The Department of English organized a public lecture titled “What Makes High Achievement Possible?: A Transversal Perspective from Neurochemistry to Performance”. Dr. Asma Mansoor and Dr. Arshad Mehmood of the Department were the convener of the public lecture.
The guest speaker was Professor Bryan Reynolds, Chancellor’s Professor & Claire Trevor Professor, Department of Drama, Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine. Dr Reynolds received his PhD in English and American Literature from Harvard University, and his BA in English Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. He has held visiting professorships at the University of London-Queen Mary; University of Amsterdam; Utrecht University; University of Cologne; University College Utrecht; Goethe University Frankfurt; the University of California-San Diego; the American University of Beirut; the University of Tsukuba, Japan; Klagenfurt University, Austria; the University of Nairobi, Kenya; and the University of Lorraine, France. Using an interdisciplinary approach while citing examples of athletes overcoming obstacles in extreme sports, he presented his theorization of how the mental processes and grit observed in both able-bodied and differently abled athletes, can 
be used as a paradigm to rethink failure in all walks of life and to go beyond them. As a performance theorist and theatre practitioner (director, playwright, actor), and having been a lifelong high level action sports athlete at alpine skiing and motorcycle motocross (one-time professional), he explores not just the mindset, training, and physicality needed to persevere and progress, but also genetic factors. For seven years he has been conducting immersive ethnographic — participant-observer — research into skiing, skateboarding, and mountain biking, and more recently back to motocross, which has involved not just participating with but also interviewing the highest level Olympic and X Games athletes, taking saliva samples from them for DNA analysis, and performing experiments with mice in a laboratory to uncover what is needed to progress at extremely challenging and highly skilled activities of all kinds. He then synthesizes and relates everything he has learned so that all people can apply the techniques — mental and physical — he has discovered to any area in which they want to excel.
The students and faculty of the Department of English subsequently asked him questions, correlating his findings and observations with issues including academic success, struggles with research and even collective dilemmas as citizens of a postcolonial society. at the end, Dr. Reynolds was presented a university souvenir in appreciation for his lecture and his engagement with the department and its students.