Menelaos Apostolou is Associate Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Nicosia in the Republic of Cyprus. He studies human behavior, focusing on mate choice, parent-offspring conflict over mating, sexuality, sports, well-being, and sexual selection theory. He has published over 80 scientific articles and three books on these topics. His books include Sexual Selection under Parental Choice: The Evolution of Human Mating Behavior, Feeling Good: An Evolutionary Perspective on Life Choices and Sexual Selection in Homo sapiens: Parental Control Over Mating and the Opportunity Cost of Free Mate Choice.
Ubadah Sabbagh, Ph.D. is a neuroscientist at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. He studies the role of networks between the thalamus and cortex in neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders.
I am a graduate student in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University where I study questions at the intersection of ecology, behaviour, and evolution in lizards. Specifically, I'm interested in how individual variation in lizards' movement patterns and habitat use influences their social, ecological, and reproductive interactions. I'm also keenly interested in the basic biology of understudied and underappreciated organisms, in communicating science to broad audiences, and in fostering inclusivity in academia.
Ken Reardon is professor and director of the master's program in Urban Planning and Community Developmen at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Prior to joining UMass Boston he was director of the graduate program for the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of Memphis. Prior to joining the Memphis faculty, Reardon was an associate professor and chair of the Department of City and Regional Planning at AAP, where he pursued research, teaching, and outreach in the areas of neighborhood planning, community development, and community/university development partnerships. During his time in Ithaca, he coordinated the department's New Orleans Planning Initiative, which produced a recovery plan for the Ninth Ward. Before joining the Cornell faculty, Reardon was a tenured planning professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where his work in establishing the East St. Louis Action Research Project earned him the AICP President's Award and the Dale Prize for Excellence in City Planning.
Peter Corning is the Director of the Institute for the Study of Complex Systems and a member of the Evolution Institute’s Scientific Advisory Committee. He taught for many years in the Human Biology Program at Stanford University and is a past president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences. He is especially known for his work, and many publications, on the causal role of synergy in the evolution of complexity.
Eleanor Power is an Omidyar Postdoctoral Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. An evolutionary anthropologist working primarily in South India, Eleanor studies how religious belief and practice interact with and shape interpersonal relationships. She uses a diverse suite of methodological tools in this endeavor, primarily including social network analysis.
Max Beilby is a professional Organizational Psychologist and author of the Darwinian Business Blog.
Max is also a member of the Human Behaviour & Evolution Society and the Association for Business Psychology.
Follow Max on Twitter: @MaxBeilby
Margaret C. Jacob is professor of history at the University of California at Los Angeles. She has published widely on science,religion, freemasonry, and the origins of the Industrial Revolution. She is past president of the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies.
Tobias Uller is Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Wallenberg Academy Fellow at Lund University, Sweden. Tobias’ research is focused on the processes that generate evolutionary diversification and adaptation, and he has a particular interest in the relationship between development, heredity and evolution. Recent topics include the role of plasticity and non-genetic inheritance in evolution, evolutionary transitions in sex-determining systems, and the structure of evolutionary theory.
Dr. Veronika Rybanska received her D.Phil from the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford in 2016. She is a developmental psychologist and anthropologist who has conducted fieldwork at multiple sites in the UK, Slovakia, and Vanuatu. Her work focuses on cognitive development, education, and issues of migration and integration. Her research on cross-cultural cognitive development has been published in high impact journals and she is currently working on developing of computational models and simulations of the cognitive mechanisms she has researched in the field.
Martha Newson is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford. Drawing from anthropology and psychology, Martha uses a broad evolutionary framework to understand human behaviours. Her main research is social cohesion and the ensuing cooperation and conflict emerging from tightly bonded groups. Over the last five years this has focused on football ‘tribes’ of fans and hooligans across four continents.
Joshua Conrad Jackson is a PhD candidate and National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research concerns the nature of religious belief, and the formation and evolution of human groups. In particular, Josh is interested in (a) explaining earliest moments of group formation, (b) ecological influences on the strength of cultural norms, and (c) the psychological factors that predict religious belief and religious diversity. Outside of research, Josh contributes to the nonprofit group Useful Science as a content editor and podcast co-host.
Dimitris Xygalatas is an anthropologist at the University of Connecticut. His interests include ritual, cooperation, and the interaction between cognition and culture. He has conducted several years of fieldwork in Southern Europe and Mauritius. He has held positions at the universities of Princeton, Aarhus, and Masaryk, where he served as Director of the Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion (LEVYNA). At UConn, he directs the Experimental Anthropology Lab, which develops methods and technologies for studying social interaction in real-life settings.
Yo Nakawake is a PhD candidate in social psychology at Hokkaido University. He is currently working on collective behaviour and cognition. He is especially interested in collective emergent properties that cannot be attributed to individuals.
Christopher Kavanagh is a post-doctoral researcher in cognitive anthropology at the Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology (ICEA) at the University of Oxford. Currently he is based in in Japan where he conducts research in collaboration with Masaki Yuki’s Culture, Social Ecology, and Psychology Lab in Hokkaido University. His research interests include East Asian religions, ritual behaviour, and the bonding effects of shared dysphoria.
