On 12 May 2017, Paul Harris (Victor S. Thomas Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate Shool of Education) delivered the lecture 'Why do children doubt magic, but believe in the miraculous?'
Children, not unlike adults, tend to be skeptical about magical phenomena. On the other hand, they are willing to believe in supposedly miraculous violations of everyday causal constraints. Professor Harris presents data demonstrating these two contradictory tendencies and offers a speculative explanation.
Professor Elizabeth Povinelli (Columbia University) delivered the lecture ''Native Life', Or, Being Outside the Carbon Imaginary' on 7 March 2014 in the Pitt Rivers Museum Lecture Theatre. Using examples from settler Australia, the talk critically examines contemporary scientific discussions of the Anthropocene and climate change and contemporary theoretical theories of New Vitalism, New Animism and Relational Ontology.
In March 2011, Dr Susanne Shultz (ICEA, Oxford) delivered the lecture 'Social Evolution in Primates and Other Animals'.
ICEA Seminars
Professor Mark Thomas (UCL) gave a seminar as part of the ICEA seminar series on 18 May 2011:
Stephen Chance (Neuroanatomy and Cognition Group, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford) discussed Brain microcircuits in chimpanzees and humans: insights into IQ and social cognition on 1 June 2011.
Stephen Montgomery (University of Cambridge) discussed The Evolutionary History and Genetics of Primate Brain Size on 15 June 2011.
Anna Nekaris (Oxford Brookes University) presented on Venom, pollinators and parasites: how the poisonous slow loris may reveal the origins of social grooming amongst primates on 2 November 2011.
Sallie Burrough (School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford) discussed Extreme climatic events as drivers of early human behaviour in Africa? An environmental perspective from the Kalahari Desert on 23 November 2011.
John Odling-Smee (Oxford) talked about How niche construction affects inheritance systems in human evolution on 30 November 2011.
