Sleep, UnraveledNobel Conference 60 | October 01 – 02, 2024
Sleep is a universal human experience and yet its importance is often overlooked. According to the National Institutes of Health, nearly 20% of Americans don’t get enough sleep and the CDC has reported that 70 million Americans suffer from some form of chronic sleep disorder that inhibits restful sleep.
In addition to its role in physical rejuvenation, sufficient high-quality sleep is crucial for cognition, memory, learning, and general health. Sleep loss — whether triggered by noise or light pollution, stress, overwork or conflict with circadian rhythms — has been associated with high blood pressure, weight gain, diabetes and a plethora of other medical conditions.
Nobel Conference 60 – “Sleep, Unraveled” brings together an interdisciplinary panel of experts to explore the centrality of sleep for human physical health and mental wellbeing. The conference will delve into the neurological and psychological processes of sleep, the cultural evolution of sleep practices, and the implications of a twenty-four-hour convenience society that leads to permanent sleep deprivation.
New in 2024 - Nobel Conference is free and open to the public!
Due to the generosity of past and current donors, Gustavus is now able to offer this amazing conference at no cost to attendees. If you plan to attend, we request you complete this registration form to help the college prepare.
Support the Conference Download the Program
Science and Ethics, in Dialogue
Since 1965, the Nobel Conference has been bringing leading researchers and thinkers to Gustavus, to explore revolutionary, transformative and pressing scientific issues and the ethical questions that arise alongside them. As the only event in the United States authorized by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm, Sweden to use this name, it is our privilege to host a space in which we can talk about big scientific questions, and the big ethical issues to which they inevitably give rise. The world needs more people who think critically about the crucial issues of our time, and who ask questions in ways that open up the conversation.
I have discovered here in this little corner of Minnesota a place of great intellectual curiosity reaching into the future.
Conference Presenters
Full Schedule
Marishka Brown
Director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research
Sleep and Circadian Health: A National Research Agenda
Mary Carskadon
Professor, Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Brown University
Clock, Hourglass, and Teen Sleep
Tricia Hersey
Performance Artist, Theologian and Founder of The Nap Ministry
Rest as Portal for Justice
Maiken Nedergaard
Professor, Neurology and Neurosurgery, Center for Translational Neuromedicine at the University of Rochester
The Glymphatic System
Benjamin Reiss
Professor of English at Emory University
Sleep and Inequality: A History
Amita Sehgal
John Herr Musser Professor of Neuroscience, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
Using a Simple Animal Model to Understand How and Why We Sleep
Robert Stickgold
Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Visiting Professor in the Program in Media Arts and Sciences at M.I.T.
Sleep, Memory, and Dreams: Pulling It All Together
Science and Ethics through the Arts
As a liberal arts college, Gustavus is committed to addressing questions using the full range of human inquiry activities. Each year, the Nobel Conference theme is interpreted through events including an art exhibit, a concert, and dance. The arts explore, inquire and teach about ideas in ways that lectures often cannot. Music, dance, and visual arts invite us to pause, reflect and learn, and to do so with all of our senses.
Learn
Dive in to Conference Topics
These resources will help you begin learning about the topic. You’ll find a carefully-selected collection of articles, videos and other materials, chosen for their suitability for a lay audience. Organized topically, the list has been developed in consultation with the conference presenters, who recommended selections from their own work and pieces by others to help you explore more about the conference topic.
Educators, looking for classroom resources and activities? Checkout our curated list to get you started.
ScienceWhys Podcast
When big scientific questions meet big ethical questions, the waters can get pretty choppy. Lisa Heldke, philosopher and director of the Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College, interviews scientists, researchers, scholars and thinkers about how science and ethics mingle, eddy, roil and churn in their own work. The podcast for anyone who hears about a scientific breakthrough and thinks “what are the downstream consequences of that?”
Gathering people together for deeply informed, carefully reasoned, respectful and thrilling conversations about critical issues is a gift of hope and civility to a bewildered, battered world. The Nobel Conference does this with expertise and grace.
— Dr. Kathleen Dean Moore, author of
Moral Ground and Great Tide Rising
Stay Involved in the Conversation
Follow the Nobel Conference on social media to keep up to date on news related to current and past conference themes.