We use cookies on this site to enhance your experience.
By selecting “Accept” and continuing to use this website, you consent to the use of cookies.
The Laurier Lifelong Learning lecture series is open to everyone.
Upcoming offerings are listed below. Be the first to know about new and upcoming offerings by signing up for our email list.
- Location: All lectures are held at the Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex Community Pavillion.
- Price: Thursday 90-minute lectures are $16 + HST.
Winter 2026 Lectures
Register for Winter 2026 courses on our registration website.
Reach out to lifelonglearning@wlu.ca with any hopes, dreams, or topics of interest!
Interested in teaching? Apply to lead a LLL lecture!
Thursday, Jan. 22 (1:30 - 3 p.m)
Course Description
In early 2020, the onset of COVID-19 posed a challenge for International Olympic Committee officials and Japanese organizers tasked to deliver the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. While the managing parties thought it was possible to proceed on schedule in February and early March, the realities of the ravages of COVID-19 soon sunk in, while athletes decried their training circumstances and ability to prepare and perform in July and August, and voiced concern for their personal health and the risks entailed in a mass gathering. Dr. Wenn/Stephen (you choose) will detail the path to postponement and the efforts required to ramp up for the Games in 2021, while also charting the fascinating Tokyo 2020 journey of Canada's gold medal-decathlete, Damian Warner.
Instructor Bio
Stephen Wenn is in his 33rd year as a member of Laurier's Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education having also served terms as its Chair and Undergraduate Advisor. He obtained his BA (1982) and MA (1986) degrees at Western University, and then completed his PhD (1993) in Exercise and Sport Science at the Pennsylvania State University while focusing on the IOC's embrace of commercial revenue from the television industry. Stephen is a co- or lead author of four books on Olympic history: A Games Changer: The International Olympic Committee, Tokyo 2020, and COVID-19 (2025); The Gold in the Rings: The People and Events that Transformed the Olympic Games (2020); Tarnished Rings: The International Olympic Committee and the Salt Lake City Bid Scandal (2011, rev.ed. 2022); and, Selling the Five Rings: The International Olympic Committee and the Rise of Olympic Commercialism (2002, rev.ed., 2004). He is a past-President of the North American Society for Sport History (2007-2009). Recently, Stephen entered the world of podcasting in an attempt to make sense of his lifelong dedication to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Thursday, Jan. 29 (1:30 - 3 p.m)
Course Description
This lecture will explore how and why bodysnatching became such a phenomenon that Victorians policed their graveyards and kept watch over dead bodies. Starting with the “Murder Act” of 1753, exploring the underside of the Victorian medical body trade, and concluding with the infamous Burke and Hare serial killers, when grave robbing shifted to actual murders.
Instructor Bio
Amy Milne-Smith is Associate Professor of History at Laurier.
Thursday, Feb. 5 (1:30 - 3 p.m)
Course Description
Please join us for an afternoon filled with fashion and the stories they carry. Enjoy this feast for the eyes and ears as we journey back in time through a curated collection of pieces from the late 19th century to present day. Discover how fashion trends repeat themselves and how they are a reflection of the times.
Instructor Bio
Always interested in the art of ‘dressing up’, Rachel Kaufman Behling opened Auburn Vintage Clothiers in 2014. A degree in English Literature from the University of Guelph led her into the world of theatre which is where she has been involved for more than 20 years as actor, producer, director, playwright and wardrobe. Rachel sits on the board of the Fashion History Museum and the Grand Philharmonic Choir.
Thursday, Feb. 12 (1:30 - 3 p.m)
Course Description
Have you ever heard of a Manitoba farmer named James Freer? You're not alone; most people haven't.
This lecture will shine a light on this little-known hero in Canadian history. He is not only "Canada's first filmmaker", but he single-handedly was responsible for stimulation a wave of immigration that saw millions from the UK and 750,000 from Ukraine come to Canada at the turn of the 20th Century. He also introduced film as a communications tool for governments creating an early model for the National Film Board of Canada and for other governments around the world. He did all this while bailing hay and raising eight children.
Instructor Bio
Mark Terry, PhD, is a Faculty member of the Department of English and Film at Wilfrid Laurier University. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and the Explorers Club. His innovative work in film has been recognized by Queen Elizabeth II with her Diamond Jubilee Medal; by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television with their Humanitarian Award; and by the Explorers Club with their highest honour, the Stefansson Medal.
