Speakers | Edinburgh 2026
Discover who will be speaking and presenting at our upcoming 18th European Alum Symposium, which will be held on November 6-8, 2026 in Edinburgh, Scotland!
.jpg)
Sylvia Cifuentes
Assistant Professor of Environmental and Social Equity and Justice
Sylvia Cifuentes is an Assistant Professor of Environmental and Social Equity and Justice at Mount Holyoke College. She is an interdisciplinary scholar who investigates the connections among Indigenous politics and global environmental challenges, including climate change, ‘Smart Earth’ technologies and energy—with a geographical focus on Amazonia. She draws from critical geography, science and technology studies, and decolonial and Indigenous studies.
As such, she has co-edited the book "Multispecies Climate Justice: Liberatory Futures for Human and More-Than-Human Worlds," published by Springer; and her research has also been published in Science, Technology and Human Values, the Journal of Latin American Geography, Digital Geography and Society, Climatic Change, among other venues.
Cifuentes is currently working on a book tentatively titled "Technologies for Worlds Otherwise: Indigenous Territorial Autonomy and Climate Futures in Amazonia," which analyzes how Indigenous knowledges and politics shape climate initiatives involving ancestral, political, solar and digital technologies in Amazonia.
At Mount Holyoke, her teaching therefore builds from global and intersectional perspectives in courses including Global Environmental Justice; Climate Humanities, Futures, and Activism; and Indigenous and Decolonial Ecologies. Both as part of her research and prior to academia, she has collaborated with several Indigenous and environmental organizations.
Head of Stakeholder Relations
Dr Patricia Erskine is Head of Stakeholder Relations for the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences and Head of Culture & Community with Edinburgh Futures Institute at the University of Edinburgh. She supports engagement projects across the College and manages strategic partnerships with Edinburgh’s festivals and cultural organisations.
Patricia has been involved with Edinburgh Futures Institute since the early days of its development. She now leads a small team to engage the public with its mission to tackle today’s increasingly complex issues by bringing people and disciplines together in our futures-focused space for learning, research, and innovation.
Following industrial research in the energy sector, Patricia came to Scotland to lecture in Chemical Engineering at Heriot-Watt University before a brief spell at Scottish Enterprise which included working in “The Workplace of the Future”. She joined the University of Edinburgh first to work in the College of Science and Engineering, before moving to Arts and Humanities and is happy to work closely with colleagues across disciplines in a future-inspired workplace once again.
.jpg)
Dr Desmond Fitz-Gibbon
Associate Professor of History
Dr Desmond Fitz-Gibbon is an Associate Professor of modern European history. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and began teaching at Mount Holyoke in 2012. Both his research and teaching revolve around questions of economic life in the modern world, and the way that commercial practices are shaped by cultural and social relations.
His first book, "Marketable Values: Inventing the Property Market in Modern Britain," explored how the British organized a market for real estate while debating the meaning of property as a social, political, and cultural institution.
He teaches a range of courses on the history of shopping, money, urban life, energy, and modern capitalism, as well as a popular first year seminar on the history of Jack the Ripper and Victorian London.
In 2025, he received the Mount Holyoke College Faculty Award for Teaching. He has also recently Chaired both the Department of History and the College’s NEXUS program in Museums, Archives, and Public History.
.jpeg)
Researcher and Public Archaeologist
Originally based in Canada, I studied Fine Arts and Art History at Langara College in Vancouver, B.C., before completing a BA in History and Humanities and a BGS in Museum Studies and Archaeology at Simon Fraser University. I later earned an MSc in Classical Archaeology from the University of Edinburgh. I recently submitted my doctoral thesis in Classics at the University of St Andrews. My research examines monumental Aegyptiaca—Egyptianising material culture—in Greek urban environments during the Hellenistic period.
For four years I collaborated with the University of Edinburgh on the Aeclanum excavation in southern Italy under Professor Ben Russell, serving as Project Manager, Public Outreach Coordinator, and Programme Secretary.
Alongside my research, I have worked on excavations in Italy, Greece and Spain. From 2017 to 2019, I collaborated with the University of Edinburgh on the Aeclanum excavation in southern Italy under Professor Ben Russell, serving as a Project Manager, Public Outreach Coordinator, and Programme Secretary.
In 2020, I launched the academic public outreach podcast, Two Friends Talk History. I currently collaborate with colleagues at the University of St Andrews as a producer and sound editor on several academic podcasts, including Visualising War and Peace (with Professor Alice König), Ukraine Russia War Talk (with Professor Phillips O’Brien), and Mountain Stories / Mountain Futures (with Professor Jason König), as well as a forthcoming series on Communism and Classics with Dr Henry Stead.
Alongside my academic work, I freelance as an artist, producing historically informed illustrations for academic publications, digital creators, and personal projects.
.jpeg)
Independent Journalist /Science Writer
Heather Hansen is a journalist and naturalist whose work has appeared in publications around the world. She often writes and speaks on topics at the intersection of people, places and science.
Heather is the award-winning author of several books: Walking Great Britain (Mountaineers Books); Wildfire: On the Front Lines with Station 8 (Mountaineers Books); Prophets and Moguls, Rangers and Rogues, Bison and Bears: 100 Years of the National Park Service (Mountaineers Books), and co-author of Solitude: The Science and Power of Being Alone (Cambridge University Press) and Disappearing Destinations (Vintage).
A born explorer, she’s logged thousands of miles across the US and around the UK, and in South America and sub-Saharan Africa. Her favorite places to roam are Colorado’s Rocky Mountains and the wild moors and coastlines of England, Scotland and Wales.
