The next guest in Thompson Rivers University’s popular President’s Lecture Series has been described as a “ rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet, and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity”.

Wade Davis, an ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker, will speak at 7:00 pm in the Grand Hall of the Campus Activity Centre on Tuesday, March 1. Tickets are not required, but seating is limited.

Currently an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society, his recent work has taken him from the Amazon to Tibet, from the Arctic to Africa, from Australia to Mongolia, from Polynesia to New Guinea, living for extended periods among indigenous communities, learning and recording their complex rituals and customs, and their uses of plants as food, medicine and psychotropic agents.

He holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University.

Davis is the author of 14 books including The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986), One River (1996), The Clouded Leopard (1999), Light at the Edge of the World (2001), and The Lost Amazon (2004). In 2009 he delivered the CBC Massey Lectures, Canada’s most prestigious intellectual forum, which were published as The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World (2009).

His many film credits include Light at the Edge of the World, an eight-hour documentary series produced for the National Geographic Channel. He is one of 20 Honorary Members of the Explorer’s Club, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and an Honorary Member and Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. In 2009 he received the Gold Medal from the RCGS for his contributions to the fields of anthropology and conservation, and he is the 2011 recipient of the Explorers Medal, the highest award of the Explorers’ Club. In fall 2011 Knopf will publish his latest book, Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest.

The TRU President’s Lecture Series sponsors one or more speakers each academic year on topics of global importance. Over the past seven years, TRU has welcomed such international figures as John Ralston Saul, Alexandre “Sacha” Trudeau, Stephen Lewis, Romeo Dallaire, Lloyd Axworthy, Severn Cullis-Suzuki, David Frum and Buffy St. Marie. Some of these highly regarded presentations have generated local and international responses that include the founding of the CanGo Grannies and motivating many TRU students to become actively involved in a variety of developing world projects.