Professor Oliver Rollins Awarded the 2026 Cecil H and Ida Green Visiting Professor at Green College at the University of British Columbia

Cecil H and Ida Green endowed the Green visiting professors program to provide opportunities for UBC students and faculty, as well as interested members of the public, to interact with outstanding scholars, artists, and intellectuals from outside of British Columbia. This innovative program, inaugurated in 1972 with public lectures by Gerhard Herzberg, Canadian recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, has now welcomed over 200 distinguished visitors. Since 1993, it has been hosted by Green College under the college’s mandate for interdisciplinary studies. In addition to the conversations that they will have at Green College, these special visitors also offer seminars in UBC departments and/or public lectures elsewhere on campus, the city, and the province.

For their Cecil H and Ida Green Visiting Professors Program, they solicit nominations for:

• Outstanding scholars, artists, and intellectuals from outside of British Columbia;
• Well-established leaders in their field who come from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds.

From this group, for residencies that typically last for four to five days.

Cecil H and Ida Green Visiting Professor: Oliver Rollins

Dr. Oliver Rollins is the Old Dominion Career Development Professor and an associate professor of Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. He investigates how neuroscience knowledge and technologies are shaped by, and in turn influence, practices of social difference (e.g., race and racism). His first book, Conviction: The Making and Unmaking of the Violent Brain (Stanford University Press), examined the evolution of neuroimaging research on antisocial behavior, highlighting the limitations of this controversial brain model in addressing systemic issues of inequality. His new book project will analyze the field of “neurolaw,” aiming to determine how brain knowledges become legally relevant “facts,” and their potential to (re)shape ethical, legal, and sociocultural views of (in)justice, vulnerability, and reform in the context of law and society.

Oliver Rollins will be in residence at Green College for two weeks in March 2026.

During his residency in March, he will be giving a series of talks in Vancouver, including:

• The Annual Distinguished Neuroethics Lecturetitled, “Criminal Minds, Risky Brains: The Scientific Obsession with the ‘Born Criminal’—and Why It’s Wrong.”
• Neuroscience Grand Rounds at Vancouver General Hospital, titled, “Where do we go from here?: Reflections on the Race Question and Neuroscience Today”
• Coach House Lecture, titled “Brain Science on the Stand: How Neurolaw Shapes—and Misshapes—Justice.”
• Neuroethics Workshop – “Towards an antiracist neuroscience.”