RAQ Speaker Series Fall 2023 - Spring 2024
RAQ offers an interesting and popular speakers’ series at the University Club for RAQ members and guests, from September to June each year. The Lunchtime Guest Speaker Series is an informal discussion over lunch with an invited speaker.
Currently, we offer live in-person as well as the option to join the event live via Zoom. When possible, we will post the Zoom recording after the event.
The in-person events follow Queen's and the University Club's COVID protocols. Reservations are required for each format.
All our Speaker Series events are held at the University Club and start at 1pm.
To reserve, please go to our on-line reservation system and scroll to the date of the event you wish to attend and the appropriate choice (either in-person or via Zoom):
April 16, 2024, 1-2PM
Speaker: Dr. Kim Nossal
Department: Political Studies
Title: The Imminent Challenge of 'America First'
Dr. Kim Richard Nossal has recently released a very important book, Canada Alone, Navigating the Post-American World, that sketches the future if the illiberal, anti-democratic, and authoritarian Make America Great Again movement regains power. Predicting that the West will fracture, he outlines what Canada will face in this unfamiliar post-American world. Dr. Nossal is an emeritus professor of Political Studies in the Centre for International and Defence Policy at Queen’s. He received his PhD from the University of Toronto and taught political science at McMaster University for 25 years before coming to Queen’s in 2001 to head the Department of Political Studies. He served as executive director of the School of Policy Studies from 2013 to 2015 before retiring in 2020. Among his many contributions, he was president of the Canadian Political Science Association and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. We look forward to his insights at this important time
To reserve, please go to our on-line reservation system and scroll to RAQ Speaker Series April 16th with Dr. Kim Nossal and click on the Register button. The option for Zoom or In Person will appear once you have clicked on "Register"). Go to: Event Listings
Save the dates or register now for our upcoming Speakers:
You can also register now for these upcoming speakers. Scroll to the appropriate date in the Events Listings link above
May 14:
Speaker: Dr. David McDonald, Global Development Studies
Title: What's Public about Public Water?
June 25:
Speaker: Dr. David Hanes (Physics, Engineering Physics & Astronomy)
Topic: Astronomy for General Audiences.
Links to previous speaker event broadcasts
Date: March 21, 2024
Speaker: Dr. John Smol
Topic: "Lakes in the Anthropocene: Gradual Ecosystem Changes Occurring 'Under the Waterline' with Major Impacts"
Department: Biology
Passcode: 0vvnAZ=s
Dr. John P. Smol, a distinguished member of the Queen’s community, was awarded the Vega Medal by the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography in 2023. As a renowned authority on long-term environmental changes in aquatic systems, his research tackles vital issues like eutrophication, acidification, contaminant transport, fisheries management, and climate change, with a focus on the Arctic. Dr. Smol established and directs the Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Laboratory, engaging around 40 researchers and students in addressing a wide range of limnological and paleoecological challenges worldwide. Authoring over 670 journal articles, book chapters, more than 20 books, and presenting at over 1100 conferences, Dr. Smol has received over 50 accolades from organizations in Canada, Finland, the UK, and China. He was recognized by Nature magazine as Canada’s Top Mid-career Scientific Mentor in 2010 and featured by Canadian Geographic as one of the ‘Canadians changing our world’ in 2013. It is our honor to have Dr. Smol as our speaker.
February 22, 2024
Speaker: Dr. Lynda Colgan
Department: Mathematics Education
Title: "Mathematics Should Never Be Boring"
Click on Link: to Dr. Colgan's talk.
Passcode: #B0&Pu=k
Dr. Lynda Colgan has been an educator for 34 years at all levels of public education in Ontario: elementary, intermediate, secondary and University. Throughout her career her passion has been mathematics and science education at many levels using many possible avenues. She has been a classroom teacher, curriculum consultant on computers in the classroom, a Vice-Principal, author of post-secondary curriculum methods courses, and author of award-winning textbooks for elementary and intermediate classrooms. Her creative projects have resulted in the development of a children’s television show, The Prime Radicals, and an award-winning children’s book, Mathemagic. She has received numerous awards, notably in 2023 the Margaret Sinclair Memorial Award Recognizing Innovation and Excellence in Mathematics Education, and Kingston’s highest civic honour, The First Capital Distinguished Citizen Award. We look forward to her ideas and insights in this important area of education.
February 13, 2024
Speaker: Dr. Herb Helmstaedt
Department: Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering
Title: The Life of James Douglas and His Connection to Queen's University
Click on Link to Dr. Helmstaedt's talk
Passcode: #5&jlaYK
Who was James Douglas, the visionary and socially conscious entrepreneur, a Queen’s alumnus instrumental in transforming Queen's from a Presbyterian college into a secular university, and provider of the financial resources to keep Queen's from going bankrupt during the Second World War? Few know about his remarkable life and the extent of his generosity, which to Queen's alone totalled well over $22 million in today’s dollars.
We look forward to hearing about this remarkable man and his role in our history from Professor Emeritus Herb Helmstaedt. Having had a very distinguished career, including serving as leader of the Western Superior Transect of the Canadian LITHOPROBE Program and as head of his department, Dr. Helmstaedt continues to write about things geological, including this fascinating piece of history.
Date: December 12, 2023:
Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk
Department: Political Geography, Department of Political Science and Economics, Royal Military College, Kingston
Title: The KGB Man in the Kremlin and Russia's War on Ukraine and the Ukrainian People
Passcode: =4mhrqBS
Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk is a professor of political geography at the Royal Military College of Canada, a Fellow of the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto, and the author of numerous publications dealing with the political history of the Canadian Ukrainian community and contemporary Ukraine. A founding member of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Dr Luciuk was distinguished in 2019 with Ukraine’s Cross of Ivan Mazepa. He has been a GIC appointee to the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada and the Parole Board of Canada, and was, for many years, active on the Endowment Council of the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund, which his efforts helped establish. He is currently writing his memoirs, and completing a monograph on the redress campaign, Lest They Forget. His most recent book (with Dr V Viatrovych) is Enemy Archives: Soviet Counterinsurgency Operations and the Ukrainian Nationalist Movement (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2023).
Speaker: Dr. David Skillicorn, Department: School of Computing
Date: September 19, 2023
Title: "Using language to infer mental state"
Passcode: 9JB2hp$0
Dr. Skillicorn received recent recognition for the creation of software that can sniff out lies in emails and other written material by studying the frequency and kinds of words used. [Certain words] send up red flags,” says Skillicorn. “It’s as though some part of the brain is feeling bad, and this comes out in the writing.” The area of his research is called Adversarial Analytics, which has the motto, “Finding the traces of bad people and bad things in large datasets.” The work consists in building models from data where those being modelled don’t want it to be known, and those modelling have a serious interest in this discovery. This applies to terrorism, cybersecurity, crime, fraud, money laundering, terrorist financing, human trafficking and a growing list of other areas. A somewhat amusing analysis was determining the language patterns of US presidential winners since 1992. Dr. Skillicorn has received many awards including the Technical Achievement Award for outstanding and sustained technical contributions to the field of Intelligence and Security Informatics from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer (IEEE).