Calleva Research Centre
For Evolution and Human Sciences
The Calleva Research Centre was established within the College in October 2010 as a result of a generous donation from an Old Member. Its aims are to investigate key questions about the origins, development, causes and functions of human behaviour by bridging the humanities, social, cognitive, and biological sciences within a broad evolutionary framework. The Centre’s work is embodied through successive three-year interdisciplinary research programmes that draw on unique collaborations between Magdalen Fellows working in these diverse fields.
The Centre’s first project brought together psychologists, neuroscientists, economists, evolutionary biologists and historians to study the ways in which human social behaviour develops and changes across the lifespan, and how these processes may vary across individuals from unique historical and cultural contexts.
The Centre’s second pair of three-year projects were launched in October 2014. One brings together evolutionary biologists and economists to study the evolution of cooperation and conflict in organisms ranging from bacteria to humans – one of the central problems in the evolution of sociality. The other brings together English and Classics specialists with psychologists in a study of the psychology of audiences at plays – a world of make-believe that has remained virtually unstudied hitherto.
Use the links on the side-bar to explore the Centre’s projects in more detail.
