It's all academic festival launches this Saturday at UCL
The 'Its All Academic' festival will launch at UCL on Saturday 10 June, and its free for all ages and interests.
![Alumni festival flyer](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/culture/sites/culture/files/styles/small_image/public/festival_wordmark_pink_cmyk_0.jpg?itok=eRC2h1uj)
Get hands on with the latest research gadgets, debate what the future holds with leading thinkers, find the hidden geology in UCL’s building stones and explore rarely-seen treasures from the archives. And in between re-fuel with a range of street food available in the Quad throughout the day.
Festival highlights include an interactive debate led by TV presenter (and UCL PhD student) Chris van Tulleken on how people and societies of the future will look. From the future of human evolution to the future of crime, this event gives a rare chance to quiz top academics, including a Nobel Prize-winner, on how their work is shaping how we live.
If the search for aliens piques your curiosity, hear TV astronomer Francisco Diego explore whether we are looking for life in all the wrong places and then head over to get hands on with Twinkle – an immersive introduction to the mission to uncover the story of planets in our galaxy.
Historians can explore how we understand the worth of ‘ordinary things’ in an event looking at artefacts that survived the Holocaust and how we can read them to connect with the past. How we approach difficult history is also tackled in Uncomfortable Reading, a look at how librarians deal with controversial items in their collection.
And we’ll end the day on a musical note when improvising opera troupe Impropera sing our very own Grant Museum specimens back to life – with your help. Book tickets here.
Explore the full programme here!