The emergence of inequality in the transition from forager to sedentary lives
Seminar
Almost all living humans live in social world that are profoundly unequal in wealth and influence. By the standard of deep human history, that is a recent change. For most of our history humans lived in egalitarian, acephalous communities. This paper focusses on two questions. First: how and why…
The Toe Dialogues
Seminar
The Toe Dialogues: Adventures in Predatory Publishing About the Lecture: The open access movement has spawned hundreds of new journals that spam academics with invitations to pay to publish. A librarian coined the phrase “predatory publishers” to describe open-access journals that do not…
Dreams of the Wild
Seminar
About the Lecture: There are parallels in the ways rural communities in eastern Australia and island Papua New Guinea experience and anticipate the impact of global change on their forest environments. Dr Guinness explores how national economic and political planning impacts on local and…
Being ‘Born Again’: Muslim Youth and The Growth of Urban and Virtual Piety
Seminar
The Indonesian da’wa (Islamic proselytising) scene is increasingly experiencing transformation. During the advent of Islam in the archipelago, promoters of Islam used cultural elements as their instruments of da’wa. Today, advances in technology, including the presence of the internet and…
The cost of fertility: maternal mortality and morbidity during ancient demographic transitions
Seminar
Bioarchaeological accounts of the relationship between fertility, maternal and infant mortality have been limited by the inability to measure the prevalence of maternal deaths and the number of infants born, and thus the proportion of infants that did not survive their early years. Even our…
Blade, skin and screen: (Re-)assembling self-harm through social media
Seminar
Self-harm discussions and images on social media have been a recent focus of concern across academia, policy and the media. Cross-sectoral calls for online technology providers to enhance safeguarding have particularly emphasised the dangers of self-harm content; this has been framed as causing,…