Kim Sterelny is a professor of philosophy at the Australian National University. His work has always been on the connections between philosophy and the natural sciences, especially the life sciences. Over the last decade or so, his main focus has been on the evolution of the distinctive forms of human social life, and of the cognitive and motivational capacities that support that life.
Brian Boyd is University Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Auckland. His evolutionary research focuses on literature, especially fiction, and on art, in their relation to evolution: as evolved behaviors, as appealing to evolved minds, as depicting behaviors and life histories shaped by evolution. He is particularly interested in the costs and benefits of earning or paying attention to art. His books include On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction, Why Lyrics Last: Evolution, Cognition, and Shakespeare’s Sonnets, the co-edited Evolution, Literature, and Film: A Reader, and the co-authored On the Origin of Art. He is editor of the book series Evolution, Cognition, and the Arts. Known best as a scholar of writer Vladimir Nabokov, he was drawn into evolutionary work partly by Nabokov’s interest as a lepidopterist in evolution, and partly by his own interest in the evolutionary epistemology of philosopher Karl Popper, on whom he is writing a biography.
Mark van Vugt is Professor of Evolutionary Psychology, Work and Organizational Psychology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands and a Research Associate at the University of Oxford, England. He studies and teaches about group and organizational behavior from an evolutionary psychology perspective. His main research themes include leadership, hierarchy, altruism, cooperation, and intergroup relations and he is the co-director of the Amsterdam Leadership Lab. Mark also has a keen interest in applications of evolutionary perspectives to such topics as management, governance, economics, sustainability, philanthropy, war and peace. He has published more than 150 articles in prestigious journals such as Nature, Current Biology, Proceedings of the Royal Society-B, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP), Psychological Science, and the American Psychologist, Academy of Management Review. He is a former Associate Editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and is currently serving at the Leadership Quarterly. He has authored and co-authored various books including “Naturally Selected: The Evolutionary Science of Leadership and, recently, Mismatch. Mark van Vugt has received research grants from national and international funding agencies including the European Union, the British Academy, NWO, from government and industry. He is a newspaper columnist and a blogger for Psychology Today on topics related to human behavior in the work place.
www.professormarkvanvugt.comTwitter: @markvanvugt1
Chris von Rueden is an anthropologist and assistant professor of leadership studies at the University of Richmond. He studies status hierarchy and collective action in small-scale societies, in particular the Tsimane forager-horticulturalists of lowland Bolivia. His research has implications for why humans in general are motivated by social status, how and why we adopt leader-follower relationships in groups, and how more politically complex societies emerged over the past few millennia.
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/chrisvonrueden/home
Peter and Rosemary Grant have been studying Darwin’s finches on the Galápagos islands since 1973. The fieldwork is designed to understand the causes of an adaptive radiation. It combines analyses of archipelago-wide patterns of evolution with detailed investigations of population level processes on two islands, Genovesa and Daphne. The work is a blend of ecology, behavior and genetics. They have collaborated with other investigators to estimate phylogenetic relationships among the species of finches and their relatives on the continent and in the Caribbean, and to identify the molecular mechanisms involved in the development of beaks that vary so conspicuously among the species. The research has been published in four books, most recently “How and Why Species Multiply” (2008) and “40 years of Evolution” (2014), both published by Princeton University Press.
Zachary Shaffer is a faculty associate and lecturer in Life Sciences at Arizona State University.
Dr. Rick O’Gorman has published on a wide range of topics, including leadership, attitudes, social norms, altruism, social policing, nonverbal behaviour and animal behaviour. Having obtained his PhD from the State University of New York at Binghamton, he has worked at the University of Kent, Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Essex. His current interests revolve around evolutionary approaches to a variety of topics, including altruism and prosociality, relatedness and friendships, morality, social policing, social norms, disgust and conformity, culture, the interplay of social behaviour and neurohormones, and the impact of the female ovulatory cycle on mate preferences for intelligence.
Alistair Thorpe is a doctoral student in the psychology department at the University of Essex with a broad interest in decision making and the behavioural sciences (economics, finance & psychology). His PhD topic is on medical decision making, with a particular focus on examining the decision making tendencies of both physicians and patients. During his undergraduate degree his final year dissertation topic explored a recently discovered violation of one of the normative principles of statistical decision theory.
Delaney is a biocultural anthropologist and Biological Anthropology Ph.D. student at the University of Washington. Her work melds cultural, biological, and evolutionary perspectives on puberty and adolescence to understand the potential ways stress impacts Darwinian fitness, health, and wellbeing. She plans to conduct fieldwork in Jordan and the U.S. Additionally, she is an rstats and Data Science enthusiast and enjoys writing.
Trevor Pearce is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is currently writing a book, tentatively titled Pragmatism’s Evolution: Organism and Environment in American Philosophy, that explores the complicated interactions between biology and philosophy in America around 1900. He co-edited the collection Entangled Life: Organism and Environment in the Biological and Social Sciences (Springer, 2014), and has published articles on a variety of topics in the history and philosophy of biology.
