Events

Abstract:Cousin marriage, practised by over 10% of the world's population, restructures kinship networks by overlapping blood and affinal ties. Theory makes competing predictions about how this affects women. "Protection" accounts argue that consanguinity aligns spouses' interests and increases kin oversight, reducing coercion. "Constraint" accounts emphasise that dense kin involvement can prioritise family cohesion over women's […]

Abstract: In virtually all human societies, men and women form stable pair bonds, male reproductive skew is low, children receive considerable care and resources from both of their parents, and nuclear families are part of a set progressively larger social units that commonly include kin, affines, and unrelated members of the same ethnic group. Understanding […]

Abstract: The study of animal consciousness is becoming a respectable domain of study, which has implications for neuroscience, evolutionary biology and ethics. In this lecture I discuss the theoretical commitments of different naturalistic approaches to animal consciousness and point to markers of consciousness. I suggest that an approach focusing on cognitive capacities in humans that […]

Abstract: I argue that the changes in our current view of evolutionary theory are leading to a new unification of life-sciences, which is occurring, seemingly paradoxically, within the context of their increased specialization and fracturing.  Unlike the modern evolutionary synthesis of the 20th century (the MS) which claimed that selection is the only direction-giving process […]

Abstract: The evolution of human longevity still remains a curious puzzle. Here I provide some new perspectives on the why and how of longevity over the course of human evolution, relying on the anthropological study of subsistence societies as an imperfect lens for gaining insight. I argue that our evolved human lifespan is about seven […]

Abstract: When we contemplate how biodiversity is changing, we often focus on the species we have lost entirely. But while we have yet to lose a single bird species to our rapidly changing climate, birds and other creatures are currently adapting and responding in myriad ways. Across the world, species are shifting their geographic distributions, […]

Abstract: A long-standing goal within the field of evolutionary genomics has been to understand how genomic and phenotypic differences between human populations arise. High-altitude environments offer a natural experiment to study this question, as these environments impose a number of selective pressures, the most severe of which is high-altitude hypoxia. Human populations residing across the […]

Abstract: Organisms that develop under adversity often differ from their peers in stress physiology, behavior, and reproductive timing. Life history frameworks offer a powerful lens for making sense of this variation, proposing that these differences reflect developmental responses calibrated to early environmental conditions. Yet the mechanistic pathway connecting early adversity to physiological changes to behavioral […]

Understanding the evolution of advanced cognition requires explaining how it could have gradually evolved through selection acting on heritable variations in simpler cognitive mechanisms. Making use of a previously proposed theory, I will explain how the evolution of cognitive abilities can be captured by the fine-tuning of basic learning and chunking mechanisms. Specifically, I will demonstrate how the process […]

The management of shared natural resources often hinges on local cooperation, yet the social networks linking communities across space can both complicate and enable collective action. This talk examines how long-distance friendships—relationships that bridge community boundaries—shape trust, cooperation, and participation in fisheries management in coastal Tanzania. Drawing on theoretical models and multi-site ethnographic and survey data from […]