About this talk

Join us for the Royal Society Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Prize Lecture delivered by 2025 winner Professor Sadiah Qureshi. Extinction was once regarded as a theologically suspect idea until modern naturalists established that it was inherent in the natural world following the French Revolution. While the first discussions of extinction as a natural law concerned prehistoric animals, new ideas about loss were quickly extended to colonised peoples and contemporary extinctions such as the great auk. This lecture traces the legacies of these new ideas about extinction to ask how we generate hope and secure justice for all life on earth.

→ Register (free) (opens in new tab)