Spencer Lecture to feature ‘Dark Laboratory’ author Tao Leigh Goffe
LAWRENCE — A scholar and creator of the climate research organization Dark Laboratory will present the 2026 University of Kansas Kenneth A. Spencer Lecture.
Tao Leigh Goffe, author of the 2025 work “Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis,” explores the question of what lessons island nations can share in understanding sovereignty. The book examines the influence of colonial histories of race, geology, climate and media.
Goffe will present the Spencer lecture at 7 p.m. Nov. 9 at Liberty Hall, 644 Massachusetts St. Free tickets are available online.
“Goffe invokes a range of methods and approaches, representing lines of inquiry across disciplines, which makes her work exceptionally resonant for The Commons,” said Emily Ryan, director of The Commons. “Our work is always to build spaces informed by a diverse array of inputs and perspectives as we create opportunities for new possibilities to emerge.”
Goffe created a gathering space — both physical and conceptual — with the Dark Laboratory, designed for the study of race, technology and ecology through digital storytelling. Inquiries are informed by knowledge holders across communities as well as in universities, museums and other institutions.
Goffe is also the executive director of the Afro-Asia Group, an organization that centers the intersections of African and Asian diasporas, futurity and radical coalition toward sovereignty. Previously a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School for 2024-2025, she is currently in residence as a Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellow for 2026-2027. She lives and works in Manhattan, New York, where she is an associate professor at Hunter College-CUNY and the CUNY Graduate Center in Earth and Environmental Sciences. She earned her doctorate at Yale University.
A second event designed for students will take place at 10 a.m. Nov. 10 in the Weaver Courtyard outside of Spooner Hall. Students interested in attending the Nov. 10 event should email thecommons@ku.edu.
About the Kenneth A. Spencer Lecture series
The Kenneth A. Spencer Lecture, presented by The Commons, is an endowed lecture dedicated to bringing leading thinkers across disciplines and ways of knowing to address the KU and regional communities. In recent years, the lecture series has featured poet Eve Ewing, activist/writer Jose Antonio Vargas, writer/scientist/enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Robin Wall Kimmerer and climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe.