Alondra Nelson, professor of sociology and dean of Social Science at Columbia University, is the author of The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome and Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination. Nelson is an expert on inequality and about the social implications of new technologies, including  artificial intelligence, big data, and  human gene-editing.

In this lecture, Nelson will discuss how DNA-based techniques are being used to grapple with the unfinished business of slavery: to foster reconciliation, to establish ties with ancestral homelands, to rethink citizenship, and to make legal claims for slavery reparations.

The event is sponsored by the Humanities Institute and the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas.  More information online.

Location: Avaya Auditorium, POB 2.302, 201 E. 24th St., University of Texas, Austin