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CATALYST CONVERSATIONS presents provocative talks by artists and scientists, whose work resonate and create dialogue and synergy.

10/21/2026

MEET THE VOICES of Home & Habitat 🏡

What makes a place feel like home? On November 10, a poet, a paleoarchaeologist, and a photographer come together to explore that question across art, science, and deep time.

🎙️ OUR SPEAKERS
Amy E. Clark, Paleoarchaeologist, Harvard
Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah, Boston Poet Laureate
Shellburne Thurber, Photographer

✨ MODERATOR SPOTLIGHT: BRIDGET ALEX
Bridget Alex is a paleoanthropologist, science writer, and educator who teaches human evolutionary biology at Harvard. She earned her PhD at Harvard, where her research traced how Homo sapiens spread across the globe as other human groups like Neanderthals disappeared, with fieldwork across the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and the Levant. Her writing on human origins and archaeology has appeared in Discover, Science, Smithsonian, and Atlas Obscura.

We can’t wait for her to guide this conversation!

10/20/2026

ART + SCIENCE. Two circles, one conversation.

Every Catalyst Conversations public program is free and open to the public, because big ideas shouldn’t be behind a paywall.

Our donors and sponsors make that possible. Interested in partnering with us? 📧

10/17/2026

We are looking forward to a cozy afternoon of transformation, care, and culture exploring the art + science of fermentation with Koji, kombucha, b**r, and w**e and learning from Rose and Yoko & friends!

A few spots left! One week away on Sunday Oct 25 at 3pm. register at the Linkinbio

10/15/2026

SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT ✨
Can a room tell you who someone is? Photographer Shellburne Thurber has spent nearly five decades showing us that it can.

Based in Cambridge, Shellburne photographs interiors as stand-ins for the people who live in them: her late mother’s childhood home, back road motels, abandoned Southern houses, and the offices of psychoanalysts, collected in her 2023 book Analysis. Her work explores loss, memory, and the energy that lived-in spaces hold. She is a Radcliffe Institute Fellow and Anonymous Was A Woman grantee, with work in the collections of the MFA Boston and Harvard Art Museums.

Join us as she shares how a portrait of a home becomes a portrait of a life.

📅 Tuesday, November 10, 2026
🕡 Doors Open: 6PM
Program: 6:30 to 7:30 PM
Community Reception: 7:30-8:30PM
📍 MIT Welcome Center, Cambridge, MA
(Enter via the Kendall/MIT Open Space entrance)

Free and open to the public.
Registration is required.
See link in bio.

10/13/2026

SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT ✨
When did humans first make a home? Harvard paleoarchaeologist Amy E. Clark joins us for Home & Habitat to explore that question. Amy is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Harvard who studies the evolution of modern humans and Neanderthals through the living spaces they left behind. By examining how early humans organized their spaces, she uncovers clues about group size, social relationships, and how people moved across the landscape. She leads active fieldwork at a Stone Age rockshelter on Morocco’s Atlantic coast.

Her work brings what she calls a feminist approach to human history, centering the home as essential to our evolution rather than a footnote to hunting and tools.

📅 Tuesday, November 10, 2026
🕡 Doors Open: 6PM
Program: 6:30 to 7:30 PM
Community Reception: 7:30-8:30PM
📍 MIT Welcome Center, Cambridge, MA
(Enter via the Kendall/MIT Open Space entrance)

Free and open to the public.
Registration is required.
See link in bio.

10/09/2026

SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT ✨
We’re honored to welcome Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah, Boston’s Poet Laureate, to our last lecture of 2026, Home & Habitat. Emmanuel is a Ghanaian American poet, editor, and educator who grew up in Boston and still calls it home. Appointed in 2025 as the city’s fourth Poet Laureate, they spent six years teaching English at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School and now serve as school librarian at the Joseph Lee School in Dorchester. Their debut chapbook, “not without small joys”, explores joy as a force that carries us through hardship.

At Home & Habitat, Emmanuel will read live from “”Self Portrait as Multiple Dreamscapes, Each Craning Its Neck Towards Home,”” a poem about longing, belonging, and the places we carry with us.

EVENT INFO:
Tuesday, November 10, 2026
Doors Open: 6PM
Program: 6:30 to 7:30 PM
Community Reception: 7:30-8:30PM

📍 MIT Welcome Center, Cambridge, MA
(Enter via the Kendall/MIT Open Space entrance)

Free and open to the public.
🎟️ Registration is required. See link in bio. 🔗

10/08/2026

SAVE THE DATE 🏡

What makes a place feel like home? Is it the walls around us, the people within them, or something we carry inside ourselves?

Join us for Home & Habitat, an evening where art and science meet to explore how the spaces we inhabit shape who we are, how we feel, and how we belong.

📅 Tuesday, November 10, 2026
🕡 Doors Open: 6PM Program: 6:30 to 7:30 PM
📍 MIT Welcome Center, Cambridge, MA
(Enter via the Kendall/MIT Open Space entrance)

Free and open to the public. Registration link in bio.

In partnership with BioMed Realty (space provided by), WGBH GBH Forum Network , and MIT Open Space Programming. (MIT Open Space Programming )

Speakers to be introduced soon. Stay tuned. ✨

10/02/2026

Moments from Transcendence & Entanglement.

An evening with Alan Lightman, Maria Molteni, and Russell Powell, asking what it means to feel awe in a world science can explain. Lightman’s book, The Transcendent Brain reminded us that wonder and reason can share the same room.

Thank you to everyone who joined us.

09/30/2026

Each year, Catalyst Conversations brings six lectures to our community, free and open to the public. Our speakers are a panel of artists and scientists drawn from the extraordinary educational and cultural resources only Boston can offer.

2026 has taken us inside the sensorium, into the invisible, through transcendence and entanglement, in search of beauty and truth, and most recently into matters of light.

One conversation remains this year:
🏡 Home & Habitat | November 10th

Join us as we close out the season exploring the spaces we live in and the environments that shape us. Details and registration at the link in bio.

05/25/2026

Maria Molteni joined us in April for our Catalyst Conversations “Transcendence and Entanglement.” Molteni’s work lives at the edges of art, science, mysticism, and the sea, so it makes perfect sense that their next destination is the Arctic Circle Residency.

They are currently raising funds in support of their expedition for spring of 2027. Check out the landing page on their site to learn how you can support them!

http://mariamolteni.com/arctic-circle-residency

You can also check out their online store, which offers limited edition artwork, tarot readings, apparel, publications and more!

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Finally, you can sign up for their newsletters and follow along on social media @‌strega_maria for special offers, including a forthcoming tarot portrait series, which also supports this work!

http://mariamolteni.com/newsletters

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15 Newbury St
Boston, MA
02116

Website

https://linktr.ee/Catalyst_Conversations

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