Past Events

Fall 2022

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December 7, 2022

Speakers: Brahim El Guabli (Williams College) and Samia Henni (Cornell University)

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Vellai Mozhi (Frankly Speaking): An Indian Transwoman’s Life Journey

November 30, 2022

Free and open to the public.

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November 29, 2022

Speaker: William Maxwell (Washington University)

Cripping the Trans Archives: Eric’s Ego Trip

November 17, 2022

Speaker: Professor Slava Greenberg

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Mandel Lecture in the Humanities: Divas, Drag Queens, Aunties, and Other Academic Personas

November 1, 2022

Speaker: Kareem Khubchandani, associate professor of theater, dance and performance studies at Tufts University.

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Mandel Lecture in the Humanities: Lessons in Drag, with LaWhore Vagistan

October 28, 2022

Speaker: Kareem Khubchandani, associate professor of theater, dance and performance studies at Tufts University.

Mandel Lectures in the Humanities Reception

October 27, 2022

Join us for food and drinks following the Dragademia performances.

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Mandel Lecture in the Humanities: Dragademia - Dressing Up the University

October 27, 2022

Kareem Khubchandani is an associate professor of theater, dance and performance studies at Tufts University whose research and creative work centers on queer, feminis and trans aesthetics, namely in South Asia and its diasporas. Performing under the name LaWhore Vagistan, Kareem utilizes drag performance as a pedagogical tool. He is the author of "Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife" (University of Michigan Press, 2020), which won the 2021 Association for Theatre in Higher Education Outstanding Book award, 2021 Dance Studies Association de la Torre Bueno book award, and the 2019 CLAGS: Center for LGBTQ Studies Fellowship. He is also co-editor of "Queer Nightlife" (University of Michigan Press, 2021) and curator of criticalauntystudies.com.

Featuring: Jacob Bird (Dinah Lux), Ryan Persadie (Tifa Wine), Enzo Toral (Penelope Sumac), and Uzma Zafar (Sher)

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Race and Revision: Editing Othello

October 25, 2022

Speaker: Patricia Akhimie (Rutgers University)

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Brandeis Novel Symposium: Reimagining Native America: D'Arcy McNickle's "The Surrounded" (1936)

October 14, 2022

Program

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Hurston's Secret Laughter: Contributions to African American Thought

September 30, 2022

Speaker: Lindsey Stewart (University of Memphis)

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September 28, 2022

PhD dissertations in the humanities and social sciences have traditionally been scholarly proto-monographs. However, increasing numbers of PhD students are exploring alternative formats for communicating their research — formats such as a series of articles, graphic novels, films, public facing blogs, apps and podcasts. Graduate departments are increasingly supporting these new forms, as are the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Mellon Foundation. In this seminar, current Brandeis PhD students Nai Kim (English) and Yi He (English) will join Anna Williams (Assistant Lecturer and Co-Director of the Writing Center, Birmingham-Southern College) and Iván González-Soto (PhD Candidate, UC Merced) to discuss the benefits and challenges of non-traditional dissertations.

Zoom

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Everyman and Everybody: The Problem of Black Matter

September 16, 2022

Speaker: Matthew Vernon (UC Davis)

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Fall Welcome and New Books Reception

September 8, 2022

Please join us for our fall welcome reception and celebration of new faculty publications.

Steven Osuna Lecture

August 2, 2022

Professor Steven Osuna researches and teaches about race and racism, Latinx migration studies, capitalism, and criminology at CSU Long Beach. In this talk and Q&A session, he will discuss the links between racism, property, and policing in our current economic system. He will also discuss alternative visions for policing that involve humane measures and community control. Osuna's research critiques institutional racism and theorizes self-determination for communities of color, and his work is of special relevance now, particularly in the years of Black Lives Matter activism and a more outward-facing white supremacist presence in the U.S.

Spring 2022

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3 Minute Thesis Competition

April 7, 2022

The Brandeis 3MT competition is a university-sponsored speaking competition designed to showcase graduate student research in three-minute talks to a general audience. This is an opportunity for graduate students engaged in original research to develop communication and presentation skills while sharing their work with faculty, staff, and students across Brandeis University.