Thursday, Feb. 19 (1:30 - 3 p.m)
Course Description
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) shipped thousands of horses and cattle from the United States to Europe as humanitarian aid for countries devastated by Nazi occupation; Poland received more animals than any other country. The animals were cared for on their trans-Atlantic voyages by men recruited by the Church of the Brethren. Known as "seagoing cowboys", they ensured the safe delivery of livestock that would help stimulate agricultural recovery and relieve hunger. This lecture will explore the many overlapping aspects of this little-known history, revealing how the animal aid shaped postwar reconstruction and reflected emerging Cold War tensions.
Instructor Bio
Eva Plach is Associate Professor of History at Wilfrid Laurier University and chair of the History Department. A specialist in the history of Poland, she teaches courses in modern European history and the history of the Holocaust and leads field courses to Poland that explore memory, trauma, and the legacies of World War II. Her research weaves social, cultural, and political histories to examine how ordinary people and institutions responded to crisis.
Thursday, Feb. 26 (1:30 - 3 p.m)
Course Description
From the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, Europe was the scene of an extraordinary and unique historical phenomenon: the Witch Craze. In massive hunts and trials, state and religious authorities prosecuted and executed thousands of people, most of them women, for witchcraft. In this talk, you will learn who the witches were, why and how they were hunted, and what happened during a witch trial.
Instructor Bio
Darryl Dee is an Associate Professor of History at Wilfrid Laurier University. He is a specialist on the history of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.
Thursday, Mar. 5 (1:30 - 3 p.m)
Course Description
Artist activism might well be as old as art itself. Artists observe and often critique what they don’t like about the societies in which they live, and the distance from critique to protest can be quite short. This presentation will take a closer look at present-day Germany where artists have felt compelled to use their art, and their positions as artists, to resist an anti-democratic shift in the country’s political culture. After briefly exploring the influence of art on the development of a national memory culture after the Third Reich, our attention will turn to more recent artist activism addressing the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment, the surge in popularity of the nationalist Alternative für Deutschland (= Alternative for Germany) party, and the controversy surrounding Germany’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas. Specific artistic interventions in the public discourse on Germany’s democratic stability will be examined with a view to answering a key question: does artist activism provide an effective defense of German democracy?
Instructor Bio
Prof. James Skidmore is the Chair of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies and Director of the Waterloo Centre for German Studies, a privately endowed research institute at the University of Waterloo. He always enjoys sharing his ideas with Laurier Lifelong Learners.
Thursday, Mar. 12 (1:30 - 3 p.m)
Course Description
This lecture will unpack country music’s roots in blues and folk, and trace its musical branches that span across the 20th and 21st centuries. These include whole new genres (bluegrass, rockabilly), subgenres (string band, honky-tonk), hybrids (Western swing, folk-rock), reactionary movements (Outlaw country, alt-country), neo-traditionist movements (old-time, Americana), and cross-overs (Dolly Parton, Shania Twain, Taylor Swift). We will also consider production aesthetics like the Nashville Sound, and country’s influence on instruments like the steel guitar.
Instructor Bio
Brent Hagerman teaches “Guitars, Hooks and Beats: Music since 1950” in the Faculty of Music, performs on guitar and mandolin in bands ranging from Irish Trad (Mighty Kin) to bluegrass (The Never Willbillies), and firmly agrees with that great 20th century philosopher, Bruce Springsteen, that “you can change someone’s life in three minutes with the right song.”
Thursday, Mar. 19 (1:30 - 3 p.m)
Course Description
Scrabble, Chess, Euchre, hockey, baseball, World of Warcraft, escape rooms… What do these activities all have in common? Well, we refer to all of them as games. But what is it that makes them games as opposed to other activities such as doing our taxes or building a fence for the backyard? In other words, can we give a definition that covers all the different activities that we refer to when use the word game?
The late Bernard Suits, who taught philosophy at the University of Waterloo from 1966 to 1994, proposed an influential definition of games in his book The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia. He also provided arguments for why games are an important part of what philosophers from Aristotle to the present day have called “the good life.” His book, as well as his other writings on games and sports have given rise to a multitude of responses. Philosophers of games, philosophers of sport, and others who study games have proposed alternative accounts both of what games are and what their value is.
In this lecture we examine the question of what makes an activity a game and will look at what Suits and other philosophers have said about the value of games. All the philosophers we will discuss believe that games are good for us, but they disagree about how games make our lives better. Based on their work, I will offer up some reasons for why playing games helps us to live well.