Barbara Oakley is a Professor of Engineering at Oakland University. She is involved in multiple areas of research, ranging from STEM education, to Engineering education, to learning practices. Most notably, Professor Oakley has co-created and taught Learning How To Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects available on Coursera. It has become the world's most popular online course. She is also the author of A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra) and has been featured in a number of popular media outlets. Oakley has most recently been featured in the Wall Street Journal with an op-ed article entitled How We Should Be Teaching Math.
Eugene Goodheart is the Edytha Macy Gross Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Brandeis University and the author of 15 books of mostly literary and cultural criticism as well as a memoir and personal essays. Darwinian Misadventures in the Humanities is his main contribution to the debate about the role of evolutionary theory in the study of the humanities.
Dr. Hannes Lang is a research associate at the chair for Governance in International Agribusiness at the Technical University of Munich. He is interested in the relationship between economic systems, social institutions and the natural world. His background is in Ecological Economics and Behavioural Economics and in his research he focuses on policies that favour a socially and environmentally sustainable development.
Russell K. Schutt, Ph.D. is 2019-2020 Chair of the American Sociological Association’s section on Evolution, Biology, and Society. He is Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Lecturer (part-time) in Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, Clinical Research Scientist I at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Research Associate at the Veterans Health Administration (Edith Nourse Rogers Veterans Hospital). His research and publications focus on the social environment and individual functioning, service preferences, and the organization and delivery of public programs, in relation to homelessness, mental illness, public health, and organizational and legal processes, with more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles, and books that include Social Neuroscience: Brain, Mind, and Society (co-edited), Homelessness, Housing and Mental Illness (both Harvard University Press), and research methods texts with SAGE Publications that include Investigating the Social World: The Process and Practice of Research (now in its 9th edition). His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Cancer Institute, the Veterans Health Administration, the Fetzer Institute, and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
Dieter Armbruster is a professor in mathematics at Arizona State University. He received a Ph.D in Physics from the University of Tuebingen in Germany, and did postdoctoral work in engineering at Cornell University. He is the author a textbook on applied mathematics.
Tim Ingold is Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. He has carried out fieldwork among Saami and Finnish people in Lapland, and has written on environment, technology and social organisation in the circumpolar North, on animals in human society, and on human ecology and evolutionary theory. His more recent work explores environmental perception and skilled practice. Ingold’s current interests lie on the interface between anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. His recent books include The Perception of the Environment (2000), Lines (2007), Being Alive (2011), Making (2013) and The Life of Lines (2015).
Christopher X Jon Jensen is an educator, writer, and scientist with interests in cooperation, human cultural evolution, and sustainability. He is Associate Professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where he teaches biology courses to future creative professionals. His position as a scientist at an art and design school provides him with a unique perspective on the intersection between human creativity, human production, and our biological origins. More writing and other work from Dr. Jensen can be found on his website.
Cristina Moya is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Human Evolutionary Biology Department at Harvard University. Her research focuses on how humans adapt to culturally-structured social worlds. Her primary research areas focus on how people reason about cultural group boundaries and make reproductive decisions. She uses ethnographic, developmental psychological, and cross-cultural comparative methods to address these questions. She has conducted extensive fieldwork along the Quechua-Aymara language boundary in the Peruvian Altiplano to understand the nature of reasoning about linguistic social groups.
Joe Rebholz is an independent researcher and writer. He has a Ph. D. in mathematics from the University of California at Los Angeles and has worked in the areas of mathematics, systems modeling and software development at the UCLA School of Engineering and Applied Science, Hughes Aircraft Space and Communications Group, and as consultant to governments and other organizations. He has written and published the books No More War Memes in 2009 and Information Communication Cooperation: The Unifying Force of Human Progress in 2015.
Thomas Hylland Eriksen is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). Much of his research has concerned the dynamics of culture and identity in complex societies, but he is now directing a comparative project on accelerated global change called “Overheating: An anthropological history of the early 21st century”. His latest book is “Overheating: An anthropology of accelerated change” (2016).
Gil Benmoshe is an independent scholar studying intentional communities in the US. His graduate education is in developmental psychology but his current research employs both behavioral economic and game theoretic approaches to understanding success and failure of intentional communities. Gil is currently working in collaboration with a few academic institutions as well as the federation of egalitarian communities. He started several intentional communities and currently lives at Cambia community in Louisa, VA.
Iuval Clejan has a PhD in Physics from Boston University. He worked as a process simulation engineer at Motorola making memory devices, as a molecular biologist studying aging and DNA repair in nematodes at UNC, and as an engineer and farmer implementing alternative technology and agriculture at several intentional communities. His other current interests are culture genesis, local economies, the connection between continuous game theory and control theory and the physics of signature flipping surfaces.
Christopher Congleton is a social scientist who applies the science of sharing to help solve ecological and social problems. He integrates human ecology and technological development with natural systems, grounded in critical theory and practice. He has extensive international experience, including facilitating public open space design charrette for the City of Stavanger in Norway and a two year stint as an English Instructor in Korea. His recent work includes a project for the Rainforest Action Network in which he interviewed stakeholders, including staff, partner organizations, and constituents and analyzed data generated by hundreds of participants across the U.S.A. in weekend-long visioning processes to produce a summary of the resulting collective vision. He is also cofounder of the Davis Bike Church. He is interested in connecting with others using evolutionary theory to remove barriers to a just and sustainable world.
Paul McLaughlin is a member of the Department of Sociology at SUNY Geneseo. His primary interest is in tracing the parallels between the Darwinian revolution and current changes in the field of environmental sociology. He has explored the implications of these comparisons for attempts to theorize adaptation and vulnerability to climate change, as well as attempts to mitigate its impacts.
Ellen Dissanayake is an independent scholar, author, and lecturer whose writings about the arts synthesize many disciplines, including evolutionary biology, ethology, cognitive and developmental psychology, cultural and physical anthropology, cognitive archaeology, neuroscience, and the history, theory, and practice of the various arts. She is the author of three books published by the University of Washington Press: What is Art For?, Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes from and Why (translated into Chinese and Korean), and Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began, as well as more than eighty scholarly and popular articles and book chapters. Just published is an Italian translation of seven of her scholarly articles in a volume titled L’infanzia dell’esthetica: L’origine evolutive delle practiche artistiche. She has recently completed a book with Ekkehart Malotki, Early Rock Art of the American West: The Geometric Enigma. She is an Affiliate Professor in the School of Music at the University of Washington. See also www.ellendissanayake.com and her page on Academia.edu.
Jill Levine is a coordinator and research assistant at The Evolution Institute’s Seshat: Global History Databank project. She previously worked as a translator and editor in Beijing, and studied Chinese and Asian Studies at Vassar College. She has also spent time at Peking University, SOAS, and Qingdao University.
Josh is currently completing his Master's in Experimental and Applied Psychology at the University of Regina. When he's not too preoccupied trying to be the next John Mayer, Josh is busy studying decision-making in sports. He is constantly learning new statistical techniques, mainly so he can use them to identify prime waiver wire pickups for his favourite NBA team (the Golden State Warriors).
Mary Ellen Hannibal is a writer focusing on science and culture. She is a recipient of the National Society of Science Writer’s Science and Society Award 2012 and Stanford University’s Knight-Risser Prize for Western Environmental Journalism. She is the founder and producer of Evolve2009, a San Francisco city-wide celebration of Darwin and evolution. Evolve2009 won the California Library Association’s 2009 award for advocacy and communications.
Sandeep Mishra is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the Hill/Levene Schools of Business at the University of Regina. His research expertise is in the broad areas of judgment and decision-making, personality and individual differences, and evolutionary theory. Professor Mishra's research program is primarily focused on understanding decision-making under risk and uncertainty, including gambling.
After publishing monographs on the Victorian cultural theorist Matthew Arnold and the modern American poet Wallace Stevens, he began integrating the evolutionary human sciences and literary study. All his work as author and editor since the early 1990s has been dedicated to that project. His books in evolutionary literary study are Evolution and Literary Theory (1995), Literary Darwinism (2004), Reading Human Nature (2011), and (co-authored) Graphing Jane Austen: The Evolutionary Basis of Literary Meaning (2012). He produced an edition (Broadview 2003) of Darwin’s Origin of Species and has coedited multiple volumes of essays and journal issues. In 2023, he received a “Lifetime Career Award” from the Evolution and Human Behavior Society.
Michelle Scalise Sugiyama is a member of the UO Anthropology Department and Institute of Cognitive and Decision Sciences, an affiliate of the UCSB Center for Evolutionary Psychology, and Founder and Director of the Cognitive Cultural Studies Project. Her research and teaching are grounded in the evolution of cultural transmission. Specifically, her work explores the ways in which storytelling, art, and play are used to meet the challenges of hunter-gatherer life.
Daniel is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Worcester. He obtained his BSc (Hons) in Psychology and MSc in Evolutionary Psychology from Liverpool University, and PhD in Psychology, studying the evolution of human cooperation, from Newcastle University. His main interests are in the empirical and theoretical application of evolutionary theory to explain human social behaviour and psychological processes. This includes areas such as how cooperation has evolved in humans, particularly in response to different social situations and pressures. He also explores how social factors, including different life-history variables such as relationship status, influence male competitive behaviour and also levels of circulating testosterone
Dr. Muir is Professor of genetics at Purdue University. He is a recipient of the Animal Well-Being Award, American Poultry Science Association, and Merck Research Award for Achievement. He has served as an advisor to corporations, universities, non-governmental and government agencies with respect to genomics, animal biotechnology, breeding, and animal wellbeing. Professor Muir has served on the National Academy of Sciences, National Research Counsel on biotechnology; has over 155 publications and edited the book Poultry Genetics, Breeding, and Biotechnology; and has received over $11.5 million in sponsored research from government and industry sources.
Massimo Pigliucci is a blogger and author, as well as the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. He writes regularly at platofootnote.org and howtobeastoic.org. His books include How To Be A Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life (Basic Books) and Science Unlimited? The Challenges of Scientism (co-edited with M. Boudry, University of Chicago Press).
