Theme: Perspectives

The speakers at TEDxLundUniversity are courageous, curious and passionate. They break conventions, explore the world around them and do not care for authority. They give their audience new perspectives on life, and with their stories they challenge our entrenched ideas about the world. The audience can expect to be both provoked and inspired.

Lund University is an arena where open and inquiring minds can meet to discuss our world and the human condition. However, if unexpected collaborations and new ideas are to come about, we need more than just a research perspective. We need meeting places at a university where curious individuals with completely different experiences can meet and inspire and challenge one another. TEDxLundUniversity will be such a platform.

Skissernas Museum
Finngatan 2
Lund, 22362
Sweden

Rebecca Walker

Rebecca Walker is a multiplatform catalyst who works collaboratively with artists, academics, and thought leaders to change the way people think about identity, culture, and power. Her books include Black, White and Jewish, Baby Love, Black Cool, One Big Happy Family, and What Makes a Man, and she has participated in projects with the Estonian Ministry of Culture, The Fundazione Merz, The Walker Art Center, Universal Pictures, Viacom, and NPR. She is the co-founder of Third Wave Foundation and Write to Wellbeing, and a very popular lecturer around the world. Time Magazine named her one of the most influential leaders of her generation.

Andreas Ekström

Did you google today? Most likely you did. The people of the world google almost 40,000 times per second. We gather more information than ever – but so does Google. Journalist Andreas Ekström wrote a bestselling book about Google, and is one of Sweden's leading commentators on the digital revolution. His talk will give you a mindblowing perspective on the knowledge, money and power the world has surrendered to very few hands.

Marie Dacke

Small insect with even smaller brains still have to solve major problems on a daily basis. A desert living insect will for example quickly die if lost in the heat of the day. How does an insect with a brain smaller than a rice grain manage without a compass, or do they? Most insects also risk having their lunch stolen from foraging conspecifics. What is the insect strategy to avoid thieves? Can insects play football, do they dance and can they see things that we cannot see? The surprising answers to many of these questions will be given on a scientific journey through the wonderful world of pooh. Biologist Marie Dacke is an award winning speaker who among other things studies flight control and navigation in insects.

Mathias Osvath

Have you ever thought about how utterly strange it is that you, a material entity, can do just that: think? Have you ever considered how you, and all other animals around you, seem to violate the laws of physics; how the future which do not exist appears to influence your current actions? Did you know that complex thinking have arisen independantly several times during the evolution? And have you ever though about what type of cognition an intelligent extraterestrial would have? Mathias Osvath is a cognitive zoologist who studies the minds of great apes and crow birds. He is the founder of several research facilities aiming at understanding the principles of complex cognition. His talk will give you very few answers on some of the most complex scientific questions of today, but it is guaranteed to give you some mind-boggling perspectives.

Mette Hoffmann Meyer

Mette Hoffman Meyer is documentary executive at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation and executive producer of Why Poverty? To create a global dialogue Why Poverty? commissioned eight documentaries from award-winning film makers and 30 shorts from new and emerging talents. The films tackle big issues and pose difficult questions. The films were shown around the world in November 2012 on more than 70 national broadcasters.

Anders Wilhelmson

Today, a staggering 2.6 billion people lack access to basic sanitation. Anders Wilhelmson has created one solution to the problem, the Peepoo toilet. His talk will tell the story of going from a well-know architect to the founder of a company that sells toilets to the world's least known.

Lucinda David

Lucinda David is an international debater and adjudicator, having participated in prestigious competitions in Asia, Australia and Europe, and was the Chief Adjudicator of the World Universities Debate Championships 2012, hailed as Olympics of debating. Lucinda is currently the Debate Director of the Lund Debate Society and one of the forces behind developing competitive, academic debating in Sweden. Her advocacy is mainly driven by her belief in reclaiming public discourse and promoting free speech by running weekly debate cafes and organizing workshops and debates on varied topics and issues critical the community at large.

Manvendra Singh Gohil

Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil grew up in a very conservative society in India. In 2007 he became world famous after appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where he talked about his homosexuality. In India, one of the world’s most traditional countries, homosexual acts were illegal until 2009. Manvendra was met by strong criticism when he came out as homosexual – effigies of him were burnt, demonstrations were held and his family disowned him. In 2008, Manvendra inaugurated the Europride gay festival in Stockholm. Today he works internationally to increase awareness of HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ issues. Manvendra is an important symbol for equal human dignity and rights, and he has devoted his life to increasing tolerance of difference in India.

Lars Samuelson

Lighting up all the world’s houses, cities and roads takes a lot of energy. Roughly one fifth of all electricity used in the world goes to lighting. However, the energy use is far from efficient. An incandescent light bulb, for example, converts only 4% of the energy into light; the rest escapes as heat. It is a huge waste of resources, but there are solutions on the horizon. 
Lars Samuelson, founder of The Nanometre Structure Consortium and known as “Mr Nano”, conducts research on how nanowires can be used to develop super-efficient LEDs (light-emitting diodes) that enable energy consumption to be drastically reduced. Professor Samuelson and his research group have also developed a special method to grow special nanowires – nanowires which can be used to manufacture solar cells that will be able to utilise more of the sun’s energy than is possible with current technology.

Clarissa Imperatore

Clarissa Imperatore started playing percussion with Prof. Gianni Casagrande at the “Scuola Musicale Sanvitese” in Italy. She got her first diploma in percussion at the Conservatorio “A. Buzzolla” di Adria at the age of 17. Since 2011 she has been studying at the Malmö Academy of Music with Lennart Gruvstedt, Nicklas Holmberg and Peter Fältskog.

Kvalia

Kvalia consists of four musicians from Malmö, Sweden. Kvalia create light, dreamy and meditative sound landscapes – always with the possibility of a surprise around the next corner.