Instructor Bio
Dr. Gary Foster is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wilfrid Laurier. He is the author of Alienation and Identity in Romantic Love (Lexington Books, 2024) and editor of Desire, Love, and Identity: Philosophy of Sex and Love (Oxford University Press, 2017). Additionally, he has published numerous articles in scholarly journals dealing with the relationship between love and personal identity. Recently, he has switched his research (and teaching) focus to the philosophy of sport and games. His 2024 article “VAR and Flow in Soccer (Football): Changes to the Fan Experience,” was published in the journal Sport, Ethics and Philosophy.
Spring 2026 Lectures
Register for Spring 2026 courses on our registration website.
Reach out to lifelonglearning@wlu.ca with any hopes, dreams, or topics of interest!
Interested in teaching? Apply to lead a LLL lecture!
Thursday, April 9 (1:30 - 3 pm)
Course Description
From a time in the early 60s when radio from the North Sea broadcasted new sounds from North America to a British public hungry to step out of a black and white and into a technicolour world, repurposing of melodic, rhythmic and lyrical ideas has become more and more commonplace. It begs the question(s): Who owns a melody? Can a drumbeat be copyrighted? This lecture dives deep into the stories behind songs that may have borrowed too much, how popular music’s tendency to ‘nick’ has evolved with the technology involved in its creation, and how the rise of artificial intelligence may blur the lines to a point where it’s impossible to decipher human creations from mashups of the works of recorded history.
Instructor
A self-identified music fanatic, Stuart Reed caught the bug around the time that Nirvana took over top spot from Michael Jackson in the charts in the early nineties. A guitarist from 13, a drummer three years later, he is hardly a professional but rarely strays far from an instrument or a turntable. In 2022, he co-authored (alongside music industry veteran Jackie Dean) a 4 course certificate program ‘Navigating the Music Industry Ecosystem’ at Laurier’s Faculty of Music, focusing on subjects such as copyrights, licensing, record deals, business planning and diversification. He is lead instructor on these courses, as well as currently adapting them for a non-credit cohort.
Thursday, April 16 (1:30 - 3 pm)
Course Description
Many of us first learn about risks not through direct experience, but through what sociologist Ulrich Beck called “second-hand non-experience.” In other words, most of what we know about risks—whether nuclear war, pandemics, or new technologies—comes from news, film, television, books, and, today, social media. Communication scholars describe this as the mediation of risk: stories about danger are filtered through familiar narratives and repeated storylines. The way these stories are framed shapes how we interpret them and how seriously we take them. Media can even “pre-mediate” our expectations, priming us to anticipate certain threats and amplifying our fears. In this talk, I will focus on how popular stories both reflect and help create what cultural theorists call a “structure of feeling”: the shared mood or emotional atmosphere of a particular period. Looking back to the mid-20th century and moving forward to today, popular culture provides an archive of these changing emotional climates. For example, alien invasion films echoed of the 1950s and 60s reflected then-new Cold War fears. Disaster movies and strange phenomena books popular in the 1970s captured anxieties about environmental and technological breakdown. More recent popular culture reflects shifting concerns about climate change, pandemics, geopolitics, societal breakdown, and artificial intelligence, among other concerns. By examining popular cultural texts, my talk will illustrate the ways we can better understand how media shape our sense of what is risky—and why certain dangers feel especially urgent at particular moments in time.
Instructor
Dr. Penelope Ironstone is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, where she teaches and conducts research on risk communication, health and science communication, and the cultural dimensions of how societies understand and respond to hazards. Her academic work draws on cultural studies and media analysis to explore how pandemics, scientific knowledge, public health messaging, misinformation, and other risk-related narratives circulate through popular media and public discourse. Her research includes culturally grounded examinations of popular understandings of microbes —from influenza to COVID-19 to the human microbiome—and investigations into how media and cultural texts shape public perceptions of risk and uncertainty. A past recipient of the Laurier Award for Teaching Excellence, Dr. Ironstone offers courses that engage students with the production and interpretation of risk communication across historical and contemporary contexts, helping them critically assess how media and culture frame what we understand as danger and safety.
Thursday, April 23 (1:30 - 3 pm)
Course Description
This lecture invites a gentle conversation about death, grief, and loss, and how compassionate communities can help us support one another. We’ll explore the value of talking openly, reducing isolation, and strengthening connection - no pressure to share, just a welcoming space to listen and reflect.
