The 2025 Hopper Lecture at the University of Guelph will take place on November 11, 2025, from 4:00 to 6:00 pm EST on Microsoft Teams or in OVC PAHL Room 1800. We’re honoured to welcome Ms. Kerryann Ifill to deliver this year’s Hopper Lecture.
UofG’s annual Hopper Lecture began as a collaboration between the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the University of Guelph, with this lecture being “the only collaboration of its kind in IDRC’s history.” This event was started by IDRC’s founding president, David Hopper, who wanted to maintain a connection between the IDRC and UofG. Today, this event is an ongoing opportunity to share advances in international development research and generate conversation with the Canadian public on critical, global issues.
This year’s guest lecturer, the Most Honourable Kerryann Ifill, is a well-known Barbadian disability rights advocate who has been instrumental in serving the wider disabled community of the Caribbean as a whole. Having lost her vision at the age of four, Kerryann Ifill completed her primary education at a school for the blind. Following this, she became the first person with vision loss to complete a degree from the University of the West Indies, after which she earned a Master of Business Administration and postgraduate diploma in Special Education. Kerryann assisted in the adoption of assistive technology for children with special needs and in preparing Barbados’s educational institutions to receive visually impaired students. Her powerful impact in the disability community—as well as her presidential role on various vision loss and disability rights councils—led her to be appointed President of the Barbados Senate at age 50, the youngest person (and only woman) to do so.
Ms. Ifill’s lecture will be centered around the recent 2025 enactment of Barbados’s Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, which followed the government’s announcement of a seven-year policy aimed at addressing the needs of persons with disabilities. Kerryann will discuss the essential need to advocate for the inclusion of all humans and abilities as our society faces social, economic, political, and environmental challenges.
To see more event details and Kerryann’s full bio, and to register for this event, please visit the Hopper Lecture 2025 – Fostering Societal Growth event page.
