Established in 1997 this lecture is funded by the family of Paul and Silvia Rava, this series is a highlight of the academic life in the department by engaging colleagues and students and friends of Italian from the Saint Louis area to ponder big thoughts.

Giordano received his PHD from Syracuse University in 1999. His research interests include: Historical GIS, Holocaust and Genocide Geography, Policy Applications of GIScience, Spatial Applications of Forensic Anthropology. He is a Professor in the Department of Geography at Texas State University, a former (2018-2019) President of UCGIS, the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, and department from 2013-2018. In 2019 he served as a Fulbright Specialist in the Department of History at the University of Vilnius in Lithuania. He is a founding member of the Holocaust Geographies Collaborative, a network of researchers and scholars interested in bringing geographical approaches, methods, and perspectives to the study of the Holocaust and other genocides. On these topics, he has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Holocaust Educational Foundation, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the USC Shoah Foundation, and the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure, among others.