American investigative journalist Sonia Shah will deliver a public lecture at Stetson University at 7 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 24, in the Stetson Room, on the second floor of the Carlton Union Building, 131 E. Minnesota Ave., DeLand. There will be a book signing and reception following the lecture. The public is invited, free of charge.

Shah is the author of critically acclaimed and prize-winning books on science, human rights, and international politics. Based on years of original research and reporting in Africa and Asia that were published in her prize-winning book, The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World’s Poorest Patients (New Press), Shah’s lecture will focus on an important and rapidly developing field: the multi-national pharmaceutical industry’s ethically problematic research in developing countries.

A former writing fellow of the Nation Institute and the Puffin Foundation, Shah has been featured on current affairs shows around the United States, on outlets such as NPR as well as the BBC and Australia’s Radio National. A frequent keynote speaker, she has lectured at universities and colleges across the country, including, among others, Columbia’s Earth Institute, MIT, Harvard, Brown and Georgetown. Her writings on science, global health, and politics have appeared in a range of publications from Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Le Monde Diplomatique to Scientific American and Foreign Affairs, and has been supported by The Nation Investigative Fund and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. Her television appearances include A&E and the BBC, and she has consulted on many documentary film projects, from the ABC to Channel 4 in the UK.

Shah was born in 1969 in New York City to Indian immigrants. Growing up, she shuttled between the northeastern United States where her parents practiced medicine and Mumbai and Bangalore, India, where her extended working-class family lived, developing a lifelong interest in inequality between and within societies. She holds a B.A. in journalism, philosophy, and neuroscience from Oberlin College.

Shah’s lectures at universities and colleges across the nation have been praised as “outstanding,” “informative and articulate,” and ”perfect for a student audience.” She has been described as a person with the “eye of a journalist, the mind of a scientist, and the heart of a humanitarian.”

“Sonia Shah’s lecture should be attractive to students and faculty with a wide range of academic interests,” said associate professor of modern languages and literatures Elisabeth Poeter, Ph.D., who is also chair of Stetson’s Gender Studies Program, one of the sponsoring organizations of this lecture. “Shah raises important ethical questions about a disturbing facet of globalization that should provoke intense debates in various disciplines from economics, and business, to biology, sociology, anthropology, political science, environmental studies, integrative health studies and gender studies.”

In addition to the Gender Studies Program, this event is sponsored by Stetson University’s Artists and Lecturers Series, the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Business Administration. It is a cultural credit event for Stetson students.

For further information contact Elisabeth Poeter at [email protected], or  (386) 822-7280.