Salem State Free Darwin Festival Returns For 46th Year

SALEM, MA — Salem State University's renowned Darwin Festival will return for a 46th year with 10 speaking events ranging from how animals adapt to changes in their environment to how society is changing to meet new demands.

The 2025 Darwin Festival will take over Veterans Hall in the Ellison Campus Center from Feb. 10 to Feb. 14. All events are free and open to the public.

"The Darwin Festival was first created in 1980 by colleagues that taught a course — Human and Social Biology — with a view to exposing their students to world-renowned researchers within a general theme of evolutionary biology," said Ryan Fisher, chairperson of Salem State's biology department. "All biology is linked together through the process of evolution, so we can encounter and hear a broad variety of talks from the camouflage of octopuses to insectivorous plants."

Talks include "Searching for Shade: Adapting to Extreme Heat in the Northeast USA," an event on Feb. 11 led by Nicholas Geron of Salem State's geography and sustainability department. Another talk scheduled for Feb. 13 will explore the topic of marginalized student resilience to systemic inequities and cultural isolation, all embedded within a lecture on stress responses in bacteria.

Other events are known to pop up throughout the week,including student societies whose members converge around the talks and follow them with events of their own, Fisher
explained.

"You could say it's a labor of love on the part of the biology department," Fisher said, explaining that biology classes are typically curtailed for the week so students can attend the lectures. "In addition to the talks held in Vets Hall, we also choose a set of streaming videos students can watch. For non-majors, we give them more freedom — one talk, maybe two videos, and most of us ask them to submit a reflective essay."

Visit this link for more on the festival and a full listing of sessions and times.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)