Fossils tell us more than any other objects about the history of life on Earth in the deep past. In this MA2-curated Tuesday Tea, we will walk together through the gardens of time, stopping along the way to admire some particularly spectacular fossils, illuminate processes of evolution, alchemy, and geology, and finish with the reading of a work in progress that imagines the world before it became the world we know—and before that, and before that, and before that…

Nicolas Baird is an evolutionary biologist, artist, dancer, and writer. They make art and science that frame the world as a network of strange kin: their art explores mutability and adaptation through photography, poetry, and performance, while their science looks back in time to understand the reciprocal relationships between bodies, landscapes, and climate. They unite these themes as co-director of the Institute of Queer Ecology, a continuously evolving, collaborative organism that creates and commissions artworks as tools for building multispecies futures. They received their BA in Visual Art and Science & Society from Brown University and their MSc in Taxonomy & Biodiversity from Imperial College London. They live in New York City, where they are a Ph.D. candidate in Earth & Environmental Science.