anthropology

#1285 Luke Kemp - Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse

Jul 27, 2026

Dr. Luke Kemp is Research Affiliate and former Research Associate at the University of Cambridge. He looks at the past (civilization collapses) and future (climate change and emerging technologies) to guide policy in the present. He is an honorary lecturer in environmental policy at the Australian National University (ANU), holds a PhD in international relations from the ANU and was previously a senior economist at Vivid Economics. He is the author of Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse. More»
#1278 Paul Pettitt: Human Mortuary Practices, and Other Animals' Awareness of Death

Jul 10, 2026

Dr. Paul Pettitt is Professor of Palaeolithic Archaeology at Durham University. He specializes in Palaeolithic art and in the long-term development of the treatment of the dead. His survey of the biological and behavioral evolution of Homo sapiens was published by Thames and Hudson in 2022 (Homo Sapiens Rediscovered: The Scientific Revolution Rewriting our Origins). He is currently researching aspects of the visual psychology that underpins the earliest cave art. More»
#1271 Douglas Fry: Advanced Introduction to Conflict Resolution

Jun 25, 2026

Dr. Douglas P. Fry is Professor Emeritus of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Docent of Cross-Cultural Developmental Psychology at Åbo Akademi University in Vasa, Finland, and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar at the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity at Columbia University. He has written extensively on aggression, conflict, and conflict resolution in his own books and in journals such as Science and American Anthropologist. His new book is Advanced Introduction to Conflict Resolution. More»
#1240 Roy Richard Grinker - Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness

Apr 13, 2026

Dr. Roy Richard Grinker is Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at the George Washington University. Dr. Grinker is a cultural anthropologist specializing in ethnicity, nationalism, and psychological anthropology, with topical expertise in autism, Korea, and sub-Saharan Africa. He is also the director of GW's Institute for Ethnographic Research. He is the author of Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness. More»
#1231 Michael Gurven - Seven Decades: How We Evolved to Live Longer

Mar 23, 2026

Dr. Michael Gurven is a Professor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, chair of the Integrative Anthropological Sciences Unit, and also head of the Evolutionary Anthropology and Biodemography Research Group. He is an evolutionary anthropologist aiming to explain behavior and physiological systems as adaptive solutions to competing demands of limited resource allocation. He is the author of Seven Decades: How We Evolved to Live Longer. More»
#1218 Edward Hagen: Is Sex Binary?

Feb 20, 2026

Dr. Edward Hagen is Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Washington State University. His research takes an evolutionary approach to non-infectious diseases, with a focus on mental health. More»
#1208 Eleanor Scerri: Homo sapiens in Saudi Arabia, Africa, and Malta

Jan 29, 2026

Dr. Eleanor Scerri is Professor at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, where she is the Head of the independent Max Planck Human Palaeosystems Research Group. She is an archaeological scientist interested in exploring the articulation between material culture, genetics, and biogeography to further theoretical, methodological and scientific advances in the field of human evolution. Her group is exploring the pan-African evolution of our species, Homo sapiens through a number of diverse projects. More»
#1200 Vicky Oelze: The Anthropology of the Atlantic and Transatlantic Slave Trade

Jan 9, 2026

Dr. Vicky Oelze is an Associate Professor in the Anthropology Department and Director of the Primate Ecology & Molecular Anthropology Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research interests include mobility and dietary adaptations in archaeological human populations; African strontium isoscapes and isotopic investigations of the Atlantic and transatlantic slave trade; the dietary ecology of extant African great apes; great ape breastfeeding and weaning; and chimpanzee tool use and termite-chimpanzee interactions. More»
#1163 Herman Pontzer: How to Understand Human Biological Variation: "Race", Height, Gender, and More

Oct 16, 2025

Dr. Herman Pontzer is Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Global Health at the Global Health Institute at Duke University. Dr. Pontzer investigates the physiology of humans and other primates to understand how ecology, lifestyle, diet, and evolutionary history affect metabolism and health. He is particularly interested in cardiometabolic disease and the lifestyle factors that protect against obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other noncommunicable diseases that are common among industrialized populations but rare or absent in non-industrialized societies. His latest book is Adaptable: How Your Unique Body Really Works and Why Our Biology Unites Us. More»
#1144 Nikhil Chaudhary: Cooperation, Social Learning, Breeding Systems, and Evolutionary Psychiatry

Aug 31, 2025

Dr. Nikhil Chaudhary is Lecturer in Human Evolutionary and Behavioral Ecology in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. He is an evolutionary anthropologist interested in applying evolutionary theory to explain diversity in behavior and cognition across the entire spectrum of human societies. Currently, He is particularly focused on developing the field of evolutionary psychiatry. He is thinking about how evolutionary perspectives can advance our understanding of the etiology of mental illness. More»