA · Seaport · Boston

Mingming Zhao, a design researcher in neuroarchitecture, combines EEG, immersive virtual environments and deep learning to study how people perceive and respond to space. Her doctoral research at CUHK’s School of Architecture produced AffectScope, a framework for multimodal architectural evaluation in stress-sensitive settings. The talk belongs to the Wentworth School of Architecture and Design’s public lecture series, themed this fall “Design Futures: From Fictions to Environments.”

Wed Oct 28 · 4pm

Picower Lecture: Richard L. Huganir

MIT · Building 46 Singleton Auditorium (46-3002) · Cambridge · Cambridge

Richard L. Huganir, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, gives the 2026 Picower Lecture. His laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms of synaptic plasticity, in particular how AMPA-type glutamate receptors at the synapse are regulated during learning and memory. MIT's Linlin Fan hosts, and a reception follows.

Wed Oct 28 · 4pm

Lie Groups Seminar: Steven Karp (University of Notre Dame)

MIT · Building 2 142 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Steven Karp, a mathematician at the University of Notre Dame, speaks to MIT's Lie Groups Seminar, a research seminar in Lie theory and representation theory. Karp works in algebraic combinatorics, chiefly on total positivity: the totally nonnegative Grassmannian, positroids and sign variation, and the amplituhedron that physicists use to compute particle scattering amplitudes.

Wed Oct 28 · 5pm

MIT Music Tech Speaker Series: Andrew McPherson

MIT · Building 6 120 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Andrew McPherson, Professor of Design Engineering and Music at Imperial College London, talks on Enacted, not Extracted: Designing and Performing with Music-Analytical Concepts, arguing that a preoccupation with language about music risks reinforcing clichés and cultural stereotypes in instrument design. An MIT graduate in music and electrical engineering, he leads Imperial's Augmented Instruments Laboratory and built the magnetic resonator piano, an electromagnetically augmented grand used in dozens of compositions.

Wed Oct 28 · 4:15pm

Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics: Ariana Chin (UCLA)

MIT · Harvard Science Center 232 · Boston

Ariana Chin of UCLA speaks at the Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics, the joint Harvard–MIT research seminar named for the MIT combinatorialist whose two-volume Enumerative Combinatorics is a standard reference in the field.

Wed Oct 28 · 5:30pm

Laurel Circle Lecture Series: Joanne Chang

Mount Auburn Cemetery · Mount Auburn Cemetery · 580 Mount Auburn St. · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Joanne Chang, pastry chef and co-owner of Flour Bakery and the restaurant Myers + Chang, talks with Mount Auburn President and CEO Matthew Stephens in a fireside chat followed by Q&A. Chang opened the first Flour in 2000 and now runs eleven; she won the 2016 James Beard Award for Outstanding Baker. A reception beforehand includes a signing of her cookbook The Joy of Cookies.

$35 general admission; $75 with a copy of the cookbook

Wed Oct 28 – Thu Oct 29 · 7pm

Simply Ina: An Evening Conversation with Ina Garten

Emerson Colonial Theatre (presenter TBC) · Theatre District · Boston

Wed Oct 28 / Thu Oct 29 · 7pm

Ina Garten, the cookbook author and television host known as the Barefoot Contessa, talks about cooking, hospitality and her new cookbook, Simply Ina, a collection of recipes meant to show that “the most delicious cooking is often the simplest.” Garten worked on nuclear energy policy at the White House budget office before buying a Westhampton Beach food shop called Barefoot Contessa in 1978.

Thu Oct 29 · 4:30pm

Darius Bost & C. Riley Snorton: A Black Queer History of the United States

Wellesley College · Green Hall · Newhouse Center (Rooms 237/239/240) · Wellesley

Darius Bost and C. Riley Snorton discuss a Black queer history of the United States. Bost is the author of Evidence of Being, on the Black gay cultural renaissance in Washington and New York in the 1980s; Snorton wrote Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity, which won a Lambda Literary Award.

Thu Oct 29 · 12:30pm

Gallery Talk: Hauntology, Death Discs, and the Specter of Postwar America

Harvard Art Museums · Harvard Art Museums · 32 Quincy St · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

A half-hour gallery talk pairs photographs by Joseph Janney Steinmetz and Terry Wood with the teen tragedy songs of the 1950s and '60s known as “death discs,” among them “Leader of the Pack,” “Teen Angel” and “Last Kiss.” Krystle Brown, an artist on the museums' marketing staff, looks at how photography can “preserve and haunt cultural fantasies of innocence, romance, suburban adolescence, and loss.”

Thu Oct 29 · 6:00pm

Artist Talk: Sneha Shrestha

Harvard Art Museums · Harvard Art Museums · Menschel Hall · 32 Quincy St · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

an exciting discussion featuring Nepali artist Sneha Shrestha, known artistically as IMAGINE, in conversation with curator Sarah Laursen. Shrestha's work infuses her native Devanagari script with the visual language of graffiti handstyles to convey stories about migration, diasporic identity, and belonging.

Thu Oct 29 · 6:00pm

A Closer Look at Charley Longfellow's Japan Room

Longfellow House · Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters NHS · 105 Brattle St · Cambridge · MA · Cambridge

Charles Appleton Longfellow, the poet's eldest son, spent twenty months in Japan in the early 1870s and shipped home crates of art and objects. On his return he turned a room of the Brattle Street house over to them. This talk looks at what he collected and how he arranged it.

