Former president of Smith College Jill Ker Conway, PhD '69, will speak on "Studying Women's Lives" during next week's annual Lowell Lecture.

Sponsored jointly by the Extension School and the Lowell Institute of Boston, the Lowell Lecture is a public service event devoted to the major issues of the 1990s. This year's lecture will take place Tuesday, April 27, at 8 p.m. in Science Center C.

Conway is an internationally acclaimed authority on women's lives, both as the author of best-selling autobiographies and as an anthologizer of women's writing. Her autobiographical writing includes The Road from Coorain (1989), the story of her early life in New South Wales, and True North (1994), which traces her life from 1960, when she left Australia, to 1975, when she accepted the presidency of Smith College. Her scholarly work in women's lives includes such major studies as Learning About Women, edited with Susan Bourque and Joan Scott (1989), Written By Herself, Autobiographies of American Women (1992), The Politics of Women's Education, edited with Susan Bourque (1993), Written By Herself, vol. 2, Autobiographies of Women from Britain, Africa, Asia and the U.S. (1996), and, most recently, When Memory Speaks (1998).

Conway has taught at the University of Sydney, the University of Toronto, Smith College, and, since 1985, she has been visiting professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also served as co-master of Leverett House. Her distinguished career in higher education administration includes serving as vice president for internal affairs at the University of Toronto (1973­75) and as the first woman president of Smith College (1975­85).

She has been awarded honorary degrees from more than 30 colleges and universities, and she is a trustee on various foundation and university boards, including the Knight Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, and Mount Holyoke College. She also serves as a director of many major American corporations, including Merrill Lynch & Co., Nike Inc., and Colgate-Palmolive Co.

She was married to the late John J. Conway, a Canadian war hero and, at Harvard, former Master of Leverett House and lecturer on British history.

The Lowell Lecture is free and open to the public. For further information call the Extension School at (617) 495-2924.