President Danielle R. Holley
President of Mount Holyoke College
Serving as the 20th President of the College, Danielle is a renowned legal scholar and educator. Prior to joining MHC, she was Dean of the School of Law at Howard University and a law clerk to Judge Carl E. Stewart on the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She holds a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
She is an expert on a wide range of civil rights and equity subjects, including desegregation, racial discrimination and affirmative action, the history of the civil rights movement, diversifying K-12 pipelines to higher education, the admission of undocumented immigrants to public colleges and universities, women in academic leadership and reproductive rights.
She is a leading scholar of the Supreme Court decisions regarding race-conscious college and university admissions.
.jpeg)
Elizabeth Keach '07
Regenerative Supply-Chain Researcher, Consultant, and Mother
Elizabeth Keach is a sustainability practitioner and researcher working at the intersection of regenerative agriculture, biodiversity, and fashion supply chains.
Drawing on a master’s degree in Sustainability Leadership from the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, she focuses on how land-use decisions and fibre sourcing can support both ecological integrity and dignified livelihoods across global supply chains.
Her current work explores what it would mean for brands and retailers to move beyond compliance-driven metrics towards listening‑led, place-based approaches to biodiversity and farmer wellbeing, with a particular interest in high-end natural fibres such as wool and cashmere. She is especially interested in how monitoring technologies and data platforms can either constrain or enable autonomy, voice, and self-determination for farmers and local communities.
Elizabeth lives in London and co-hosts a regular Mother + Child gathering that experiments, at a very human scale, with practices of care, shared food, and collective learning. Across her work, she is motivated by a simple question: how can the tools of sustainability—metrics, standards, and strategies—be reoriented to serve the people and places they measure, rather than the other way around?
Associate Professor of History, University of Cincinnati
The comparative focus of my research is the social and cultural history of Britain and its Empire, across c18th-c20th, encompassing France, Italy, and the United States. I am the author of The Romance of Italy and the English Political Imagination (St. Martin’s, 1998) and with Deborah Cohen, contributor and co-editor of Comparison and History (Routledge, 2004). After graduating from Mount Holyoke College, I taught history and literature in secondary schools in the Bronx and Surrey, England and worked for an investment firm in San Francisco, the year before starting graduate school at UC Berkeley.
My current research project reflects an ongoing curiosity about cultures of finance capitalism. Titled "Risking the World: The London Stock Exchange and the British Financial Empire, 1801-1910," it tells the story of the world of international finance, the culture of risk capital, and the gendered politics of speculating and investing in the British Empire from the Napoleonic Wars when the financial center shifted from Amsterdam to London to the aftermath of the South African War when London's financial supremacy was seriously challenged.
I have another book in the making, a collection of essays. "Desire in the Archive," is about grief, the body, intimacy and desire, characters in nineteenth century novels and the metaphorical arc of time's passage in coming to terms with loss.
.jpg)
Art Director and Founder
Claudia Palmira is a New York–born, Rome-based artist, creative director, and entrepreneur working at the intersection of fine art, design, and cultural storytelling. Her practice spans digital and physical realms, from mixed-media works exploring beauty, consciousness, and language to defining visual identities for international exhibitions, institutions, and brands.
She is the founder of Clù, a collection of artist-designed silk scarves created from her original paintings and sold internationally, including at The Met Opera Shop in New York. Palmira is also the creator of The Aria Scarf and the originator of Calligraphic Abstractionism, a visual language in which written forms dissolve into expressive abstraction while retaining resonance and meaning. Her art work has been exhibited in Rome, New York and Greenwich, CT.
As Art Director of Laudato Sie, the 2025-2026 landmark exhibition of Franciscan manuscripts presented at Palazzo Braschi in Rome and the Sacred Convent of Assisi, she translated centuries of cultural heritage into a contemporary visual experience. Clients have included Bulgari Hotels & Resorts, the United Nations, and the Vatican.
Palmira serves as Chief Creative Officer of Beacon International Group and Measure Publishing. She is the author of the book The Micro Daily Practice, hosts private creative immersions in Rome, and proudly serves as Country Head for the Mount Holyoke Group of Italy.
.jpg)
Author and Social Historian
Jane Robinson is an acclaimed social historian, focusing on women pioneers. Born in Edinburgh, she was brought up in North Yorkshire and read English at Somerville College, Oxford. For ten years she worked in the antiquarian book trade before becoming a full-time writer and public speaker. She has written 14 major books, including Hearts and Minds, looking at the hidden history of the fight for the vote; Bluestockings, the story of the first women to access higher education in Britain, and Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders, charting the lives and work of the first women to enter the elite professions.
Jane’s interests range from book-collecting (forced upon her at the age of 7 after being banned from her local library for using a jam tart bookmark) to designing and building pop-up Escape Rooms to raise funds for charity. She is a Fellow of both the Royal Historical and Royal Geographical Societies, a Hawthornden Fellow, a writing mentor, and a Senior Associate of Somerville College.
Dubbed by the BBC ‘one of our most original and engaging social historians,’ Jane is a popular guest at literary festivals, and on national radio and television.
_JPG.jpg)
Publisher-at-Large and Charity Trustee
Dr Barbara Schwepcke is the founder of GINGKO and serves as the charity’s CEO. After receiving her doctorate from the London School of Economics she worked as a publisher for Prospect Magazine. In 2003 she founded Haus Publishing.