Ed Wasserman is the Stuit Professor of Experimental Psychology in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at The University of Iowa. He is a founding member and Past President of the Comparative Cognition Society and co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Cognition. His research experimentally explores learning, memory, and cognition in humans and nonhuman animals.
Randolph M. Nesse is Professor of Life Sciences and the Director of the Center for Evolutionary Medicine at Arizona State University. He collaborated with the evolutionary biologist George Williams on writings that established the field of evolutionary medicine. His current research is on how understanding the evolutionary origins of responses like pain, fever, anxiety, and depression can help relieve suffering. He also investigates the origins of capacities for morality. Dr. Nesse welcomes connections with all who share his mission to establish evolutionary biology as a basic science for medicine, worldwide.
Dr. Tiffany Taylor is an evolutionary biologist currently doing research at the University of Reading. It was the sheer variety of life which first grabbed her attention, with each variation solving the problem of staying alive in a slightly different way. Evolution is a dynamic process, ever changing, and only those which can keep up with the pace will survive. She felt this concept was lost in current teaching methods, and so she wrote this book in order to introduce the concepts of evolution, without the jargon, in a fun and comprehensible way, with the hope of encouraging questions about the world we live in, and getting kids wondering why things are the way they are.
Richard Lenski is the John Hannah Distinguished Professor of Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University. He studies the genetic mechanisms and ecological processes that produce evolution. In an experiment started in 1988, he and his team have studied 12 populations of bacteria as they evolve in the laboratory for over 65,000 generations, providing insights into the process of adaptation by natural selection, the dynamics of genome evolution, and the origin of new functions. He is a past President of the Society for the Study of Evolution, and he was a member of the National Research Council committee that reviewed the scientific approaches used in the FBI’s investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks. He helped start the BEACON Center, which brings together biologists, computer scientists, and engineers to harness and illuminate the power of evolution in action. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Pablo Reyes Arellano is an Organizational Consultant with experience in programs of culture transformation and organizational evolution. He is professor in the Master in Organizational Communication from Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez and co author of the book "La nueva élite" (The new elite, the evolutionary transition of the Chilean society).
Dr. Stuart Thomas is an applied economist at RMIT University. He is also the president of Australia's stand-up paddle-boarding association.
Professor Jason Potts is an evolutionary economist at RMIT University. He specializes in innovation economics as well as the economics of arts, culture and sports.
Matthew Polistina holds a Masters of Science in Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology from the University of Oxford and Bachelors degrees in Biological Sciences and Philosophy from Binghamton University, where he was a member of the Evolutionary Studies program.
Bernard Lafayette, Jr. is a longtime civil rights activist and organizer, who was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He played a leading role in early organizing of the Selma Voting Rights Movement; was a member of the Nashville Student Movement; and worked closely throughout the 1960s movements with groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the American Friends Service Committee. Lafayette has been recognized as a major authority on strategies for nonviolent social change. He is also recognized as one of the leading exponents of nonviolent direct action in the world. He was a Senior Fellow at the University of Rhode Island, where he helped to found the Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies. The Center promotes nonviolence education using a curriculum based on the principles and methods of Martin Luther King, Jr. He is a Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Candler School of Theology, at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. - wikipedia
Mark Nouss was the president of the UF Alumni Association and a board member of both Tampa General Hospital Foundation and Mary Lee's House in Tampa. He received a bachelor's degree in accounting from UF in 1981, a juris doctor from UF in 1985, and a master's degree in law taxation from New York University in 1986. Before taking his current sabbatical from the practice of law, Mark was most recently financial director at JP Morgan Chase in New York. Prior to this, he was special counsel and a tax associate for almost 10 years at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York.
Neema Parvini is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Surrey. He is the author of five books: Shakespeare's History Plays: Rethinking Historicism (2012); Shakespeare and Contemporary Theory: New Historicism and Cultural Materialism (2012); Shakespeare and Cognition: Thinking Fast and Slow through Character (2015); Shakespeare and New Historicism Theory (2017) and Shakespeare's Moral Compass: Ethical Thinking in His Plays (forthcoming 2018). He also presents a popular podcast series called Shakespeare and Contemporary Theory.
Edwina Rogers has served in public policy positions in the US Senate, White House, private, and international sectors for over twenty years. She has worked for two Presidents and four Senators, and founded or directed lobbying firms for public health issues. From 2012 to 2014, she was the Executive Director of the Secular Coalition for America.Ms. Rogers is currently CEO of an international organization, the Secular Policy Institute.
Michelle Shimberg has been a school policy activist for nearly twenty years, helping to shape policy and programs for the 8th largest school district in the country. During this time she has built effective relationships with elected officials as well as administrators and parents that led to important changes.In addition to her work on education, Ms. Shimberg serves on the Board of Starting Right, an organization dedicated to ending homelessness through multiple strategies. She also serves as an officer of Men of Vision, a group that provides support to at-risk males.She is twice the past president of Delta Delta Delta Fraternity, an organization of more than 200,000 women.
