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Danielle Wood speaks at Chicago Humanities Festival 2018

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Chicago Humanities Festival

Chicago Humanities Festival

As a high-school intern at the Kennedy Space Center, Danielle Wood was inspired by NASA’s inimitable capacity for precision, collaboration, and achievement. She dreamed of a career in the space program, but also aspired to serve communities directly—while advancing opportunities for women of color. Wood recently established Space Enabled, a research group within the MIT Media Lab, whose mission is to advance justice on Earth using designs enabled by space technologies. Space Enabled brings together scholars; partners from governments, agencies, and socially-minded entrepreneurial groups; and puts it all together to prototype space-technology applications in areas such as managing invasive plants, caring for water resources, and even curbing the spread of disease. Join Wood as she reveals the myriad ways we can use lessons drawn from space for the benefit of all humankind.

The Chicago Humanities Festival connects people to the ideas that shape and define us, and promotes the lifelong exploration of what it means to be human. CHF fosters curiosity, celebrates creativity, explores the boundaries of contemporary knowledge and culture, and challenges us to see ourselves and the world anew.

The Chicago Humanities Festival began in 1989 as a dream shared by a determined group of Chicago’s cultural leaders eager to extend the rich ideas of the humanities to wider public audiences.

Since then, the Festival has expanded into a year-round presenter, gathering some of the world's most exciting thinkers, artists, and performers to celebrate ideas in the context of civic life. We bring together novelists, scholars, musicians, archaeologists, historians, artists, performers, playwrights, theologians, poets, architects, policy makers, and others—both established and emerging talents—to offer conversations, performances, screenings, and exhibits on a theme of universal interest, such as Speed, Citizens, Belief, and Style.

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