Dominic Johnson (Project coordinator)

Dominic Johnson is Reader in International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. He received a DPhil from Oxford University in evolutionary biology, and a PhD from Geneva University in political science. Drawing on both disciplines, he is interested in how new research from the human and biological sciences is challenging theories of international relations, conflict, and cooperation. Dominic’s current work focuses on the role of evolutionary dynamics, evolutionary psychology, and religion in human conflict and cooperation.

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Jesse Bering

Jesse Bering is Director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture and Reader in the School of History and Anthropology at Queen’s University, Belfast. He is interested in aspects of human cognition for which there is evidence suggestive of human uniqueness from other animals. Jesse’s MSc training focused on the psychological differences between human beings and chimpanzees, and this early exposure to comparative psychology, combined with his PhD in developmental psychology, led to his work studying how the evolved human mind plays a part in religious thinking.

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Terry Burnham

Terry Burnham is Director of Economics at Acadian Asset Management and a research scientist at Harvard University’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. He received a PhD in Business Economics from Harvard in 1997, an MBA from MIT, a Master’s in computer science, and a Bachelor’s in biophysics from the University of Michigan. Terry has worked on Wall Street and co-founded Progenics, a biotechnology firm with promising treatments for cancer and AIDS. Terry has studied wild chimpanzees in Africa, and served with distinction as a tank driver in the U.S. Marine Corps.

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Jeffrey Schloss

Jeffrey Schloss is Distinguished Professor and Chair of Biology at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. He obtained his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Washington University and undergraduate training in biology and philosophy from Wheaton College. Jeff’s research interests span the ecophysiology of poikilohydric regulation in the animal kingdom and evolutionary understandings of religion, altruistic morality and human purpose.

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Richard Sosis

Richard Sosis is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut, and received his PhD from the University of New Mexico. His work has focused on the evolution of cooperation and the adaptive significance of religious behavior. To explore these issues, he has conducted fieldwork with remote cooperative fishers in the Federated States of Micronesia and with various communities throughout Israel, including Ultra-Orthodox Jews and members of secular and religious kibbutzim. He has also pursued ethnohistorical research on 19th century communal societies and conducted economic experiments with non-student populations in the United States and Israel.

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Robert Trivers

Robert Trivers is Professor of Anthropology and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 1972 and revolutionized biology and the social sciences with seminal papers on reciprocal altruism, parental investment, and parent-offspring conflict. More recently he has made influential contributions on intragenomic conflict and the adaptive logic of self-deception. Robert Trivers is arguably one of the most influential evolutionary theorists alive today. In 2007 he was awarded the prestigious 2007 Crafoord Prize in Biosciences for his “fundamental analysis of social evolution, conflict and cooperation”.

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David Harnden-Warwick

David is a graduate student at Queen’s University in Belfast. He has a Master of Theological Studies from Emory University, and is now working with Jesse Bering on the evolutionary origins of religious beliefs and behavior.

Zoey Reeve

Zoey is a graduate student at the University of Edinburgh. She has a BSc in psychology from Coventry University and a MSc in international relations and terrorism from Aberystwyth University. Zoey is now working with Dominic Johnson on the role of social identity in the causes of terrorism.

Paul Swartwout

Paul is a graduate student at the University of Connecticut. He has a BS in Evolution and Ecology from Ohio State University, and is now working with Richard Sosis on the role of costly signaling in cooperation within religion groups.

Distinguished Fellow and Senior Lecturer, Religious Studies Department, Victoria University, New Zealand. Joseph Bulbulia has degrees from Holy Cross and Harvard University, before receiving his PhD from Princeton University in 2001. He has written ground-breaking work on the evolution of religious cultures and minds, and cooperation and signaling. Joseph lives in Wellington New Zealand.

Paul Zak

Professor of Economics, Department Chair, and founding Director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University. Paul Zak has degrees in mathematics and economics from San Diego State University, a Ph.D. in economics from University of Pennsylvania, and post-doctoral training in neuroimaging from Harvard. His new book “Moral Markets: The Critical Role of Values in the Economy” appeared in 2008 from Princeton University Press. Professor Zak is credited with the first published use of the term “neuroeconomics” and has been a vanguard in this new discipline that integrates neuroscience and economics. Zak’s lab discovered in 2004 that an ancient chemical in our brains, oxytocin, allows us to determine who to trust. This knowledge is being used to understand the basis for modern civilizations and modern economies, improve negotiations, and treat patients with neurologic and psychiatric disorders.

David Sloan Wilson

SUNY Distinguished Professor, Departments of Biology and Anthropology, Binghamton University. David Sloan Wilson is an evolutionist who studies all aspects of humanity in addition to the biological world. He manages a number of programs designed to expand the influence of evolutionary theory in higher education (EvoS), public policy (The Evolution Institute), community-based research (The Binghamton Neighborhood Project), and religion (Evolutionary Religious Studies). I communicate to a general audience through my ScienceBlogs site and my trade books, including Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives and my forthcoming Evolving the City: An Evolutionist Contemplates Changing the World–One City at a Time.