Grady Ballenger Lecture Series
Speaker:
Dr. Graeme Harper
Dean, The Honors College
Topic:
Undergraduate Invents Time Travel: New Research in the Fourth Dimension
Lecture Description
They reported it briefly, but it was quickly hushed up. Time travel. Not the basic kind you find in a movie or a book. Not that kind with a wizened inventor or that happens in a dark alley in Victorian London with a guy who you sometimes confuse with Tom Cruise. Not time travel in a DeLorean, or through a portal you find in an ordinary wooden doorway in Nepal. No, this was the kind of time travel Einstein could only dream about. Movement, not just in space, but across another dimension. We all know the basic dimensional three: breadth, width, and height. Try on new shoes, and you experience a few of those; lose your way in the dark of night and you realize the importance of those. But time – that fourth dimension – it took an open mind to crack that one. No wonder they wanted to hush it up. The fourth dimension is like the fourth estate:
sometimes you need to shut it down or it’ll reveal something. Let’s face it, you can’t go changing the world for the better and expect everyone to be happy about it.
About the Speaker
In 2012, Dr. Graeme Harper became the inaugural Dean of The Honors College at Oakland University in Michigan. Previously, he led academic schools at the University of Wales and the University of Portsmouth before serving as Director of Research and later a research fellow at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
Dr. Harper has served as a research panelist for the European Commission’s Education and Culture Directorate in Brussels and spent twelve years as a panelist for Britain’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. He also served on the Research Committee of the Joint Information Systems Committee, supporting the UK’s national academic technology network.
A prolific writer, Dr. Harper has published around fifty books. Reflecting both his passion for writing and his dedication to universities, he holds doctorates from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom and the University of Technology Sydney in Australia.
From July 2021 to July 2024, he served as Chair of the At Large Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research.