Aaron is a Professor at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University, Melbourne, Australia. His research focuses on beliefs and the management of psychological, organizational and policy change in business, sport, health, religion and society. Aaron’s most recent books include ‘Cognitive Mechanisms of Belief Change', 'Thinking about Religion: Extending the Cognitive Science of Religion', and 'Rethinking Drugs in Sport: Why the War on Drugs in Sport will Never be Won.'
Bob Stewart is Professor of Sport Policy in the College of Sport and Exercise Science at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia. Bob has a special interest in player regulation in professional team sports, and the ways in which the forces of neoliberalism and hyper-commercialism shape the structure and conduct of contemporary sport. Bob is the author of ‘Sport Funding and Finance’, and ‘Rethinking Drug use in Sport: Why the War will Never be Won.’
Rosemary L. Hopcroft is Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She has published widely in the areas of evolutionary sociology and comparative and historical sociology in journals that include the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Evolution and Human Behavior, and Human Nature. She is the author of Evolution and Gender: Why it matters for contemporary life, Routledge 2016).
Sudhindra Rao is a doctoral candidate in Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at Binghamton University. His research focusses on diet and health from an evolutionary perspective. For his doctoral thesis Rao conducted a randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of a Paleolithic type diet. The main goals of this dietary study are to test hypotheses of mismatch and demonstrate that dietary trial can be carried out with minimal resources. He is currently working on his dissertation and data analysis of the dietary trial. Rao is also interested in human behavior, prosociality and mindfulness based psychology.
Dr. Aaron Blaisdell is a UCLA Psychology Professor where he runs the Comparative Cognition Lab. Dr. Blaisdell is a member of the UCLA Brain Research Institute, the UCLA Integrative Center for Learning & Memory, and the UCLA Evolutionary Medicine program. He received a BA in Anthropology (SUNY Stony Brook), an MS in Anthropology (Kent State University), a Ph.D. in Behavioral Neuroscience (SUNY Binghamton), and had 2 years of NIH-funded postdoctoral training (Tufts University). Dr. Blaisdell studies animal cognition, behavioral neuroscience, and ancestral health. He co-founded the Ancestral Health Society and is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Evolution and Health.
Kevin Laland is Professor of Behavioural and Evolutionary Biology at the University of St Andrews, and prior to that held positions at UCL, UC Berkeley and Cambridge Universities. He studies animal behaviour and evolution, with a specific focus on niche construction, the extended evolutionary synthesis, and the evolution of cognition. He has published over 200 scientific articles on these topics, and been the recipient of more than £15m in grant income. He is an Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. His books include Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution, Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour and Social Learning: an Introduction to Mechanisms, Methods and Models.
Kevin Kniffin, This View of Life's Sports Editor, is an applied behavioral scientist at Cornell University who teaches and researches the mechanisms that facilitate cooperation within groups. He has contributed research papers to outlets including Evolution & Human Behavior, Human Nature, and Evolutionary Psychological Science and his work has been covered by popular media including The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and The Atlantic. Kniffin has conducted research in diverse field settings, including firehouses, gyms, and new automobile dealerships. He is active on Twitter @KevinKniffin.
Helga Vierich has doctorate in anthropology and teaches at The Yellowhead Tribal College. She has worked for the International Crops Research Institute in Burkina Faso, and taught at the University of Kentucky and the University of Alberta.
Matt Edgeworth is an archaeologist and Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leicester.
Benjamin Grant Purzycki is a sociocultural anthropologist who engages in the cognitive, evolutionary, and ethnographic sciences of cooperation and religion. Presently, most of his attention is devoted to understanding cross-cultural variation in the cognition of supernatural minds, and how explicit religious beliefs and rituals adaptively address local pressures that require collective coordination. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of British Columbia's Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition, and Culture.
Chris Weible is associate professor at School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver. He is also co-editor for the Policy Studies Journal, teaches courses in environmental politics, policy processes, policy analysis, and research methods and design, and co-directs the Workshop on Policy Process Research (WOPPR).
Lixing Sun is currently a Professor of Biology at Central Washington University. He studies, teaches, and writes about animal behavior, human nature, evolution, and behavioral economics.
Alex Mesoudi is an Associate Professor of Cultural Evolution at the University of Exeter (Cornwall Campus), UK. He conducts research into human cultural evolution: explaining cultural change using the concepts, tools and methods of evolutionary theory. Specifically, he uses lab experiments and theoretical models to simulate the individual-level social learning processes - who copies what, from whom, and when - that generate large-scale patterns of cultural change and diversity. Much of his work has examined technological evolution, looking at arrowheads and handaxes. More recently he has been studying immigration as a source of cultural change and stasis. His 2011 book, Cultural Evolution, was his attempt to synthesise cultural evolution research across multiple disciplines to encourage a unified evolutionary science of culture
Aaron M. Ellison (@AMaxEll17) is the Senior Research Fellow in Ecology at Harvard University’s Harvard Forest, and an Edward P. Bass Distinguished Visiting Environmental Scholar at the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies. He studies the disassembly and reconstruction of ecological systems.
