Inaugural Lecture - Professor Dorian Fuller

Full title - Growing Societies: the Archaeobotany of Food Production and Globalization of Agriculture

The origins of agriculture irrevocably changed the relationship of humans and the earth, literally transforming earth at local scales of cultivation, and over the long-term, promoting population growth and economic specialization globally.While archaeologists have long investigated this “Neolithic revolution”, the ways in which humans changed plants through domestication and reordered their use of the vegetative world has come to be appreciated more recently through advances in the archaeobotany, the study of archaeological plant remains. This lecture considers recent insights on the transition from wild plant gathering to farming, drawing on examples from India, Southwest Asia, China, and Africa.

Dorian Q Fuller grew up in San Francisco, California, received a BA from Yale University in Anthropology and Biology, and a PhD from Cambridge. After his PhD on the origins of agriculture in South India, he began teaching archaeobotany at UCL in 2000. His archaeological fieldwork has included India, Sri Lanka, China, Thailand, Sudan, Ethiopia, Morocco, Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan. He has authored more than 170 papers and is a founding editor of the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.

Growing Societies - Professor Dorian Fuller (UCL Institute of Archaeology)

Speakers: Adrian Hearn (Melbourne), Ariel C. Armony (Pittsburgh); Chair: Paulo Drinot (UCL-IA) - This presentation examines Latin American perceptions of deepening Chinese trade and investment. China’s growing influence in Latin America is evident in the growth of bilateral trade to $240 (£143) billion in 2013, and a new wave of investment announced during Xi Jinping’s July 2014 regional tour. Alongside mining and energy, agriculture has become critical to Sino-Latin cooperation, driven by unprecedented demand for food as Chinese cities progress toward the target of one billion residents. Chinese acquisition of Latin American land for food production has proven more contentious than investment in other primary sectors, mainly because of local suspicion of Chinese state-owned enterprises. In Brazil, which provided 45 per cent of China’s 2013 soybean imports (amounting to 33 million metric tons worth $17.2 billion), President Rousseff has warned that 'inane xenophobia' may ward off Chinese investment.


UCL Americas Seminar: China and LatinAmerica: from Cyberspace to the Farm Gate

This paper, originally given as the Luis González lecture at the Colegio de México in early 2014, compares the (neglected) military dimension of the Mexican Revolution to the First World War in Europe, using the concept of 'total war' as the bridge; it defines 'total war' (in two distinct senses) and argues that, notwithstanding the dismissive comments of some historians of Mexico - for whom the armed revolution was a chaotic fiesta de balas, a 'carnival of bullets' - the revolution involved very costly mass conventional warfare. The argument, involving both demographic and military analysis, concludes that, in Mexico as in Europe, total war profoundly affected society, leaving a legacy of violence, veteran activism, and an incipient 'social pact' that underpinned the social reform and state-building of the 1920s and '30s.

UCL Americas Seminar: Mexico - Europe 1914 Total War

In this episode, Awa and Lavin discuss diasporic consciousness, focusing on the themes of belonging, identity, and home. Drawing on their experiences and reflecting on Warsan Shire's poem "Home," they explore what it means to feel at home.

Diaspora Diaries Episode 2: Diasporic Consciousness

Discussion of Gargi’s research and the new module designed to open conversations about how we might understand the interplay between global politics and the global economy in this moment of rapid realignment.

Speakers:
Gargi Bhattacharyya, Paige Patchin, Luke de Noronha

In Conversation with the SPRC: Geopolitics, catastrophe and trying to comprehend the world

Live dissections, Leonardo da Vinci and vodka on the brain ... 

Professor Dilwyn Knox (UCL School of European Languages, Society and Culture) provides some background to 'Neuroscience in the Renaissance', on 26 May. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/festival-of-culture/events/neuroscience-and-renaissance

The focus of the session is natural philosophers’ understanding and depiction of the human brain during the Renaissance.

Neuroscience in the Renaissance

What role does writing play in an age of austerity and rapid digital evolution?

Dr Nick Shepley talks about One Day in the City, UCL English’s bi-annual celebration of London and Literature, the high-octane conclusion to the UCL Festival of Culture on 27 May.

Come and listen to, question and rub shoulders with some of the greatest living poets, novelists and writers in London: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/festival-of-culture/events/one-day-in-the-city




One Day in the City

From the Civil Rights movement to the modern efforts to legalize gay marriage, the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution has been central to many of the most important issues in American history. UCL historian Adam Smith takes us through its significance. |

Read along while listening at our Medium: bit.ly/2aEpNZE |

Narrated by Adam Smith and Vidish Athavale | Music by Sergey Cheremisinov and Kai Engel |

Adam is a Senior Lecturer in the History Department at UCL and a frequent broadcaster on BBC Radio 4. An expert on the nineteenth century United States, his latest book is ​'The Stormy Present: Conservatism and American Politics in an Age of Revolution, 1848-1877', shortly to be published by the University of North Carolina Press.

Why Martin Luther King had the US Constitution on his side | Adam Smith

Iwan Morgan, Ronald Reagan’s first British biographer, discusses Reagan’s life from small-town Illinois boyhood, through his Hollywood years, to his political career – first as California governor, then as national conservative spokesman, and finally as US president – in his newly published book.

Iwan Morgan's 'Reagan: American Icon' Book Launch

Professor John Mullan (UCL English) reads one of his favourite festive poems,  T. S. Eliot’s, ‘Journey of the Magi’ (1927).

A specialist in 18th-century literature, Professor Mullan is also a broadcaster, journalist and host of the Guardian’s Book Club.

For more information about studying literature, visit the UCL English website: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/english

T.S. Eliot’s ‘Journey of the Magi’

For Valentine's Day, Professor Helen Hackett (UCL English) reads two love sonnets from Lady Mary Wroth's collection Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1621). 

Wroth was the first Englishwoman to write a sequence of love sonnets, a prose romance (the Urania) and a tragicomedy (Love's Victory).

Professor Hackett is an expert on 16th and 17th century literature, with a special interest in women's writing.

Lady Mary Wroth's 'Pamphilia to Amphilanthus'

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Note on the logo: the blue and green background is a detail of a banner (300x120cm; oil paint, oil pastel and compressed charcoal on canvas) that artist Lucile Haefflinger produced for and which is on display at the IAS.

Growing Societies - Professor Dorian Fuller (UCL Institute of Archaeology)

UCL Institute of Advanced Studies