Instructor
Dr. Cara Grosset is a Registered Social Worker and a Fellow in Thanatology. Cara is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University, and in the Thanatology and Disability Studies programs at King’s University College, Western University. Cara works in private practice where she supports grieving individuals and families of all ages and abilities.
Thursday, April 30 (1:30 - 3 pm)
Course Description
Social media shapes how we receive news, form political opinions, and interact with one another, yet there is little consensus on whether, or how, it should be regulated. This lecture examines empirical evidence on social media's effects on polarization, mental health, and public opinion, drawing on recent interdisciplinary research from economics, political science, and behavioral science. Central to the debate is whether researchers can identify causal effects of social media on behaviour and beliefs, or whether the existing evidence remains correlational and therefore open to competing interpretations. The lecture reviews how researchers attempt to establish causality and what their findings imply for public policy. It also considers the practical challenges governments face when considering social media regulation, including trade-offs between free expression and harm reduction, the limits of existing policy tools, and the potential unintended consequences of policy interventions.
Instructor
Juan S. Morales is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University. He is an applied micro-economist working in the fields of political economy and development economics, with particular research interests in media, conflict, political communication, and legislative behaviour. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Toronto and a BCS (Computer Science) from the University of Waterloo.
Thursday, May 7 (1:30 - 3 pm)
Course Description
Elections in Canada, federally and provincially, are often defined by bold campaign promises. Yet once in office, governments frequently struggle to deliver on them. Why does this happen? Have voters been intentionally misled, or is campaigning and governing more complicated than it appears? In this talk, former politician and political advisor John Milloy examines the realities of both election campaigns and governing, explaining why turning promises into policy is so difficult—and why governments sometimes fail to keep their “darn” promises.
Instructor
John Milloy is the Director of the Centre for Public Ethics and Assistant Professor of Public Ethics at Martin Luther University College. He is also the inaugural Practitioner in Residence in Wilfrid Laurier’s Political Science Department. From 2003 to 2014, John served as a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario for the riding of Kitchener Centre, holding several cabinet portfolios. John’s political experience extends to the federal scene where he worked for several senior Cabinet Ministers in the mid-90s, as well as spending five years in the office of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.
Thursday, May 14 (1:30 - 3 pm)
Course Description
Urbanization and modern lifestyles have dramatically reduced human contact with nonhuman life, contributing to what scholars describe as an “extinction of experience” and a decline in environmental connection. This lecture will explore the reasons for this decline, and how designs for more-than-human futures could help to facilitate healthier relationships with nonhumans. Visual art, design and speculative methods will help to illustrate future scenarios for radical co-existence and sustainability.
Instructor
Dr. Lauren Judge is an Assistant Professor in the department of Geography and Environmental Studies and an interdisciplinary artist. She uses arts-based methods to investigate Canadian landscapes and more-than-human futures.
Thursday, May 21 (1:30 - 3 pm)
Course Description
Canada's culinary history is an amalgam of ingredients, flavours, and traditions representing the nation's diverse population. What Canadians have eaten throughout time can tell us a great deal about politics, economics, religion, society, and culture. This presentation will explore how the vast cookbook collection stored at the University of Guelph's Archival & Special Collections is being used by librarians, historians, and researchers as an innovative way to study Canada's vast history through the lens of food.
Instructor
Rebecca Beausaert is the Francis and Ruth Redelmeier Professor in Rural History at the University of Guelph. Her research explores food, agriculture, gender, and leisure in rural and small-town Ontario in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Ashley Shifflett McBrayne is the Rare Book Librarian at the University of Guelph's McLaughlin Library. She has worked with and catalogued cookbooks for over 10 years.
Thursday, May 28 (1:30 - 3 pm)
Course Description
“Wait! Not so fast!” In our day-to-day lives there are many situations that call for patience – waiting for someone else to go first, moving more slowly, or enduring difficult circumstances. Patience is often regarded as a virtue.
But sometimes there’s a voice saying, “Come on! Get moving!” Whether the context is with work colleagues or family members or perfect strangers, the message becomes, “Be more productive!” or “Drive faster!” or “Stop lollygagging!”
Although this presentation will introduce some personal and everyday examples when we are called upon to be patient or impatient, the deeper goal is to make a connection with current political, social, and ecological issues. Within larger world issues, we show up with our individual personalities – perhaps more patient, perhaps more impatient – but we also cultivate patience and impatience as communities, even as nations.
