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Upcoming Lectures & Talks

Tufts University

Medford · events.tufts.edu

25 upcoming lectures and talks from Tufts University, with dates, venues and ticket links taken from the organization’s own pages and refreshed weekly. All lectures in Greater Boston →

Production art for Forthcoming Israeli Elections: Different Shades of Radical Right

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Tue Oct 6 · 12pm

Forthcoming Israeli Elections: Different Shades of Radical Right

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Dani Filc, professor of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University, gives a Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies seminar on the radical right ahead of Israel's coming elections. Trained as a physician, Filc researches populism, Israeli politics and the health care system, and is a former chair of Physicians for Human Rights Israel. He is the author of The Political Right in Israel: Different Faces of Jewish Populism.

Production art for Friedman Speaker Series: Black Longevity

Wed Oct 7 · 12:15pm

Friedman Speaker Series: Black Longevity

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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.

Production art for Book Talk: Endgame of Empire: Sultan Khan, Asia's First Grandmaster

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Wed Oct 7 · 6pm

Book Talk: Endgame of Empire: Sultan Khan, Asia's First Grandmaster

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Atiyab Sultan discusses Endgame of Empire, the biography of Sultan Khan written by Khan's son and granddaughter. Khan, a self-taught prodigy from colonial Punjab, beat the world's best players in the late 1920s and '30s, won the British Chess Championship three times and became the first Asian to reach the top of international chess. The historian Ayesha Jalal, Mary Richardson Professor of History at Tufts, chairs.

Production art for 15th Annual Tufts Neuroscience Symposium & Shucart Lecture

Thu Oct 8 · 9am

15th Annual Tufts Neuroscience Symposium & Shucart Lecture

· · · · 150 Harrison Ave · · ·

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.

Production art for [ENVS] How to Tell Environmental Stories for the Ear

Thu Oct 8 · 12:00pm

[ENVS] How to Tell Environmental Stories for the Ear

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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.

Production art for Tufts in Translation: Dr. Madeleine Oudin

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Wed Oct 14 · 11:30am

Tufts in Translation: Dr. Madeleine Oudin

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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.

Production art for K'uuyemugeh: An Ancestral Tewa Center Place

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Wed Oct 14 · 12pm

K'uuyemugeh: An Ancestral Tewa Center Place

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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.

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

Thu Oct 15 · 12:00pm

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

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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.

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

Fri Oct 16 · 12:00pm

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

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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.

Production art for Democracy and Society in a Long War of Attrition

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Fri Oct 16 · 4pm

Democracy and Society in a Long War of Attrition

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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.

Production art for Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History

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Mon Oct 19 · 5pm

Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History

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Linford Fisher discusses his new book, shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize, which traces the enslavement of Indigenous people from the years just after 1492, when it began "ensnaring an estimated three to six million Natives throughout the Americas," and the ways Native Americans fought for their sovereignty. Fisher is professor of history at Brown University and the author of The Indian Great Awakening.

Production art for Philip Levine Poetry Project presents: Erika Meitner and Jenny Browne, Reading & Conversation

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Tue Oct 20 · 7pm

Philip Levine Poetry Project presents: Erika Meitner and Jenny Browne, Reading & Conversation

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Erika Meitner and Jenny Browne read from their new collections, Meitner's Assembled Audience (Milkweed Editions) and Browne's I am Trying to Love the Whole World (BOA Editions), followed by a Q&A moderated by Anna V.Q. Ross, a poet and lecturer at Tufts. Meitner's earlier Holy Moly Carry Me won the National Jewish Book Award for poetry; Browne teaches at Trinity University in San Antonio.

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

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Wed Oct 21 · 12pm

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

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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.

Production art for [ENVS] Community-based scaling for innovations in sustainability

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Thu Oct 22 · 12pm

[ENVS] Community-based scaling for innovations in sustainability

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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.

Production art for Digital Scholarship Conversations: Sonic Studies

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Fri Oct 23 · 12pm

Digital Scholarship Conversations: Sonic Studies

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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.

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

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Thu Oct 29 · 12pm

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

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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.

Production art for Book Talk: Aurangzeb 'Alamgir and the Mughal Empire: A History Retold

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Mon Nov 2 · 6pm

Book Talk: Aurangzeb 'Alamgir and the Mughal Empire: A History Retold

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Munis D. Faruqui discusses his new history of Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir (r. 1658–1707), the last of the so-called great Mughal emperors, castigated by some for religious intolerance and hailed by others as a Muslim hero. Drawing on a large archive, the book covers his rise to power, his administrative and religious policies, and the imperial eunuchate and harem. Ayesha Jalal, Tufts' Mary Richardson Professor of History, chairs.

Production art for [ENVS] Climate, food, and power: Lessons from now, directions for the future

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Thu Nov 5 · 12pm

[ENVS] Climate, food, and power: Lessons from now, directions for the future

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Khristopher Nicholas, assistant professor of agriculture, food and environment at Tufts, examines the “widening gap between large-scale decision-making and on-the-ground realities of food insecurity.” Drawing on forums from IPCC expert meetings to COP30, and on community-based research in small island settings, he outlines the scale of climate-related nutrition challenges and the links between human and planetary health through food systems. The Environmental Studies program hosts.

Production art for Solomont Speaker Series: Rev. Dr. Susie Hayward on “We Protect Us: Neighborism and the Renewal of Democracy in Minneapolis”

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Thu Nov 5 · 5:30pm

Solomont Speaker Series: Rev. Dr. Susie Hayward on “We Protect Us: Neighborism and the Renewal of Democracy in Minneapolis”

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Rev. Dr. Susie Hayward, Minister for Justice Organizing at Minneapolis’ Creekside United Church of Christ, lectures on the ethic and practice of “neighborism” that emerged among faith leaders, organizers and immigrant communities in response to ICE’s Operation Metro Surge, and what it suggests about pluralism and renewing democracy. A Tufts graduate, Hayward spent fourteen years leading religion and peacebuilding work at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Production art for [ENVS] Climate Change and Conflict in Africa

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Thu Nov 12 · 12pm

[ENVS] Climate Change and Conflict in Africa

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Eoin McGuirk, associate professor of economics at Tufts, asks whether climate change is contributing to civil conflict in Africa and, if so, through what mechanisms. His talk examines the link between rising aridity in pastoral Africa and farmer-herder conflicts across the continent. McGuirk has written on the subject with Harvard economist Nathan Nunn, in a paper on transhumant pastoralism, climate change and conflict.

Production art for Expanding Viewpoints Public Forum with Khalil Shikaki and Leila Farsakh

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Thu Nov 12 · 6pm

Expanding Viewpoints Public Forum with Khalil Shikaki and Leila Farsakh

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Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, and Leila Farsakh, a political economist at UMass Boston, discuss the configuration of the Middle East after the Gaza war: Palestinian responses to October 7, relations with Israel, prospects for elections and political renewal, and changing attitudes toward the two-state solution. Tufts's Center for Expanding Viewpoints in Higher Education hosts; registration is required.

Production art for [ENVS] Resonant Landscapes: Listening with Nature and History

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Thu Nov 19 · 12pm

[ENVS] Resonant Landscapes: Listening with Nature and History

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Jeremy Eichler, assistant professor of music at Tufts and former chief classical music critic of the Boston Globe, explores the relationship between the nature of music and the music of nature. Sampling composed works and the sounds of ecosystems, the lecture considers how sound connects to place and what listening means in an age of environmental crisis. Eichler wrote Time's Echo, on music and the memory of the Second World War.

Production art for [ENVS] Protecting carbon and communities: Transforming boreal fire management into a climate solution

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Thu Dec 3 · 12pm

[ENVS] Protecting carbon and communities: Transforming boreal fire management into a climate solution

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Kayla Mathes, a research scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, describes Woodwell's work on how fire management in boreal forests could better protect communities while limiting greenhouse gas emissions from wildfires on carbon- and permafrost-rich land. Northern fires are burning more often and more severely, releasing ancient soil carbon, speeding permafrost thaw, threatening Indigenous ways of life and sending smoke across North America.

Production art for “Arnold J. Kemp: A Reader” Launch & Panel

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Thu Dec 3 · 6pm

“Arnold J. Kemp: A Reader” Launch & Panel

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Tufts University Art Galleries launches Arnold J. Kemp: A Reader, co-published with No Place Press, with a panel pairing the artist and Pamela Lee, Carnegie Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at Yale, moderated by TUAG curator and co-interim director Laurel V. McLaughlin. Edited by Rachel Churner and designed by Geoff Kaplan, the book gathers writing by Gregg Bordowitz, Huey Copland, Kevin Killian, Ed Roberson, Lynne Tillman and others.

Production art for [ENVS] Maine’s Kelp Forests: A Case Study in Global Change Biology

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Thu Dec 10 · 12pm

[ENVS] Maine’s Kelp Forests: A Case Study in Global Change Biology

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Douglas Rasher, a senior research scientist at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, discusses a warming-induced “state shift” now unfolding in the kelp forests of the Gulf of Maine, “one of the fastest warming ocean basins globally.” He traces its drivers and how its effects ripple through every trophic level, and what the Gulf can teach about kelp restoration and about predicting and managing global change.