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Dustin Luca
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SALEM, MASS. – From octopuses that change color in a flash to societies that evolve with the climate, this year’s week-long Darwin Festival at Salem State University promises something for everyone.
Returning for its 46th year, the 2025 Darwin Festival will take over Veterans Hall in the Ellison Campus Center next week for 10 speaking events that run from Monday, Feb. 10 to Friday, Feb. 14. All events are free and open to the public.
“The Darwin Festival was first created in 1980 by colleagues that taught a course – Human and Social Biology – with a view to exposing their students to world-renowned researchers within a general theme of evolutionary biology,” said Ryan Fisher, chairperson of Salem State’s biology department. “All biology is linked together through the process of evolution, so we can encounter and hear a broad variety of talks from the camouflage of octopuses to insectivorous plants.”
Animal species that buck the trend and develop new abilities over time aren’t the only focus for the festival, however. Many highlight concepts of evolution that fall far outside the animal kingdom: those within human society itself.
Talks include “Searching for Shade: Adapting to Extreme Heat in the Northeast USA,” an event on Tuesday, Feb. 11 led Nicholas Geron of Salem State’s geography and sustainability department. Another talk scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 13 will explore the topic of marginalized student resilience to systemic inequities and cultural isolation, all embedded within a lecture on stress responses in bacteria.
The 10 lectures, one of which is a webinar, are only a portion of the festival, however. Other events are known to pop up throughout the week, including student societies whose members converge around the talks and follow them with events of their own, Fisher explained.
“You could say it’s a labor of love on the part of the biology department,” Fisher said, explaining that biology classes are typically curtailed for the week so students can attend the lectures. “In addition to the talks held in Vets Hall, we also choose a set of streaming videos students can watch. For non-majors, we give them more freedom – one talk, maybe two videos, and most of us ask them to submit a reflective essay.”
The talks are each sponsored by various organizations and community partners, including Salem State University departments in biology and geological sciences, geography and sustainability, chemistry and physics, the Charles Albert Read Trust, and Thermo Fisher Scientific, a clinical research company headquartered in Waltham.
Learn more about the festival and see a full listing of sessions and times.