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An Afternoon with Akkai Padmashali, gender justice activist

April 7, 2022

Akkai Padmashali is a transgender activist based in Bangalore, India, and the founder of Ondede, an organization working toward gender justice across social movements in India.  A longtime grassroots activist, Akkai was one of the co-petitioners who challenged Section 377, a colonial-era law that criminalized sodomy, in the Supreme Court of India in 2018. Her autobiography, Akkai, was written in collaboration with Prof. Gowri Vijayakumar and Prof. Dominic Davidappa, and published in Kannada in the summer of 2021.  The English version, "A Small Step in a Long Journey," will be published this year. Akkai has won regional and national awards for her work as an activist and educator, and has traveled around the world to advocate and build coalitions around gender justice.

She will be in conversation with Professor Gowri Vijayakumar and Brandeis undergraduate students Inaara Gilani and Sanjitha Subramaniam.

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March 31, 2022

Colm Tóibín is a renowned Irish novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, playwright, professor, and literary critic. Author of 10 novels, including his 2021 publication The Magician, and Brooklyn, adapted to the BAFTA award-winning film of the same name in 2015, Tóibín's work explores religion, gender, sexuality, family, and Irish identity. His work has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times and received an LA Times Novel of the year award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, among many others. In addition to his fiction, he is a prolific literary critic and journalist, publishing in venues such as the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, and The London Review of Books. Tóibín is currently the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and Chancellor of the University of Liverpool. His first poetry collection, "Vinegar Hill," is set to be published in April 2022. Revisiting Brandeis after a decade, Professor Tóibín will be discussing the life and career of James Baldwin.

March 31, 2022

Speaker: Colm Tóibín, Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities Columbia University

This event will center on a discussion of Colm Tóibín's piece "Alone in Venice."

March 30, 2022

Open to the public. Drinks and sushi will be served.

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March 30, 2022

Colm Tóibín is a renowned Irish novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, playwright, professor, and literary critic. Author of 10 novels, including his 2021 publication The Magician, and Brooklyn, adapted to the BAFTA award-winning film of the same name in 2015, Tóibín's work explores religion, gender, sexuality, family, and Irish identity. His work has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times and received an LA Times Novel of the year award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, among many others. In addition to his fiction, he is a prolific literary critic and journalist, publishing in venues such as the New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, and The London Review of Books. Tóibín is currently the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and Chancellor of the University of Liverpool. His first poetry collection, "Vinegar Hill," is set to be published in April 2022. Revisiting Brandeis after a decade, Professor Tóibín will be discussing the life and career of James Baldwin.

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Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Colloquium

March 18, 2022

On Friday, March 18, the First Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Colloquium was held in the Mandel Reading Room. This event, which was created and organized by a group of graduate students from different disciplines and funded by the Mandel Center for the Humanities, was envisioned as a way for graduate students to build community across departments, build skills in talking about their research outside of their disciplines and create conversations across fields. The IGSC was a roundtable event in which graduate students took turns presenting on their research and then heard prepared remarks from respondents from a different discipline on how they perceived their research and suggestions on possible directions they could take going forward.

The organizers of the event — Shirah Malka Cohen (NEJS), Miranda Peery (English), Monica Keel (WGS), Kerry Jo Greene (History), Sarah Beth Gable (History) and James Heazlewood-Dale (Musicology) — wanted this to be an opportunity for graduate students to practice speaking about their research in an approachable way as well as to look for the connections they have across disciplines. The structure was seven research presentations spread across two panels with a unique respondent for each from a total of six different disciplines, and then an open discussion period at the end, including questions from the audience. The event was very successful, with many participants commenting that it was one of the more fun and satisfying events they had attended, and the organizers are already looking forward to expanding and improving the event for next year.
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March 17, 2022

Speaker: Dorothy Kim (English & Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies)

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Rajiv Mohabir Poetry Reading and Conversation with Faith Smith

