People

Harvey Whitehouse is an anthropologist whose research focuses on the evolution of social complexity. One of the founders of the cognitive science of religion, Harvey is well known for his theory of "modes of religiosity," which explains how the frequency and emotional intensity of collective rituals influence the scale and structure of religious organisations. He is Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow of Magdalen College.

Dr Julia Ebner is a researcher specialising in radicalisation, extremism and terrorism studies. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the Calleva Centre of Evolution and Human Sciences at the Magdalen College, Oxford, where she studies why authoritarian leaders use violence to achieve their objectives.

Professor Emma Cohen is a cognitive and evolutionary anthropologist with interdisciplinary research interests in the evolution and psychology of human sociality. Her current primary research studies social affiliation in everyday human behaviour, culture and health. 

Dr Martha Newson uses an evolutionary angle to understand human culture and behaviour. She focuses on the themes of belonging, ritual and transformative experiences, themes central to both her academic research and her consultancy practice, with clients including the Premier League, Hyundai, and Guinness.

Dr Christopher Kavanagh's background is in cross-cultural research, focusing on ritual psychology, group bonding through ritual experiences, and the impact of transformative events on autobiographical identity.

Dr Lukas Reinhardt is a behavioural economist specialising in global identity and social cohesion on a global scale. He is also a research affiliate at the Identity and Conflict Lab at Yale University and has conducted his doctoral studies at the Department of Economics at the University of Cologne.

Professor Pieter Francois studies world history over long timescales. He designs methodologies to understand patterns in world history quantitatively and constructs infrastructures to store and query world historical data.

Dr Oliver Scott Curry is a Research Affiliate at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford and Lab Group Leader for the Morality-as-Cooperation Lab at the Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion.