Eric Hunter
Patrick Fan

42nd Annual Presidential Lecture: Understanding Our Multiple Voices in 21st-Century Communication

 

University of Iowa faculty members, Eric Hunter and Patrick Fan will deliver the 2025 Presidential Lecture at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, March 5, 2025, in the International Ballroom at the Iowa Memorial Union.

In recent decades, the human voice has undergone a massive revolution, from the crucial individual teacher’s voice in the classroom to the frontiers of technology. How we create, protect, understand, convey, and amplify our multiplicity of voices in learning and sharing ideas and discoveries continues to transform. Professors Fan and Hunter will explore how voice is a powerful communication tool with major impacts on classroom teaching, health care, consumer behavior, online platforms, social chatter, and more, from the individual to mass populations and cultures

Read about the 2025 Presidential Lecture in Iowa Now 

The Presidential Lecture series provides an opportunity for distinguished faculty members to present significant aspects of their work to the greater university community and general public.

The university established the annual series to encourage intellectual communication among the many disciplines that constitute the UI, as well as to provide a public forum for scholarship, research, and creative achievement. The series is made possible by the generosity of donors of unrestricted gifts to the UI Center for Advancement.

 

2024: Pathways to Discovery: Clinical and Legal Trials, Academic Rigor, and Public Perceptions

Included speakers:

Christopher Coffey - Professor, Director of the Clinical Trials Statistical and Data Management Center, Edwin B. Green Chair in Public Health

Cristina Tilley - Claire Ferguson-Carlson Faculty Fellow in Law and professor in the UI College of Law

Q&A

 

2023: Rivers of Discovery- UI Research, Iowa, and the World

Included speakers:

Witold Krajewski - Director of the Iowa Flood Center

Kristy Nabhan-Warren - Associate Vice President for Research

Q&A

 

2022: The University of Iowa at 175

Included speakers:

Craig Kletzing - Professor of Physics

Christopher Merrill -Director of International Writing Program

Patricia Winokur - Professor of Internal Medicine-Infectious Diseases

Q&A

2021:
It's Not a Dream, It's a Memory

Ted Abel 
Q&A

Director, Iowa Neuroscience Institute
Professor, Chair and Department Executive Officer of Neuroscience and Pharmacology 
Roy J. Carver Chair in Neuroscience

2020 : Violence, Syndemics, and the Biology of Trauma

Corinne Peek-Asa
Q&A

Associate dean for research for the University of Iowa College of Public Health and professor in the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health

2019: Violence Against Women: The Hidden Figures

Karen Heimer
Q&A

Professor of sociology and Collegiate Fellow in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Courtesy appointment in the Department of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies; Affiliate of the UI Public Policy Center

2018: Diabetes and Cardiovascular Complications

E. Dale Abel
Q&A

Francois M. Abboud Chair in Internal Medicine; John B. Stokes III Chair in Diabetes Research; Chair and Department Executive Officer, Department of Internal Medicine; Director, Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center

2017: Global Reach of Air Pollution

Gregory Carmichael
Q&A

Professor, Chemical and Biochemical Engineering; Director, University of Iowa Informatics Initiative; Co-director, Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research

2016: A Principled Defense of Freedom

Richard Fumerton
Q&A

F. Wendell Miller Professor of Philosophy

More lectures

Browse an archive of previous presidential lectures.

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