Monday, August 12, 2024 The Gibraltar Tourist Board has announced Rob Henderson and Paul Pettitt as featured speakers for this year’s Gibunco Gibraltar Literary Festival. Scheduled to run from November 11 to 17, the Literary Festival will host a variety of speakers, including Henderson, who will deliver a 45-minute presentation on his debut book, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, a national bestseller in the United States. Henderson’s early life was spent in foster homes in Los Angeles and the small town of Red Bluff, California.
At 17, he enlisted in the US Air Force. Following his military service, he earned a BS in psychology from Yale University and received the prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship. Recognized by the New York Times as “self-made,” Henderson later achieved a PhD in psychology from the University of Cambridge.
His writings have been featured in prominent publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Boston Globe. Additionally, he has appeared on numerous popular podcasts, including Honestly with Bari Weiss, The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, and Modern Wisdom.
His Substack newsletter boasts over 60,000 subscribers weekly. Paul Pettitt, a Palaeolithic archaeologist with 25 years of experience, will also be presenting at the festival. His PowerPoint-illustrated talk will draw from his extensive research and his book, Homo Sapiens Rediscovered: The Scientific Revolution Rewriting Our Origins.
Pettitt will explore the Ice Age existence of Homo sapiens ancestors and provide a comprehensive overview of human biological and behavioral evolution. Pettitt is a Professor of Palaeolithic Archaeology at Durham University in the UK, holding degrees from Birmingham, London, and Cambridge universities. His PhD research at Cambridge focused on Neanderthal behavior in Southwest France.
Before his tenure at Durham, he held various academic positions, including Senior Archaeologist at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, Research Fellow, and Tutor at Keble College, Oxford, and Lecturer in Palaeolithic Archaeology at Sheffield University. His research delves into the behavior of Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens in Europe, with a particular interest in mortuary practices and the emergence of art. Pettitt is currently excavating a campsite of Upper Palaeolithic mammoth hunters in Moldova and investigating the visual psychology behind Palaeolithic art.
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