Messenger Lecturer

Professor Guðni Thorlacius Jóhannesson, former President of Iceland (2016–2024) and current Professor of History at the University of Iceland.

Lecture 1
“My Fellow Citizens: The Need for National Unity and the Positive Role of Heads of State” Warren Hall 175 Monday, March 16—12pm-1pm

In this insightful and personal lecture, President Jóhannesson reflects on his eight years as Iceland’s head of state and the delicate balance between leadership, neutrality, and unity. A historian by training, he considers how academic habits of critical thinking both help and hinder those in positions of power. Drawing on experience from Iceland’s presidency, he discusses how heads of state can nurture optimism and cohesion in divided times, while remaining truthful and principled in a world often dominated by spin, spectacle, and partisanship.

Lecture 2
“Greenland: The Last Colony in Europe”
Clark Hall 700 Thursday, March 19—12pm-1:15pm

President Jóhannesson explores Greenland’s complex path from colony to emerging nation. Drawing on Iceland’s own experience of gaining independence from Denmark, he examines the historical ties, political tensions, and geopolitical stakes that shape Greenland’s future amid growing great-power interest in the Arctic. The lecture offers a unique perspective from Iceland, Europe’s closest neighbor to Greenland, on questions of sovereignty, self-determination, and small-state resilience in an era of global change.

Lecture 3
“History of Iceland”
MVR 2219 Friday, March 20—12pm-1pm

From The Crown to Vikings, dramatized history has become one of the most powerful ways people engage with the past—but often at the cost of accuracy. In this thought-provoking talk, President Jóhannesson, historian and former head of state, explores the tension between storytelling and scholarship. Drawing on his own work developing a major documentary series on Iceland’s history, he asks whether entertainment and education can ever truly align, and what happens when the need to captivate audiences threatens to rewrite the past itself.

Messenger Lecturer

Professor Ludovic Orlando, HDR, PhD, Agrégé, Normalien, Director, Centre for Anthropobiology & Genomics of Toulouse, CAGT, Université Paul Sabatier Toulouse III, France, is one of the world’s leading scientists who study ancient DNA. His published work over the past decade has provided paradigm-changing insights into the evolution and domestication of the horse and the contributions of the horse to human civilization.

Lecture 1
“The Ancient DNA revolution in human evolution”
Room 121, Atkinson Hall
Monday 20, April 2026, 4:00 pm
Reception immediately following

Lecture 2
“The horse before and after our shared history”
Lecture Hall 1, Atrium Ground Level,
College of Veterinary Medicine
Thursday 23, April 2026, 3:30 pm
Reception immediately following

Lecture 3
“Environmental DNA: time capsules of past”
and present life
Room 121, Atkinson Hall
Friday 24, April 2026, 3:30 pm
Reception immediately following

University Lecturer

Dr. Britt Wray, director of Stanford University’s “CIRCLE at Stanford Psychiatry”

Lecture Title: TBD
Date:  March 2027
Time: TBD
Place: TBD

From the nomination: “Dr. Wray is director of Stanford University’s “CIRCLE at Stanford Psychiatry,” a
research and action initiative focused on Community-minded Interventions
for Resilience, Climate Leadership and Emotional wellbeing. She is the author of Generation
Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Anxiety (2022), a carefully-researched general audience
book on how to support young people as they face eco-anxiety related to climate and
environment-related fears. Dr. Wray received in 2023 the top prize in the “Research Scientist:
Early Career” category of the SciComm Excellence awards given by the National Academies of
Science, Engineering, & Medicine in partnership with Schmidt Futures. Dr. Wray’s work
crosses, among other disciplines, psychology, environmental studies, ethics, and communication.”

University Lecturer

Dr. Cynthia Miller Idriss ’94, Professor, School of Public Affairs and School of Education Justice, Law & Criminology

Lecture Title: TBD
Date:  September 30, 2026
Time: TBD
Place: TBD

Dr. Miller Idriss recently publish a book, Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism (Princeton University Press, 2025). From the nomination: “Dr. Miller-Idriss’s work represents a bold and incisive analysis of the link between misogyny and far-right extremism throughout the Western Hemisphere…Dr. Miller-Idriss is a sociologist and scholar of extremism and radicalization who graduated from Cornell in 1994 with a BA in Sociology and German Area Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan in 2003. She now holds an appointment as Professor in the School of Public Affairs and the School of Education at American University. She is the founding director of the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) research lab, which combines quantitative, cultural, policy, and media analysis to understand how hate and violence emerge in society.”