Heron-Allen Lecture: Professor Harvey Whitehouse

All are welcome to join us for the annual Heron-Allen Lecture, hosted by WildCRU and LMH. This year's lecture will be delivered by Harvey Whitehouse, Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Magdalen College. 

Professor Whitehouse is Director of the Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion and a founding director of Seshat, a vast database on human history that enables scholars and scientists to test hypotheses about the rise and fall of human civilizations. His many books include The Ritual Animal (2021, OUP) and Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World (2024, Penguin Random House).

Professor Whitehouse's lecture, on "Human Nature, Society, and the Future of Humanity", will explore how humankind's evolved psychology predisposes us to conform, to believe, and to belong. Over thousands of years of cultural evolution, he will argue, these predispositions have been shaped and extended through the rise of more sophisticated technologies, more organised religions, more expansive empires. But now, for the first time, human nature is driving us towards a future of unprecedented political polarisation, deadlier wars, and environmental destruction. 

The lecture will offer a sweeping account of how our evolved biases have shaped humanity’s past and imperil its future. Taking us deep into New Guinea tribes, Libyan militias, ancient archaeology sites, and child psychology labs, Professor Whitehouse argues that the tools we once used to manage our evolved predispositions are breaking down. But it isn’t too late to fix them...