Speaker: Professor Wade Davis (CM, Department of Anthropology and BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk, UBC)

Dr. Davis is an award-winning anthropologist, ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker. He was named by the National Geographic Society as one of the Explorers for the Millennium, and described as “a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity.”

His research has inspired numerous documentary films as well as three episodes of the television series, The X-Files. He is the recipient of 11 honorary degrees, as well as the 2009 Gold Medal from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society for his contributions to anthropology and conservation, the 2011 Explorers Medal, the highest award of the Explorers Club, the 2012 David Fairchild Medal for botanical exploration, the 2013 Ness Medal for geography education from the Royal Geographical Society, and the 2015 Centennial Medal of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University. In 2009 he delivered the CBC Massey Lectures. His book Into the Silence, received the 2012 Samuel Johnson prize, the top award for literary nonfiction in the English language.