Mark Williams is a Professor of Palaeobiology in the Department of Geology at Leicester University in the United Kingdom, and a Guest Professor at Yunnan University in Kunming, China. The co-author of two popular science books, ‘The Goldilocks Planet’ and ‘Ocean Worlds’, his work is predicated on understanding major innovations in the biosphere over geological time. More simply though, he just loves studying beautiful fossils.
Robert J. Richards is the Morris Fishbein Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Science, and Professor in the Departments of History, Philosophy, and Psychology at the University of Chicago. He has written several books on evolutionary theory in the 19the and early 20th centuries; he has also written on the history of German Romanticism, especially its impact on science and philosophy in the age of Goethe.
Erle Ellis is Professor of Geography & Environmental Systems at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and Visiting Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. His research investigates the ecology of anthropogenic landscapes and their changes at local to global scales. Current work in his lab has three main foci: the global ecology and history of human landscapes (anthroecology; anthropogenic biomes), tools for global synthesis of local knowledge of landscape change (GLOBE), and inexpensive tools for measuring and managing ecological change across anthropogenic landscapes (Ecosynth, Anthropogenic Ecotope Mapping). All of these come together in his main goal: informing sustainable stewardship of the biosphere in the Anthropocene.
Barbara Finlay is the W.R Kenan Professor of Psychology at Cornell University, and co-editor of the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Beginning from sensory physiology and developmental neurobiology, she evolved into a scientist studying the interaction of development and evolution in the construction of the brain.
Diane A. Kelly is a comparative anatomist studying vertebrate reproductive systems. Her interests are broad, and include the evolution of genital tissues in amniotes and the function of sex-specific neural circuitry in the mammalian brain. Her current projects examine the biomechanics of copulatory organs within living crocodilians and birds, and work toward describing the connectome of a sexually dimorphic set of neurons in the mammalian forebrain.In addition to her scientific work, Dr. Kelly writes about science, takes photographs, and designs games. Her work has appeared in Gizmodo, Muse, Wondertime, and on The Story Collider. She holds appointments as a Research Scholar at the Ronin Institute and as Research Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts.
Dr. Brown is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Bedfordshire. His research investigates social evolution across multiple levels of life such as genes, brains, behavior and societies. His current focus is exercise epigenetics with a focus on genomic imprinting. Brown proposed that exercise-associated DNA methylation change amongst ageing humans in an epigenetic adaptive response to antagonistic pleiotropy. Will also has research interests in 3D scanning and analysis of phenotype.
Cameron K. Murray is an economist who specializes in environmental economics, regulation, rent-seeking, corruption, and property markets. Twitter: @rumplestatskin
Michael Shermer is the Publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University. He is the author of numerous bestselling books, including The Science of Good and Evil and The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity Toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom.
David Colander, Distinguished College Professor of Economics at Middlebury College, writes on complexity, history of economic thought, economic policy, and social science methodology. His recent book, Complexity and the Art of Public Policy, (co written with Roland Kupers) was described by Herb Gintis as the “best book on public policy in years.” He is currently at work on a book exploring how the neoclassical revolution in economics moved economics policy discussion away from its classical liberal policy roots, and how the complexity revolution is returning economics to those classical liberal roots.
Peter J. Richerson is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California—Davis. His research focuses on the processes of cultural evolution. His 1985 book with Robert Boyd, Culture and the Evolutionary Process, applied the mathematical tools used by organic evolutionists to study a number of basic problems in human cultural evolution. His recent books with Boyd includes Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution, an introduction to cultural evolution aimed at a broad audience and The Origins and Evolution of Cultures, a compendium of their more important papers and book chapters. His recent publications used theoretical models to try to understand some of the main events in human evolution, such as the evolution of the advanced capacity for imitation (and hence cumulative cultural evolution) in humans, the origins of tribal and larger scale cooperation, and the origins of agriculture. He and his colleagues also investigate cultural evolution in laboratory microsocieties.
Athena Aktipis is a cooperation theorist, cancer biologist and social psychologist who studies cooperation across systems from human sharing to the evolution of multicellularity and cancer. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology, co-Director of The Human Generosity Project, co-leader of the Arizona Cancer Evolution Center and a member of the Center for Evolution and Medicine and the Biodesign Center for Immunotherapy, Vaccines, and Virotherapy at Arizona State University. She is the author of Evolution in the Flesh and The Cheating Cell: How Evolution Helps Us Understand and Treat Cancer.
Adriana Novoa completed her MA and PhD in Latin American History at the University of California, San Diego. She is a cultural historian whose specialty is science in Latin America, and with Alex Levine she has written a book about Darwinism in Argentina: From Man to Monkey (The University of Chicago Press, 2010), and Darwinists! (Brill, 2012). Dr. Novoa’s articles have been published in Journal of Latin American Studies, Science in Context, The Latinoamericanist, and Revista Hispánica Moderna, among others. She is currently working on a book dealing with Darwin's evolutionism and masculinity in Argentina, From Virile to Sterile.
