The West Midlands branch committee is very pleased to have Katrina van Grouw deliver the 2021 Darwin Festival talk on Unnatural Selection. Her talk will be part of the annual Shrewsbury festival, held for the first time online. 

Katrina holds degrees in fine art and natural history illustration, and is a former curator of ornithological collections at a major national museum. She is a self-taught scientist with a passion for evolutionary biology and its history. Katrina is the author and illustrator of The Unfeathered Bird and Unnatural Selection.

When Charles Darwin contemplated how best to introduce his controversial new theory of evolution to the general public, he chose to compare it with the selective breeding of domesticated animals. In her book, Unnatural Selection, marking the 150th anniversary year of Darwin's great work on domesticated animals Variation under Domestication, Katrina explains why this analogy was more appropriate than even Darwin had realised. Artificial selection is, in fact, more than just an analogy for natural selection - it's the perfect example of evolution in action.

This event is free to attend and open to all. Advance booking is essential through the link at the top of the page.

For booking or website queries, please contact Harriet McAra at regions@rsb.org.uk or on 020 3925 3445.