Selected Events

Host: Department of Archaeology

Evolutionary Origins of the Human Niche - Online Lecture and Q&A with Prof Kevin Laland

How did our species’ distinctive niche evolve, and what role did our ancestors play in its origin? Understanding the origins of the human niche requires recognition of the manner in which organisms construct aspects of their world. Empirical and theoretical studies show how the activities of organisms modify selection and influence evolution, and how this was a particularly important process in human evolution. In this seminar, Prof Laland will describe some theoretical and experimental projects suggesting feedback mechanisms that may have been instrumental to the evolution of human cognition. [more]

Wolf Niche/Human Niche - Online Lecture and Q&A with Emma Marris

In North America and Europe, humans expelled wolves from their niche, seeing them as incompatible with their own flourishing. Now, we've seemingly changed our minds, and are actively bringing wolves back in some places, while allowing them to return independently in others. But how does the wolf function in a human world? Can its niche fit inside or overlap the human niche? [more]

The Legacy of the Human Niche in the Amazon - Online Lecture and Q&A with Dr. Yoshi Maezumi

The Past, Present and Future of the Human Niche
Dr Yoshi Maezumi is a Marie Curie Fellow and National Geographic Explorer specializing in past human-environment interactions. Her research integrates cross-disciplinary perspectives from palaeoecology, archaeology, archaeobotany, and palaeoclimatology to examine the legacy of past human land use and fire management on modern ecosystems in the Amazon and Caribbean. [more]

Self-Domestication and the Origin of Homo Sapiens - Online Lecture and Q&A with Richard Wrangham

The Past, Present, and Future of the Human Niche
Richard Wrangham is a Research Professor at Harvard University, where he taught from 1989 to 2020. His major interests are chimpanzee and human evolutionary ecology, the evolutionary dynamics of violence and self-domestication, and ape conservation. Since 1987 he has studied wild chimpanzee behavior in Kibale National Park, Uganda. His latest book is The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution (2019). [more]

Distinguished Lecture by Robin Dennell: "The Human Colonisation of East Asia"

Distinguished Lecturer Seminar Series
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