Thu Oct 29 · 5:00pm

Rocks As Art: A Chinese Tradition from Antiquity to the Contemporary

Davis Museum at Wellesley College · Collins Cinema · Wellesley · MA · Wellesley

Jan Stuart, the National Museum of Asian Art's curator of Chinese art, on scholars' rocks — stones collected for a millennium by China's elite for their shape and their perceived spiritual charge, set in gardens and studies as objects of meditation and treated as embodiments of cosmic force rather than decoration.

Thu Oct 29 · 12:30pm

Staging Belief: Performance, Identity, and Campus Encounters

Framingham State University · Heineman Ecumenical Center · Framingham State University · Framingham · MA (hybrid · Zoom link offered) · Framingham

Tuffy Love Andrews returns to Framingham State with 'Bible Drag', reading the street evangelists who appear on campuses as performers — spectacle, costume, an audience and a revenue model — and drawing the parallels with drag that follow from treating evangelism as a staged act rather than a sincere one.

Thu Oct 29 · 7:00pm

Uzo Aduba: Owning Your Identity

Museum of Fine Arts · Museum of Fine Arts · Boston · MA · Fenway · Boston

Uzo Aduba, who won two Emmys as Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren in Orange Is the New Black and a third playing Shirley Chisholm in FX's Mrs. America, talks about identity, belonging, resilience and courage, drawing on her career and her 2024 memoir The Road Is Good. She most recently starred in Netflix's The Residence. Part of the Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Celebrity Lectures, also livestreamed.

Thu Oct 29 · 5:00pm

Celebrating QR Connections Series: Michael Bastedo

Wellesley College · Pendleton East 225A Knapp Atrium · Wellesley College · Wellesley · MA · Wellesley

Michael Bastedo — the Marvin W. Peterson Collegiate Professor at Michigan's Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, and senior associate dean for research in the Marsal Family School of Education — gives the second of Wellesley's Celebrating QR Connections talks this term, a series pairing quantitative reasoning with one discipline at a time. In the Knapp Atrium.

Thu Oct 29 · 6:30pm

Lectures on Tap — Bias in Medicine: A Crusade Against "Normal

Lectures on Tap · Back Bay · Boston · MA (bar; exact address emailed after ticket purchase) · Boston

Liz Co, Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Boston University and Director of Inclusive Pedagogy in her department, examines the historical roots of implicit and systemic bias in clinical care, from medical education to diagnostics, and how assumptions about a “normal” human body have excluded and harmed many communities. Co wrote Anatomy and Physiology by Co, described as the first A&P textbook written with diverse representation as a primary goal.

Thu Oct 29 · 5pm

Evening With a Laureate: Simon Johnson on AI and the Global Economy

MIT · ENDICOTT · Dedham · Dedham

Simon Johnson, the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan, shared the 2024 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson for research on how institutions shape prosperity. Over dinner he talks about that work, his time in Stockholm, and how AI and economic policy are shaping the future. The evening launches the Endicott House Nobel Laureate Series.

$149.00 plus tax, MIT Rate

Thu Oct 29 · 6pm

MIT Architecture Lecture: Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi and Rachel Lee

MIT · Building W41 (MET Warehouse) 1216 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Architectural historians Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi and Rachel Lee give a lecture, The Work of Collaboration, on collaboration as both a feminist practice and a mode of historical inquiry, starting from their long-term project Feminist Architectural Histories of Migration. Siddiqi, Associate Professor at Barnard College, is the author of Architecture of Migration: The Dadaab Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Settlement; Lee is Assistant Professor of Architecture at TU Delft.

Thu Oct 29 · 4:30pm

Symplectic Geometry Seminar: Chris Woodward (Rutgers University)

MIT · Building 2 449 · Cambridge · Cambridge

Chris Woodward, a professor of mathematics at Rutgers University, speaks at the Symplectic Geometry Seminar. He works on symplectic geometry and its links with algebraic geometry and representation theory, including Lagrangian Floer theory, gauged Gromov–Witten theory and, with Katrin Wehrheim, pseudoholomorphic quilts, a framework for relating Floer theories through Lagrangian correspondences.

Thu Oct 29 · 5pm

Leading From the Edge with Kate Williams

Boston College · Devlin 101 · Boston

Kate Williams, CEO of 1% for the Planet, talks about leadership; in more than a decade at its head she has grown the network's certified contributions to environmental causes past $939 million. Afterward she joins sociologist Juliet Schor and accounting professor Mary Ellen Carter for a fireside chat. The Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics presents it with the Environmental Studies Program and two other campus programs.

Thu Oct 29 · 12pm

[ENVS] After the Flush: Rethinking the Future of Human Waste

Tufts University · Medford/Somerville campus · Medford

Nick Kawa, associate professor of anthropology at Ohio State, discusses his new book After the Flush, built on long-term ethnographic research in the American Midwest into where toilet waste goes, who manages it and what else it might become, along with more radical approaches to sanitation. His current work follows community activists developing ecological sanitation in Santa Cruz and Mendocino counties. The Hoch Cunningham Environmental Lecture series presents it.

Thu Oct 29 · 6:30pm

Outsiders in Horror with Brandeis University Professor Brandon Callender

Waltham Public Library · Lecture Hall · Waltham Public Library · Waltham

Brandon Callender, assistant professor of English at Brandeis University, talks about outsiders in horror fiction and film. His research explores where Black, queer and horror studies meet, and his courses include The Ghosts of Race and Vampires: Dark Fictions of Blood. A Berkeley PhD, he has discussed “How Horror Creates Meaning” on NPR’s 1A and is a recurring discussant at the Brattle Theatre.