Theme: The Human Condition

TEDxAberystwyth is an independent TED event. The formula is great speakers with a great idea to share. Be prepared for a very diverse set of expert speakers drawn from art, science, education, music, real life and beyond. No politicans, we promise. The theme for TEDxAberystwyth 2018 is "The Human Condition!".

Arts Centre
Penglais Compus
Aberystwyth University
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, SY23 3DE
United Kingdom

Andy Hardy

GIS lecturer

Andy is a lecturer in Remote Sensing in GIS in the Dept. Geography and Earth Sciences at Aberystwyth University, UK. His research has centred on the use of remote sensing for mapping biophysical parameters including applications related to land cover dynamics, hydrology and malaria vector ecology, using a range of systems from optical/radar satellites to manned aircraft and drones. He has focus the application of his skills to public health challenges with previous research projects including the use of hydraulic flood modelling for mapping malaria habitats in Western Zambia and the use of drones for providing spatial intelligence for malaria elimination in Zanzibar. Related Speakers

Catherine Elan Taylor

Editor

Every Tuesday for the last three years Catherine Elan Taylor and Keith Morris been working on the Humans of Aberystwyth project. They have meet some fantastic people and taken some amazing photographs. Catherine will share the idea behind the project [ The mid Wales relative of Humans of New York ] that knowing a little about the people we meet as we go through our every day lives enhances our social experience and sense of cohesion.

David Healy

Professor of Psychiatry

David Healy is a Professor of Psychiatry at Bangor University. His main areas of research are adverse effects of treatment, clinical trials in psychopharmacology, the history of psychopharmacology, and the impact of both trials and psychotropic drugs on our culture. He has been involved as an expert witness in homicide, suicide and birth defect legal actions involving psychotropic drugs, and in bringing problems with these drugs to the attention of American and British regulators, as well raising awareness of how pharmaceutical companies sell drugs by marketing diseases and co-opting academic opinion-leaders, ghost-writing their articles.

Emma Appleton

Builder and Community Facilitator

Emma has been working in the building trade over the last ten years. She is a carpenter and general builder. She has experienced both small bespoke sites and also on large house building sites at the extreme end of macho culture. Her idea is that building site can be transformed in to welcoming place for all you work there and the impact this would have on the buildings produced.

Hannah Engelkamp

Writer, Editor and mum

Hannah Engelkamp is a writer and editor who once walked around Wales with a donkey called Chico, and thought that was the hardest thing she’d ever done. Then she had a baby, and discovered that walking about the place with a donkey – even an untrained, opinionated, insubordinate one – was nothing compared to the complete life changing catastrophe of parenthood. She will be talking about these experiences, the role the outdoors can play in looking for a better balance, and how to make friends with ambiguity and embrace feeling great joy and sorrow at the same time.

Iwan Morus

Born and brought up in Aberystwyth, Iwan graduated in Natural Science from Cambridge University in 1985 before going on to complete an MPhil (1986) and PhD (1989) in History and Philosophy of Science there. He was a Research Fellow at Cambridge until 1994, after which he spent a year at the University of California San Diego before taking up a lectureship at Queen's University Belfast. He joined the Department of History & Welsh History at Aberystwyth in 2005. He was the editor of History of Science until the end of 2014 and remains on the editorial board. He is also on the Editorial Board of the University of Wales Press Scientists of Wales series. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Learned Society of Wales.

Jan Ruzicka

International Politics Lecturer

Jan is a Lecturer in Security Studies at Aberystwyth University International Politics department. Since October 2013 he serves as Director of the David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies. Previously, he worked in the Department as a research assistant on the project ‘The Challenges to Trust-Building in Nuclear Worlds’. From 2006 to 2009 he was Marie Curie doctoral fellow in the Department, where he defended his thesis in 2010. The thesis combined a theoretical critique of securitization theory with historical case studies of the French and Russian revolutions. Prior to coming to Aberystwyth, he served as the chief aide to a ranking member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Security of the Senate of the Czech Republic from 2004 to 2006. He shares the story behind the legacy of the worlds oldest International Politics department. £20k in 1918 was given in memory of students of the University College who lost their lives in the Great War.

Jasmine Donahaye

Writer, Literatrure Professor

asmine Donahaye’s publications include narrative non-fiction, fiction, poetry, and cultural criticism. Her memoir, Losing Israel (2015), won the non-fiction category of Wales Book of the Year, and her story ‘Theft’ was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize. Before taking up her post at Swansea University, she worked for many years in the publishing sector and as Publishing Grants Officer at the Welsh Books Council, and this background in publishing closely informs her teaching of creative writing. Her research interests include the natural world, identity, Jewish studies, Welsh culture and Israel-Palestine, and she would welcome enquiries about Creative Writing PhD supervision that pertain to any of these areas and beyond. She was elected a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales in 2017.

Keith Morris

Photographer

If you stand on Aberystwyth prom on a clear winters evenings, chances are you still see Starlings and Keith Morris. Keith’s photographic work explores the boundary between people and the natural world. Sometimes dramatic, sometimes subtle, always interesting.

Marie Goreman

Physics Lecturer

Dr Maire Gorman is an associate Lecturer in the physics department where she specialises in teaching planetary and atmospheric physics. Her research focuses on calculating the wavelengths of light emitted by different molecules which are of interest in various astronomical settings such as exoplanets, stars, “failed” stars and the Inter-stellar Medium. Maire was born in Aberdeen and moved to Aberystwyth in January 2016.

Nia Edwards-Behi

Horror festival co-director

Nia is co-director of the annual Abertoir International Horror Festival which is recognised globally as a leading small film festival. Nia will share her insight into how and why films get classified in the Horror genre and what the need to be scared says about us as humans.

Roger Santer

Zoology Lecturer

Dr Roger Santer is a lecturer in zoology at Aberystwyth University. He has investigated the sensory systems and behaviour of a variety of invertebrates, including air movement sensitivity in arachnids, and motion vision in swarming locusts. He currently investigates colour perception in biting flies, with a view to optimising devices to control them and the diseases they spread. We are surrounded by a variety of beautiful colours, but we might not realise that those colours are perceptions generated by our nervous systems. As such, different organisms perceive colours rather differently. His talk will explain how colour perceptions are generated, and how they vary across species. He will share how understanding fly colour perceptions can help us build more effective devices to control them.

Ru Hartwell

Maverick Forester

Ru Hartwell is a maverick forester from Mid-Wales who has been planting trees to remove carbon from the atmosphere since 1983, at which time he was sometimes referred to as ‘that climate change nutter up in the mountains’. He helped to set up the national reforestation charity, Size of Wales and currently runs the Community Carbon Link, a forestry project connecting Wales and Kenya that has so far put in 3/4 million trees. In 2006 he was the first person to come up with the concept of planting trees to absorb air travel emissions so has some familiarity with the controversy surrounding ‘carbon offsets’. He believes that if we can shift our conception of what trees are, we can unleash their tremendous absorptive potential and so take advantage of our biggest ally in the battle to stop the planet overheating. Related Speakers