Amitav Ghosh – the award-winning novelist named by Foreign Policy magazine as “one of the most important global thinkers of the preceding decade” – will discuss migration in the age of climate change. He will share poignant stories he gathered from migrant camps in Italy, told in the migrants' native languages, offering a unique window into the personal journeys of those displaced by climate-induced challenges. 

Open to the general public, as well as the region’s academic communities, the lecture will be followed by a book signing with his books available for purchase. Advance registration for the keynote address is encouraged.

Ghosh’s work has been translated into 30+ languages and whose essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic and The New York Times. He holds four Lifetime Achievement awards and five honorary doctorates. His accolades include being awarded the Padma Shri by the President of India, being selected as a joint winner with Margaret Atwood of a Dan David Prize, and becoming the first English-language writer to receive the Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary honor.

Ghosh earned the inaugural Utah Award for the Environmental Humanities for his book, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, which Loyola students have been studying. His newest book, Smoke & Ashes – which unravels the impact of the opium trade on global history and in his own family – was named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Foreign Policy, Literary Hub and The Millions. 

The keynote address will cap off various faculty workshops, student-faculty colloquia and activities following the theme of Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor. Since 1986, Loyola’s Humanities Center has sponsored the annual Humanities Symposium – a series of events related to a particular text for students, faculty, friends of the University and the Baltimore community. The main goal has been to get a large portion of the Loyola community to read the same work at roughly the same time and to be engaged in a common inquiry. Keynote speakers have included Elie Wiesel, Toni Morrison, Tracy Chevalier, Czeslaw Milosz, Phil Klay, Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale and William Bennett.