Doug is a ceramics process-engineering expert in the nuclear industry. He holds a Bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from Washington State University as well as a Masters degree in Biblical and Theological Studies from Luther Rice University.After spending 20 years as a creationist Christian, he has experienced a radical de-conversion and is now an ardent evolutionist. He is interested in understanding and explaining the evolution of human psychology, behavior, and culture, especially the origin and function of religion. He consumes everything that he can get his hands on about philosophy, morality, and religion. He has a strong desire to witness and participate in the creation of communities of scientists and evolutionists that have a positive and meaningful impact on society all around the world.
Dr. Gale M. Sinatra is a Professor of Education and Psychology at the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. She received her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is a Fellow of both APA and AERA. She heads the Motivated Change Research Lab, the mission of which is understanding the cognitive, motivational, and emotional processes that lead to attitude change, conceptual change, and successful STEM learning.
Dr. Shtulman is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Occidental College. He holds an A.B. in Psychology from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Harvard University. His research explores conceptual development and conceptual change, particularly as they relate to science education, and he is a recipient of an Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation and an Understanding Human Cognition Scholar Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation.
Jason Niedermeyer is a teacher at South Salem high school and an adjunct professor for Linfield College’s Education Department. He is also the father of two boys (CJ and Ryan), a husband, and the coauthor of his college football coach’s autobiography, Figure It Out: How I Learned to Live in a Digital World Without Digits.
David Korten (www.livingeconomies.org, among others) is co-founder and board chair of YES! Magazine, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, president of the Living Economies Forum, a member of the Club of Rome, and a former Harvard Business School professor. He is the author of numerous books, including Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, the international best-seller, When Corporations Rule the World (updated, third edition July 2015), The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community; and, most recently, Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth.
Richard Clugston, Ph.D, directs the Sustainability and Global Affairs programs at the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary (www.centerforearthethics.org). He is also the Co-Director of the Association of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future and directs the Sustainable Development Programs of the Forum 21 Institute. Rick served as Executive Director of the Center for Respect of Life and Environment in Washington, DC, where he assisted religious and academic institutions in transforming their teaching and practices to support strong sustainability. Rick was publisher and editor of “Earth Ethics: Evolving Values for an Earth Community.” Prior to coming to Washington, Rick worked at the University of Minnesota as a faculty member in the College of Human Ecology.
Zachary Stein's work (www.zakstein.org) focuses on social justice and education through the lenses of developmental psychology and integral metatheories. He studied philosophy and religion at Hampshire College, and educational neuroscience, human development, and the philosophy of education at Harvard University. While a student at Hampshire he co-founded what would become Lectica, Inc., a non-profit dedicated to the research-based, justice-oriented reform of large-scale standardized testing in K-12, higher-education, and business. Zak has published in a wide range of outlets including American Psychologist, New Ideas in Psychology, Mind, Brain, and Education, Integral Review, and the Journal of Philosophy of Education. He is the Academic Director of the activist think-tank at the Center for Integral Wisdom, and Core Faculty at Meridian University.
Mike Morrell, an influential blogger in progressive religion, serves as Communications Director for Presence International (www.presence.tv). Through the internet platform "Speakeasy", Mike has cultivated a hive of over 1,000 avid spirituality and culture bloggers who cross-pollinate quality books and ideas on the work and future of religions. Mike, also an author coach and publishing consultant, is also a founding organizer of the justice-, arts-, and spirituality-oriented Wild Goose Festival.
Doug King is an author, speaker, and President of Presence International (www.presence.tv), an Integral Theology think tank revisioning the role of spirituality for the common good. Doug (originally a graduate of conventional theological and biblical schools, and graduate study in biblical languages) also serves on the Advisory Board for Forum 21, a forum of UN NGO's visioning Century 21.
Rev. Mac Legerton is Coordinator of the Eco-Ministry Initiative of the Interspiritual Network and Forum 21 Institute on the national level (www.selfcaretoearthcare.com). He is Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Community Action in rural N.C., focusing on sustainability, poverty reduction, and social justice. Rev. Legerton is a Christian contemplative and leader in the Guild for Spiritual Guidance and Windcall Institute. He is the 2007 recipient of the Distinguished Service to Rural Life Award from the Rural Sociological Society. He is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and a graduate of Union Theological Seminary in New York.
With 22 books on spirituality and science, that have been translated in more than 25 countries, Ken Wilber (www.kenwilber.com, among others) is now the most translated writer on consciousness studies in the world. His debut The Spectrum of Consciousness (1977) established his reputation as an original thinker, who seeks to integrate Western and Eastern thought, and science and the world’s spiritual traditions. No Boundary (1979), which summarizes this work, is one of his most popular books. His core works The Atman Project (1980) and Up from Eden (1981) cover the territories of developmental psychology and cultural history respectively. In his recent work, especially the voluminous Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995), he has criticized not only Western culture, but also counter-cultural movements such as the New Age. In his opinion, none of these approach the depth and detailed nature of the "perennial philosophy", the conception of reality that lies at the heart of all major religions, and which forms the background of all his writings. This fundamental work has been summarized too, in A Brief History of Everything, one of his most widely read books.