March 14, 2022

Poet, professor, and translator Rajiv Mohabir is the author of two books of poetry, four chapbooks, and a memoir. Mohabir's genre-bending work explores queerness, Indo-Caribbean identity, and anti-colonialism, among other things. In his 2021 memoir, "Antiman," Mohabir powerfully and poignantly melds poetry and prose as he grapples with, at times fraught, family relationships as well as personal and cultural identity. His work has received numerous awards including a Ghostbook Press inaugural chapbook prize for Acoustic Trauma, the 2014 Intro Prize in Poetry by Four Way books for "The Taxidermist's Cut," a Voices of Our Nation's Artists Foundation Fellowship, and the New Immigrant Writing Award from Restless Books for "Antiman." He is currently a professor for the BFA/MFA program in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing department at Emerson University and the Translations Editor at Waxwing Journal.

Following his poetry reading, Mohabir was in conversation with Brandeis University's Professor Faith Smith (AAAS and English).

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The Arboreal Humanities: Trees, Art, Activism

March 4, 2022

  • Zheng Bo (Hong Kong-based video and installation artist) in conversation with Glyn Davis
  • Carl Phillips (Prof of English, Washington University, St. Louis) in conversation with Chris Barrett
  • Eleanor Kaufman (Prof of Comparative Literature, UCLA) in conversation with Jonathan Flatley
  • Manifesto Workshop coordinated by Caren Irr (Professor of English, Brandeis) and Laura Harris (Professor of Cinema Studies, NY)
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February 9, 2022

Speaker: Shoniqua Roach (African and African American Studies & Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies)

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January 27, 2022

Speaker: Émilie Diouf (African and African American Studies, English, and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies)

Fall 2021

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Candyman Film Screening

November 19, 2021

In this exciting event sponsored by Mandel Center for the Humanities, FTIM, and the English/ Creative Writing Departments, please join us for a screening of the brand new, highly anticipated 2021 film "Candyman." The screening will be followed by a critical conversation led by Brandeis English professor, Dr. Brandon Callender. The discussion will center on the ongoing reimagination of how Blackness is represented within the horror genre.

Join the UDRs and faculty from the English, AAAS, and Film departments for the screening, followed by a critical discussion in Wasserman Cinematheque.

November 9, 2021

Join author Nancy Langston and Brian Donahue, associate professor for Environmental Studies at Brandeis, for a book discussion about climate change and human impact on three  species in the U.S. Great Lakes region. 

In her book "Climate Ghosts," environmental historian Langston researches the three so-called “ghost species” in the Great Lakes watershed — woodland caribou, common loons, and lake sturgeon. Ghost species are those that have not gone completely extinct, although they may be extirpated from a particular area. Their traces are still present, whether in DNA, in small fragmented populations, in lone individuals roaming a desolate landscape in search of mates. Learn how climate change and human impact affected these now ghost species, and what it will take to restore them.

This program is part of the Brandeis University Press Author Series 2021 (BUP).

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November 3, 2021

This roundtable discussion, part of the MCH's new Humanists at Work series, is meant to initiate a discussion on our campus about the nature of public scholarship and to think more broadly about what research output might look like beyond the typical scholarly monograph. The invited speakers are all located in the academy but take an innovative approach to research, scholarship and publication.

Speakers:

David Sterling Brown — Shakespeare and premodern critical race studies scholar — is Assistant Professor of English at Binghamton University and he is a current ACLS/Mellon Scholars and Society Fellow in residence with The Racial Imaginary Institute, founded by Claudia Rankine. Brown’s antiracist scholarship is published or forthcoming in "Radical Teacher, Shakespeare Bulletin, Shakespeare Studies, White People in Shakespeare, Hamlet: The State of Play, Los Angeles Review of Books" and other venues. His forthcoming book projects examine race and whiteness in Shakespearean drama.

