Join us for our Darwin Day 2025 Lecture!

Nina Jablonski, Ph.D., Atherton and Evan Pugh Professor Emerita of Anthropology, will be presenting her talk “The Skin in the Game of Evolution: How Human Skin Illustrates Darwinian Evolution and Much More”

Everything about human skin, from its apparent nakedness and potential sweatiness to its many inherent colors and exquisite sensitivity, is the product of evolution. This lecture will draw upon the rich and diverse evidence from paleontology, physiology, climatology, genetics, microbiology, and other fields that has led to our current understanding of the evolution of human skin. It will also explore how the preeminence of vision and language in humans paved the way for our ability to rapidly assess skin traits and then transmit impressions and value judgements of skin color and other traits to others, often with disastrous results. Learning the basics of skin evolution instills valuable information about Darwinian evolution and a deep appreciation of the beauty of human diversity. It also provides the foundation of an educational curriculum for an anti-racist world.

Light reception immediately following the lecture in the Chaiken Family Atrium.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Human Evolution and Diversity in the College of the Liberal Arts and the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences