Seasons of Life lecture series

The Seasons of Life lecture series has become an established part of our programme to inform, discuss and debate with our community issues which affect our health and society. Each year experts in diverse fields including science, clinical and public medicine, social sciences and the arts bring their knowledge and insights to a chosen topic or theme.

The lectures are designed for non-scientific audiences and questions are welcomed. They are free and open to the public, however places are limited and bookings are essential.

Previous lecture series have highlighted key events during the life course - conception, childhood growth, adolescence and breast cancer. They have considered social and medical issues of reproduction and the importance of children having a healthy start to life. Our 2009 series looked at aspects of Man’s evolution from the origins of the human body plan to our instinctive love of art.

The 2010 series reflected the Institute's increasing focus on nutrition. It explored some of the ways the environment impacts on food supplies, the value of  food and how nutrition affects our present and future health – and that of our children.

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The next series of lectures will take place during the first half of 2012. Read about previous lecture series below or go to individual lectures archived  in our events section.
For further information email Liggins Institute

2006

Our first series dealt with aspects of science, medicine, social and ethical issues related to conception, childhood, adolescence and women’s health – in particular breast cancer.

1. The importance of a good conception
   Dr Frank Bloomfield, Liggins Institute
   Dr John Peek, Fertility Associates, Auckland
   Dr Paul Hofman, Liggins Institute
   
   Experts in neonatology, assisted reproductive technologies and paediatric endocrinology discussed the importance of good maternal nutrition around the time of conception, the science behind in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and the effects of reproductive technologies on child development.
2. The vital years of childhood
   Dr Richie Poulton, Director, Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Unit, University of Otago
   Dr Susan Morton (Liggins Institute and School of Population Health, The University of Auckland)
   
   The speakers talked about long term (longitudinal) studies of child development including results from the internationally recognised “Dunedin study” begun in the 1970s and plans for a new study (since established as “Growing up in New Zealand”).
3. Evolution of the adolescent brain
   Professor Peter Gluckman, Liggins Institute
   Dr Sue Bagshaw, adolescent mental health practitioner and researcher, Christchurch
   
   Speakers discussed the "difficult" adolescent years: the mismatch between physical, neurological and emotional maturity and strategies to help teenagers make the transition from childhood to adulthood.
4. Hormones and Hope – breast cancer under the microscope
   Professor Peter Lobie and Dr Jo Perry (Liggins Institute)
   Ginny Harwood, Educator for NZ Breast Cancer Foundation
   
   What exactly is breast cancer, how does it spread through the body, what treatments are available and how do they work? Plus the real-life experiences and concerns of New Zealand women.

 
2007

The Institute launched its 2007 series with a lecture by renowned scientist and television presenter, Professor Lord Robert Winston. Lectures in this series explored the role of early influences on long term health - including personal happiness, child health, changing patterns of reproduction, and international approaches to optimising fetal development.

1. Can science make us happy?
   Professor Lord Robert Winston, Imperial College London
   A journey through time exploring the nature of happiness – what is happiness, what makes us happy, can happiness be manipulated by meddling with our genes and the way they work?
2. Too young to be parents? – early puberty and teen pregnancies
   Dr Deborah Sloboda (Liggins Institute)
   Dr Sue Bagshaw (198 Youth Health Centre and Christchurch School of Medicine)
   
   The early life influences that affect sexual maturity and the impact that earlier development has on our society.
3. Leaving it too late? – social pressures and declining fertility
   Dr Susan Morton (Liggins Institute and School of Population Health)
   Dr Richard Fisher (Fertility Associates, Auckland)
   
   Current social and economic conditions drive many women to delay starting their families. The lecturers discussed the impact on fertility and child health and how science has helped women to extend their childbearing years.
4. Getting it just right – strategies to optimise pregnancies
   Professor Peter Gluckman (Liggins Institute)
   
   International strategies to improve pregnancies, maternal and infant health in developing countries.

 
2008

The importance of a healthy start to life – what is the evidence?

Researchers at the Liggins Institute and their colleagues around the world have shown that the environment that a baby develops in has long lasting effects on its future health and wellbeing.

1. Happy mothers, healthy children
   Professor Michael Meaney, McGill University, Canada
   
   A distinguished academic discussed scientific evidence for the importance of early mother-child interactions in determining the long-term mental and physical health of her children.
2. Challenges in childhood
   Associate Professor Frank Bloomfield and
   Professor Wayne Cutfield Liggins Institute
   
   A neonatologist and a paediatrician discussed current research and the challenges in caring for preterm infants and helping them to manage the particular risks they face in leading healthy lives.
   