Maria Sachiko Cecire is an Associate Professor of Literature at Bard College, where she founded the academic program and Center for Experimental Humanities. She is the author of "Re-Enchanted: The Rise of Children's Fantasy Literature in the 20th Century" (2019) and is now working on an interdisciplinary project about the intellectual lives of so-called "at-risk" youth and their responses to young adult literature. She is currently on leave from Bard to serve as a program officer in the Higher Learning program at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Kareem Khubchandani is the Mellon Bridge assistant professor in theater, dance, and performance studies, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Tufts University. He is the author of "Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife" (University of Michigan Press, 2020), which won the 2021 Association for Theatre in Higher Education Outstanding Book award, 2021 Dance Studies Association de la Torre Bueno book award, and the 2019 CLAGS: Center for LGBTQ Studies Fellowship. Kareem is also co-editor of "Queer Nightlife" (University of Michigan Press, 2021) and curator of criticalauntystudies.com

Marissa López is Professor of English and Chicana/o and Central American Studies at UCLA, researching Chicanx literature from the 19th century to the present.  She is the author of "Chicano Nations" (NYU 2011) and "Racial Immanence" (NYU 2019), and in 2020 served as a Scholar in "Picturing Mexican America," that uses geodata to display images of Mexican California to users.

 

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November 3, 2021

Speaker: Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik (Assistant Professor of African and Middle East History, Suffolk University)

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Daoist Art and Imperial Icons in the Tang Dynasty

October 28, 2021

Speaker: Dr. Yang Liu (Chair of Asian Art and Curator of Chinese Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art)

This lecture deals with the remarkable relationship between Daoist organization and the Tang court, and the significance of imperial patronage in the development of Tang Daoist art. Tang Daoist sculpture made for the temple is shown to possess a unique quality and iconography, revealing a mixture of religious devotion and political expediency, in which the Tang rulers promoted themselves to be the holy object equal to the god. It was under the strong influence of the imperial court, bound up with political expression and a realistic treatment, that the new methods of approaching the sacred images contributed widely to establish a new repertoire of Daoist imagery, and eventually allowed it to stand apart from its predecessors and its counterpart Buddhist iconography.

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October 22, 2021

Graham Greene's "The Quiet American"

 

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Fall Welcome Reception

September 23, 2021

Open to the public. Food and drinks will be served.

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"Rethinking the Humanities in Trying Times": A Lecture by Professor Leonard Cassuto

September 23, 2021

MCH 303, Reading Room

On Sept. 23, Dr. Leonard Cassuto, professor of English at Fordham University and the author of "The New PhD: How to Build a Better Graduate Education" who also writes the graduate advisor column for The Chronicle of Higher Education, gave the opening lecture for this year's programming at the MCH. His talk, "Rethinking the Humanities in Trying Times," argued that graduate education was already in trouble even before the recent pandemic. Making the case for a more student-centered approach to graduate education, Dr. Cassuto highlighted the fact that humanities graduate education focuses on training students for only one type of job — tenure-track professor at a research institution — even though only a very small minority of students will get that job.

Dr. Cassuto put forth concrete suggestions for revitalizing the humanities PhD, such as encouraging public scholarship, focusing on professional skills that transfer to more than one type of job, and reducing the time it takes students to earn a degree to make graduate education more relevant and helpful to students who enter a diverse job market. His talk helped the audience reevaluate how they see humanities work in their own departments and to imagine new ways that humanistic thinking can be used in the world.

Professor Cassuto speaking at the Mandel Center for the Humanities

Spring 2021

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New Books Reception 2021

May 11, 2021

A celebration of the new year and faculty monographs published in 2019-20 and 2020-21.

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April 22, 2021

Speaker: Sheida Soleimani (Fine Arts)

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April 15, 2021

This event will involve a discussion of two texts selected by Professor Brooks: Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and "Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience."

