Rachel Carson Lecture

Supported by a generous endowment from George L. and Helen B. Long, the Rachel Carson Science, Technology, and Society Lecture was designed to bring leading experts in the fields of science and technology to campus to address the PLU community. Visiting scholars interact with PLU students and faculty in the classroom, and lecture on a scholarly topic of general interest in the evening.

Next Rachel Carson Lecture: Monday, February 23, 2026

We’re pleased to welcome Dr. Banu Subramaniam, author and the Luella LaMer Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College, as our 2026 Rachel Carson lecture series guest speaker. Dr. Subramaniam holds a Ph.D. from Duke University and is trained as an evolutionary biologist and plant scientist. Her work explores the natural sciences in relation to race, gender, colonialism, ethnicity, caste, and xenophobia.

She is the author of Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism (2019) for which she received the 2020 Michelle Kendrick Memorial Book Prize from the Society for Literature, Science & the Arts and Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity (2016),  winner of the Ludwik Fleck Prize 2016 for an outstanding book across the breadth of science and technology studies. Her most recent book – Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism was published by University of Washington Press in June 2024.