Evolutionary Anthropology seminars

Does culture drive biological evolution? The role of culture in the biological diversity of the people of Madagascar
Jason Hodgson | Anglia Ruskin University
30 September

Epigenomic and molecular approaches to understanding how stress during development impacts health
Luisa Riviera | UCL
7 October

Unsung songbirds: Understanding vocal communication in corvids
Claudia Wascher | ARU
14 October 

The 21st century resurgence of eugenics and scientific racism, or how science is manipulated to promote political ideology
Rebecca Sear | Brunel
21 October

The evolution of diversity in hunter-gatherers
Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias | University of Cambridge
28 October

Hair speaks: social context and the interpretation of religious signals such as veiling and beards
Ozan Akroy | Oxford
11 November 

Maternal styles in chimpanzees
Eleanore Rolland | UCL
18 November

Modelling brain development in human evolution
Mauricio Gonzalez-Forero | Konrad Lorenz Institute
25 November 

Keeping their cool: Body temperature patterns of a wild primate
Richard McFarland | NTU
2 December

14 January | Jonathan Wells,  Institute of Child Health, UCL
“The obstetrical dilemma:  it's contemporary manifestation in lowland Nepal and its role in the 'developmental origins' of adult disease”

21 January | HEB MSc alumni event
“Life after the MSc - Emily Johnson, Helen Reiderman, Siri Olsen and Elisa Fernandez-Fueyo ”

28 January | Sally Street, Durham
“Palaeolithic art and signals of intentionality”

4 February | Simon Underdown, Oxford Brookes
“Infectious disease in the Pleistocene: Old friends or old foes?”

11 February | Aiyana Willard, Brunel
“The practice and function of witchcraft in Mauritius and in the UK”

18 February | Reading week, no seminar

25 February | Adam Kenny, London Interdisciplinary School & Oxford
"Understanding in-group bias, reducing publication bias: Investigating human parochialism through Registered Reports"

4 March | Jacob Dunn, Anglia Ruskin University
“The Paradox of Speech: How Evolutionary Simplification Enabled Complex Vocal Communication”

11 March | Arik Kershenbaum, University of Cambridge
“Why Animals Talk”

18 March | Ashleigh Wiseman, UCL
"How to build a hominin: simulations of locomotion"

Tuesdays 3.30 - 5.00pm | Daryll Forde Seminar Room | Department of Anthropology

1 Oct – Anna Rotkirch, Institute at Vaestolitta, Finland
“The partner privilege: Social networks and wellbeing in contemporary Europe”

8 Oct – Guy Jakobs, University of Cambridge
“Changing lifestyles and microbiomes in Indonesia”

15 Oct – Alex Mielke, Queen Mary University of London
“Reimagining interactions as the basic unit of sociality”

22 Oct – Volker Sommer, UCL
“The complete Chimpanzee: synthesizing field and lab research”

29 Oct – Emma Pomeroy, University of Cambridge
“Developing understanding of Neanderthal mortuary behaviour from Shanidar Cave, Iraqi Kurdistan”

12 Nov – Elliot Howard-Spink, Max Planck Institute for Animal Behaviour
“Landscapes of cultural accumulation in animals”

19 Nov – Jordan Moon, Brunel
“Self interest in cultural preferences”

26 Nov – Gill Thompson, University of Lancashire
“Helping women recover from traumatic births”

3 Dec – Laura Buck, Liverpool John Moors University
“Non-human primate models for exploring the effects of hybridisation in human evolution” 

Tuesdays 3.30 - 5.00pm | 14 Taviton Street | Darryll Forde Seminar Room

9 January – Karen Swan (Natural History Museum)
“Growing up bipedal: skeletal adaptations to bipedalism and changes in cortical bone structure as children learn to walk”

16 January – Chris Dunmore (University of Kent)
“Getting to grips with the internal morphology of hominin fossils”

23 January – Helen Fewlass (Francis Crick Institute)
New insights into the Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician at Ilsenhöhle Ranis, Germany

CANCELLED – 30 January – Kim Bard (University of Portsmouth)
“Chimpanzee infancy in comparative perspective”

6 February

Nicole Torres-Tamayo (UCL)
“Evolution of human childbirth: what can we learn from other primates?”

