Darwin Day 2026 "The Irony of Evolution" with Dr. Thomas C. Durand at TCD

Every Darwin Day, the Humanist Association of Ireland and Trinity College Dublin join forces to bring you groundbreaking talks from inspiring thinkers. This year, Dr. Thomas C. Durand is set to deliver a captivating lecture that promises a profound and thought-provoking exploration of his work. This event is open to everyone with an interest and is completely free to attend!

About the conference:

Evolution faces a very peculiar challenge: it deals with things that feel familiar to us, and most people assume they already understand it. Yet we approach it with a brain that is itself a product of evolution, shaped by intuitive ontologies that run counter to the principles Darwin uncovered. The theory clashes with our natural representations and our everyday sense of how the world works — which is why it is so often resisted, misunderstood, or even disliked.

About the speaker:

Thomas C. Durand is a French science communicator and a former researcher with a PhD in biology. After several years in academic research and teaching, he devoted himself fully to public engagement with science, focusing on critical thinking, scientific literacy, and the examination of belief systems.

He is the co-founder and vice-president of ASTEC (Association for Science and Critical Thinking), an organisation promoting rational inquiry. He is also the creator of the YouTube channel La Tronche en Biais and the author of the blog La Menace Théoriste. Durand’s work explores how cognitive biases, social representations and pseudoscientific narratives shape public understanding of the world. His videos popularise concepts from cognitive science and social psychology, and each month he hosts a specialist guest to address topics clouded by misinformation or confusion.

He regularly delivers public lectures and provides training sessions for students, educators and professionals on themes such as scientific skepticism, cognitive self-defence and the practical methods of zététique, the French tradition of applied critical inquiry.

As an author, he has published several books on critical thinking, skepticism and the public understanding of science, as well as a series of fantasy novels released by ActuSF.
Bibliography

· La vie après la mort ? Une approche rationnelle (A Rational Approach to Life After Death), Book-e-book, 2016.

· L’ironie de l’évolution (The Irony of Evolution), Seuil, 2018 — La Science se Livre Prize, 2019.

· Quand est-ce qu’on biaise ? (When Do We Bias?), humenSciences, 2019.

· Connaissez-vous l’homéopathie ? (Do You Really Know Homeopathy?), Éditions Matériologiques, 2019.

· L’Évolution, ça marche (Evolution Works), Seuil, 2019.

· La science des balivernes (The Science of Nonsense), humenSciences, 2020.

· Pyramidologie : aux sources de la pseudo-archéologie (Pyramidology: At the Roots of Pseudo-Archaeology), Book-e-book, 2021.

· DIEU, la contre-enquête (GOD: The Counter-Investigation), humenSciences, 2022.

· L’esprit critique pour les Nuls (Critical Thinking for Dummies), First, 2023.

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Host or Publisher Humanist Association of Ireland (HAI)