Speaker: Daphne A. Brooks, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies, Music, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies

Yale University

 

April 8, 2021

Speaker: Daphne A. Brooks, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies, Music, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies

Yale University

April 7, 2021

Speaker: Daphne A. Brooks, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies, Music, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies

Yale University

April 5, 2021

Speaker: Daphne A. Brooks, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies, Music, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies

Yale University

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Bridging the Two Cultures: Visualizing the Invisible

February 10, 2021

Speakers: John Plotz (English) and John Wardle (Astrophysics)

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Close Looking: Exploring Roman Daily Life through Objects in the Classical Studies Artifact Research Collection (CLARC)

February 3, 2021

Speakers: Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow (Classical Studies) and Alexandra Ratzlaff (Classical Studies)

Fall 2020

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November 19, 2020

Speakers: Erin Gee (Music)

Close Looking: Adam Pendleton, "Larry Hinton (white)," 2012

November 12, 2020

Speakers: Isaiah Wooden (Theater Arts) and Elizabeth Bradfield (Creative Writing)

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Close Looking: Annette Lemieux, "Left Right Left Right," 1995

October 22, 2020

Speakers: Muna Guvenc (Fine Arts) and Sheida Soleimani (Fine Arts)

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October 7, 2020

Speaker: Aida Yuen Wong (Fine Arts & East Asian Studies)

Spring 2020

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Bridging the Two Cultures: “Dreaming and Sleep”

March 5, 2020

Speakers: Leslie Griffith (Neuroscience) and Mary Baine Campbell (English)

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Bridging the Two Cultures: “Cognitive Loss and Aging”

January 30, 2020

Speakers: Angela Gutchess (Psychology) and Arthur Wingfield (Neuroscience)

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January 23, 2020

Speaker: Alexander Kaye (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

Fall 2019

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Bridging the Two Cultures: “Navigation and Place”

November 21, 2019

Speakers: Stephen Van Hooser (Biology) and Shantanu Jadhav (Psychology)

Close Looking: Zilia Sánchez, "Las troyanas [The Trojans]," 1987-1997

November 20, 2019

Speakers: Faith Smith (English) and Raysa Mederos (Romance Studies)

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Bridging the Two Cultures: “Technology and Creativity”

October 31, 2019

Speakers: Jim Haber (Biology) and Erin Gee (Music)

Close Looking: "Dante’s 1564 'Divine Comedy' and Censorship"

October 2, 2019

Speakers: Laura Quinney (English) and Govind Sreenivasan (History)

"Minima Moralia" Today: A Symposium

September 20, 2019

MCH 303 Reading Room

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September 11, 2019

Only open to members of the faculty and invited guests

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Welcome Reception and New Books Celebration

September 5, 2019

MCH Atrium

Spring 2019

Faculty Lunch Lecture: Refugees or Radicals?: British Responses to the French Émigrés

April 4, 2019

Hannah Weiss Muller (History)

Faculty Lunch Lecture: The Trials of Stella Goldschlag: Jews, Gender, and Enforced Collaboration During the Holocaust

March 21, 2019

Laura Jockusch (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

Mandel Lectures: Climate Grief: Toxics, Global Warming and Loons in the Boreal North

March 14, 2019

Nancy Langston (Michigan Technological University)

Mandel Lectures: Back from the Brink: Restoration History and Coaster Brook Trout

March 13, 2019

Nancy Langston, (Michigan Technological University)

Mandel Lectures: Mining, Toxics and Environmental Justice

March 13, 2019

Nancy Langston (Michigan Technological University)

Mandel Lectures: Ghost Species: the Uncertain Future of Woodland Caribou in the Anthropocene

March 11, 2019

Nancy Langston (Michigan Technological University)

Bridging the Two Cultures: Genes, Genomics, and Race

February 28, 2019

James E. Haber (Biology) and James R. Morris (Biology)

Close Looking Series: Archival Materials Related to the Establishment of AAAS

February 27, 2019

Chad Williams (African and African American Studies)

Bridging the Two Cultures: Linguistics in the Age of Data: Introspection versus Observation

February 7, 2019

James Pustejovsky (Computer Science)

Close Looking Series: "What Remains to be Seen” Untitled #18 by Howardena Pindell

February 6, 2019

John F.C. Wardle (Astrophysics)