Migration is a significant life event with diverse implications for the migrants and their families, as well as for sending and receiving areas and countries. Parrado’s research focuses on migration and its interaction with other demographic and social processes. Currently he’s studying the intersection of gender, migration, and health risks among Mexican and Honduran migrants.

To mark the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare this April, three of Penn’s Shakespeare scholars will give three perspectives on Hamlet in this special panel. Zachary Lesser will tell the ghost story of the lost Hamlet quarto, Cary Mazer will discuss the play in performance, and Rebecca Bushnell will speak about choice and consequence. Followed by a Q&A.

After months of campaigning, the first voting will take place at the Iowa caucus on February 1, and the first primary election in the nation will be held in New Hampshire on February 9— the day before this talk. What can these early and limited results tell us about what the electorate is thinking and what might come next? A panel of professors from the Department of Political Science will discuss this and answer questions. 

According to the BBC, more than 500,000 migrants have made their way across the Mediterranean to Europe in 2015, sparking a crisis as countries struggle to cope with the influx, and creating division in the European Union over the best way to resettle people. The panel of professors will discuss European social policy, the EU's response to the crisis, and international human rights.

Tectonics, erosion, sedimentation, and chemical weathering work together to form the Earth’s surface environment where we all live. Willenbring is interested in the response of the landscape to external forcing by the rise of mountains, sea level, ice sheets, and civilizations, and the feedbacks between tectonics, geomorphology, climate, and life on Earth.

Bethany Wiggin is the founding director of the Penn Program in the Environmental Humanities. PPEH was created in 2014 by Wiggin and Leah Davidson, W'16, as a fresh and unique forum for work on environmental issues. With support from the Penn Arts and Sciences' Dean's Office, the Green Campus Partnership, and the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, the program offers competitive year-long research fellowships to graduate and undergraduate students across all Penn's schools and is hosting a series of five major public events this year outlining the role of the environmental humanities.