Barbara Rose Johnston, senior research fellow at the Center for Political Ecology in Santa Cruz, Calif., is this year’s distinguished scholar for St. Mary’s College of Maryland’s anthropology department. She will give a public lecture on Monday, April 2 at 4:45 p.m. in Auerbach Auditorium of St. Mary’s Hall, co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy.

Johnston’s talk, titled “Life and Death in a Radioactive Nation: Lessons from Rongelap,” traces her study of the lives of the Rongelap community of the Marshall Islands, who were unknowing victims of radiation experimentation following the detonation in the 1950s of the largest nuclear device the U.S. has ever tested.

Broadly published, she co-authored with Holly M. Barker “Consequential Damages of Nuclear War: The Rongelap Report” (Left Coast Press, 2008). Johnston holds a B.A. in anthropology from Univ. of California, Berkeley; an M.A. in cultural ecology from San Jose State Univ., and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Univ. of Massachusetts.