World renowned environmental thinker and activist Dr. Vandana Shiva will open Hamilton College's Kirkland Project 2003 series with a lecture "Alternatives to Globalization and War," on Sunday, Sept. 7, at 7 p.m. in the Chapel. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is co-sponsored by the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center and Biology department. The 2003-04 Kirkland Project series theme is Technology, Science and Democracy.
Before becoming an activist Shiva was one of India's leading physicists. In 1982 she founded an independent institute, the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in Dehra Dun, dedicated to researching the most significant ecological and social issues of our times. In 1991 she founded Navdanya, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seeds. A leader in the International Forum on Globalization with Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin, she won the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award) in 1993. Shiva is the author of Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply (1999) and Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit. She is director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy.
Her contributions to gender issues are nationally and internationally recognized. Her book Staying Alive dramatically shifted the perception of Third World women.
Shiva has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Oslo, Norway, Schumacher College, U.K., Mt. Holyoke College and lectured at York University, Canada, University of Lulea, Sweden, University of Victoria, Canada, and organizations worldwide on environment, feminism and economic development.
The Kirkland Project for the Study of Gender, Society and Culture is an on-campus organization committed to intellectual inquiry and social justice, focusing on issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, as well as other facets of human diversity.