On the one hand, the politics of patience means taking the long view and sometimes trusting in the power of social movements that are steadily chipping away, chipping away, chipping away toward a better world. On the other hand, the politics of impatience means getting appropriately worked up, getting exasperated, and hurrying to change the world for the better.
Therefore our leaders call out, “What do we want?” Millions of us answer: “Democracy! Peace! Ecological health!” The leader calls out again: “When do we want it?” And we reply: “Sometime next year!”
Wait – is this one of those times when we must become much, much more impatient? Come to this presentation if you can’t wait to find out the answer.
Instructor
Matthew Bailey-Dick worked as an educator in both academic and non-academic settings, as a pastor in three Mennonite churches, and as a hospice volunteer. In his graduate studies Matthew looked into the connections between adult education, death education, and hope.
Thursday, June 4 (1:30 - 3 pm)
Course Description
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) looms large in narratives of Western music history. Typically viewed as a “transitional figure” between the Classical and Romantic eras, he was among the first composers to work in a freelance capacity, rather than relying primarily on a wealthy aristocratic patron or the church for his livelihood. Beethoven was also unprecedented in his historical self-consciousness, as expressed by Laura Tunbridge: “Beethoven and his contemporaries self-consciously cultivated an image of the composer for posterity, demonstrating a new awareness that as his music circulated more widely and was played and discussed with greater skill, his name might last beyond their lifetimes” (Tunbridge, 2020).
This lecture aims to show that many aspects of the Western art music tradition that are routinely taken for granted actually stem from Beethoven and the cultural moment that he occupied, whether it be concert etiquette requiring audiences to sit in reverent silence at music performances or perceptions of musical composition as a protracted process necessitating great effort and deliberation. Outlining Beethoven’s three “creative” periods, the lecture will discuss the tendency in post-Beethovenian music historiography to prioritize innovation over an adherence to convention. It will also show how the case of Beethoven has often made listeners assume that a deep connection exists between a composer’s personal life and art. Looking briefly at some of the aesthetic trends that came after Beethoven, the lecture will conclude by considering the long shadow that he cast over the nineteenth century. Students will hopefully come away with a deeper understanding of Beethoven’s legacy and a fuller appreciation of the ways in which he has shaped how we think about art music today.
Instructor
Eva Branda holds a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Toronto and teaches music history courses at Wilfrid Laurier University. With special attention to Dvořák, her research focuses primarily on issues of reception and genre in the late nineteenth century. Her work has appeared in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Music & Letters, Cambridge Opera Journal, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, and Acta Musicologica. She also has a chapter on Dvořák’s “Dumky” Trio in Chamber Music in Europe: 1850–1918 and a chapter on the nineteenth-century Czech symphonic tradition in the recently published book A History of Music in the Czech Lands. Eva will be contributing to the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Antonín Dvořák.
Thursday, June 4 (1:30 - 3 pm)
Course Description
While grim, 1945 was also a fascinating year in which we saw the war in the Pacific / Asia draw to a close and coming to an end quicker than some would have thought just a few years earlier. Why did the war in Asia end when it did? In this talk, Dr. Cyr discusses the Battle of Okinawa and the deployment of atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, plus other intersecting events like the Battle of Iwo Jima, the Red Army's invasion of Manchuria, and the release of CIA signal intelligence findings from the era, to help us understand why WWII in Asia drew to a rapid close in the late summer of 1945. Covering critical historical sources, debates within the study of history, and Dr. Cyr's own battlefield touring pictures from 2006, let's revisit the end of the war--and memories of the war--decades later to help our understanding of the dour yet seismic year that was 1945.
Instructor
Dr. Dylan A. Cyr obtained his Ph.D. in History from Western University in 2009, and since then has been instructing in university classrooms across Southern Ontario. Centered mostly at UW and WLU, Dr. Cyr specializes in a wide array of topics that largely boil down to geopolitics, environmental history, and, more recently, popular culture. His 2013 publication in Water History helped to innovate environmental and medical military history with four major conference presentations (including for The American Society of Environmental Historians and the Association of American Geographers) disseminating the findings that environmental factors did play major roles in the soldier experience and conduct of the Pacific War. Recently, Dr. Cyr has overhauled HI249: Second World War in Asia for Laurier's History Department and, as such, has been revisiting his original research on WWII. Dylan lives in Waterloo with his wife and daughter; has been researching pop culture of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s; and is a fan of film, music, hiking, swimming, and Lego.