Ursula Paredes-Esquivel (UCL)
“Monkeys under stress: tales of transgenerational trauma, epigenetics, ageing and evolution”

20 February – Kim Bard (University of Portsmouth)
“Chimpanzee infancy in comparative perspective”

27 February – Minhua Yan (IAST Toulouse)
“How are norms maintained and how do they change? A theoretical model and a field study”

5 March – Emily Emmott (UCL)
“Improving breastfeeding rates in England: evolutionary anthropological insights for public health”

12 March – Brenna Hassett (University of Central Lancashire)
“Growing Up Human: anthropological approaches to the long human childhood”

Tuesdays 3.30 - 5.00pm | 14 Taviton Street | Darryll Forde Seminar Room

3 October - Duncan Stibbard-Hawkes (University of Durham)
"Why hunt? Why gather? Why share?: Hadza self-assessments of foraging and food-sharing motive"

The adaptive motivations underlying hunter-gatherer food acquisition patterns and food-sharing have been extensively debated. Proposed motivations include self- and family-provisioning, reciprocity, 'tolerated theft' and skill-signaling. However, few studies have asked foragers themselves directly and systematically what motivates them. We recruited 110 Hadza participants and employed a combination of free-response, ranking and forced-choice questions to do just this. In free response tasks participants most often gave outcome-oriented foraging motives (e.g., ‘to get food’) and moralistic sharing motives (e.g., ‘I have a good heart’), but several also mentioned theory-derived motives. In ranking tasks, participants gave precedence to reciprocity as a motive for sharing food beyond the household. There were small but real gender differences in foraging motive, in line with previous predictions: women were more likely than men to rank family-provisioning highly whereas men were more likely than women to rank skill-signaling highly. However, overall the relative importance of different motivations was similar for both men and women. Evolutionary researchers have often avoided self-assessments of motive. I reflect on this and ask whether researchers should give greater precedence to self-report data.

10 October - Michelle Kline (Brunel University)
"Finding a way: A roadmap for culturally grounded research in the human sciences"

17 October - Gilly Forrester (University of Sussex)
"Seeds of us: Evolutionary and developmental origins of cognition"

In the literal sense, ontogeny (the development of the individual) does not recapitulate phylogeny (the evolution of the species). However, during both human evolution and development, higher cognitive abilities build upon earlier acquired sensorimotor behaviours. Moreover, the integrity of the sensorimotor system has cascading consequences for the acquisition of the higher cognitive function. Evolutionary investigations report advantages of a ‘divided brain’ with respect to the fitness of the organism, however, it is not yet clear of the impact of functional brain biases on the development of modern cognition. My research focuses on the evolution and development of cognition, specifically targeting the relationships between cerebral lateralization, behavioural biases and cognitive abilities in human and non-human great apes. My experimental approaches treat sensorimotor and cognitive abilities as intrinsically linked components of a dynamic and unfolding system.

[CANCELLED] 24 October - Simon Underdown (Oxford Brookes University) - please note this seminar has been cancelled due to sickness
"Infectious disease in the Pleistocene: Old friends or old foes?"

The impact of endemic and epidemic disease on humans has traditionally been seen as a comparatively recent historical phenomenon associated with the Neolithisation of human groups, an increase in population size led by sedentarism, and increasing contact with domesticated animals as well as species occupying opportunistic symbiotic and ectosymbiotic relationships with humans. The orthodox approach is that Neolithisation created the conditions for increasing population size able to support a reservoir of infectious disease sufficient to act as selective pressure. This orthodoxy is the result of an overly simplistic reliance on skeletal data assuming that no skeletal lesions equated to a healthy individual, underpinned by the assumption that hunter-gatherer groups were inherently healthy while agricultural groups acted as infectious disease reservoirs. The importance of DNA, from ancient and modern sources, to the study of the antiquity of infectious disease, and its role as a selective pressure cannot be overstated. I'll consider evidence of ancient epidemic and endemic infectious diseases with inferences from modern and ancient human and hominin DNA, and from circulating and extinct pathogen genomes.

31 October - Jeanne Bovet (Northumbria University)
"Unpacking the Beauty Premium: Using evolutionary human sciences to understand the effect of physical attractiveness on first impressions"

28 November - Gabriel Saffa (Max Planck Leipzig and University of South Bohemia)
"Evolution of rituals, sex and marriage: A phylogenetic cross-cultural perspective"

5 December - Andrew Gardner (University of St Andrews)
"The rarer-sex effect"

Seminars marked "in person" are taking place in person in IOE - Bedford Way (20) C3.11.

Seminars marked "online" are taking place online only on Zoom.

Contact: Alecia Carter

[CANCELLED] 10 January Victoria Herridge (Natural History Museum) - in person
Title TBC

17 January Andrea DiGiorgio (Princeton University) - in person
Bornean Orangutan Diet and Health - Novel Insights from Nutritional Geometry

24 January Krishna Balasubramanian (Anglia Ruskin University) - in person
Unravelling the links between animal socio-ecology, human-wildlife interactions, & infectious disease ecology: insights from nonhuman primates

31 January Habiba Chirchir (Marshall University) - in person
Title TBC

7 February Alecia Carter (UCL) - in person
Primates' responses to death: insights into death awareness?

Reading Week  **NO SEMINAR**

[CANCELLED] 21 February Laura Lewis (UC Berkeley) - online
Title TBC

[CANCELLED] 28 February TBC - online
Title TBC

7 March Laura Lewis (UC Berkeley) - online
The Cognitive Foundations of Social Relationships in Great Apes

14 March Wenda Trevathan (New Mexico State University) - online
Are Humans “Just Another Primate” in the Way They Give Birth?