More speakers have been added to the TEDxTruro line-up, covering topics as diverse as antibiotics, cakes, photography and animal behaviour.
TEDxTruro will take place on October 26 at Truro & Penwith College, exploring the theme ‘Wonder’.
TEDxTruro co-licensee, Katie Moore, said: “A TEDx event is like no other. Where else could you have a speaker asking where we will find new antibiotics alongside another arguing that cake can improve your memory, followed by someone else allowing us to see through the eyes of animals? This is our third TEDxTruro event and yet again we have been blown away again by the calibre of speakers we have secured.”
Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health, food security and development today. Professor Matthew Upton from the University of Plymouth thinks that the solution may lie deep under the surface of the ocean, in dark, cold environments where weird and wonderful sponges live.
Award-winning cake designer Christine Jensen from Penzance-based Peboryon – who has appeared on Channel 4’s Extreme Cake Makers – will explain how cakes can evoke wonder and create memories that stick.
Laura Kelley, a research fellow at the University of Exeter’s Cornwall campus, will help the TEDxTruro audience to see through the eyes of animals as she discusses how they see the world compared to us.
Hugh Hastings is a professional photographer who is based in Cornwall. Formerly the official photographer for Chelsea Football Club, he has managed the club’s official photographic archive since 2008. In a world that is obsessed with today, the future and the new, Hastings will ask if we are we losing the life-affirming experience of looking at photographs of the past.
The four new speakers announced join a diverse line-up which includes information security expert James Lyne who will open the discussion about cyber security. Conservationist and adventurer Sacha Dench will give a talk on her epic 7,000 km paramotor journey following the migration of wild swans from the high arctic to the UK.
Professor Monica Craciun from the University of Exeter and Dr Dimitar Dimov will discuss graphene, which has been hailed the wonder material of the 21st century. Spacecraft engineer and COO of the Satellite Applications Catapult, Lucy Edge, will share her vision of how emerging space technologies can help us defy distance and time to create more diverse, inclusive and closer communities.
Cornwall-based philosopher Peter Sjöstedt-H will discuss the hidden impact psychedelics have had on philosophy – from Plato to Penzance ‘chemical philosopher’ Humphry Davy – and ask if such extreme, altered modes of mind could help give us answers to some of the big questions facing the philosophers and scientists of today.
Tickets are £50 each (plus an admin fee of £3) and are available by clicking here.