   What is it that sets children on the path to obesity and ill health – is it a diet of fast, fatty foods or too much time in front of a TV screen? Could it be that the pathway is set before the child is born?
3. No escape!
   Professor Peter Gluckman, Liggins Institute
   We cannot escape our biology; humans now live in very different ways and environments from when the majority of our evolution occurred. A mismatch arises when there is discordance between the evolved state of an organism and its environment. Professor Gluckman discussed a striking example - the modern phenomenon of adolescence.
4. The value of life
   Professor Peter Gluckman, Liggins Institute
   
   A new view on the value of human life and evidence for the relative economic and social advantage of intervening in the early stages of the life course for later benefits such as improved learning capacity and reduced risk of life-style associated diseases in populations of differing economic standing.

 
2009 Darwin’s Legacy

To mark Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of his landmark publication On the Origin of Species, the series took an eclectic look at evolution. Five distinguished speakers discussed aspects of Man’s evolution - from the origins of the human body plan to our instinctive love of art.

1. Death, Sex and Evolution - 380 million year old fishes and the origins of the human body plan
   Dr John Long, (former) Head of Sciences at Museum Victoria, Melbourne
   
   Perfectly preserved 3-dimensional fish fossils from the remote Kimberley district in Western Australia are revealing new insights into how the human body plan was first shaped by evolution and the origins of sex in vertebrates.
2. The Cousin Marriage Controversy - from Darwin to the US and Modern Britain
   Professor Hamish Spencer, Head of Department of Zoology, The University of Otago
   
   Charles Darwin worried that the early deaths of three of his ten children were attributable to the intermarriage of several generations of the Darwin and Wedgwood families. This lecture examines the genetic validity of controversial laws which ban marriage between first cousins.
3. Evolution, Art, Science and Purpose
   Distinguished Professor Brian Boyd, Department of English, The University of Auckland
   
   Does evolution by natural selection rob life of purpose? Darwin, says Professor Boyd, has made it possible to understand how purpose, like life, builds from small beginnings, from the ground up. In a very real sense, evolution creates purpose.
4. Darwin and Medicine
   Distinguished Professor Peter Gluckman FRS, Liggins Institute, The University of Auckland
   
   Head of the institute’s Centre for Human Evolution, Adaptation and Disease, Professor Gluckman explained how evolution is geared for survival of the species rather than for individuals to have long and healthy lives.
5. The Art Instinct: why we evolved to love beauty
   Professor Denis Dutton, Department of Philosophy, The University of Canterbury
   
   Author of The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, Professor Dutton shows how Darwin explains why - from Homer of the Iliad to the Homer of The Simpsons, from the Lascaux caves to Carnegie Hall - human beings are enchanted by the arts.

2010 Nutrition – more than a good square meal

Research at the Liggins Institute demonstrates the importance of children having a healthy start to life. Nutrition is potentially the most important environmental factor determining later life health. Poor antenatal nutrition, both under- and over-nutrition, may lead to chronic metabolic diseases (diabetes, obesity, heart disease) in adulthood, which in turn become major public health issues. As we age, nutrition becomes an important factor in maintaining health and reducing the incidence of disease. These lectures explored some of the ways in which our environment impacts on our food supplies, the value of our food and how nutrition affects our present and future health – and that of our children.

1. Matching our diet to our genes: a new way to optimise our health
   Professor Lynn Ferguson Head of the Discipline of Nutrition, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, The University of Auckland
   
   Understanding how our genes interact with our environment and the food we eat will help to reduce our risk of developing particular diseases. Professor Ferguson explained how we can potentially harness this knowledge to optimise our health.
    
2. You are what your mother eats: the impact of maternal nutrition on children’s reproductive development
   Dr Deborah Sloboda Senior Research Fellow Liggins Institute
   
   Fetal physiologist, Dr Sloboda explored the ways in which a mother’s diet during pregnancy and lactation affects her children's reproductive health and development.
    
3. A delicate balance: foraging, food and fat
   Professor David Raubenheimer Professor of Nutritional Ecology, Institute of Natural Sciences, Massey University, Albany
   
   Biologist and adventurer, Professor Raubenheimer described new research that is explaining how animals in the wild forage for foods and how this can help us to understand why humans, who have potentially many more choices, tend to over eat energy rich foods and become obese.
    
4. Super foods: can certain foods improve our health?
   Professor Paul Moughan Distinguished Professor, Riddet Institute, Massey University
   
   It is widely believed that some foods contain ingredients that have particular benefits to human health. The marketing of so-called ‘super foods’ often includes quite remarkable claims – from curing cancer to prolonging youth. What is the evidence for such claims, do super foods really exist?
    
5. Is it safe to eat?
   Professor Ian Shaw Professor of Toxicology, University of Canterbury, Professor of Food Safety, Lincoln University
   
   Industrialisation has resulted in tens of thousands of new chemical contaminants – some of these get into our food and are having biological effects that will change our futures.