Tanya Elliot
Abstract:
"Towards sustainable well-being: Beyond transdisciplinary science"
It is widely accepted that the complex and urgent issues facing humanity and the earth call for a truly cooperative effort on the part of natural and social scientists, in large part because human and ecological well-being are inextricably linked. In this context we discuss the intersection of Sen's capability approach to development economics with the ideas of ecological economics and argue that quantitative work in this area is both necessary and possible.
We then consider how such academic modeling fits into a broader framework of sustainability and contend that the transformations needed to transition to a sustainable world need more than transdisciplinary scientific collaboration; they require that scientists dialogue with policy makers, politicians, non-governmental organizations, local communities and educators of all levels.
Bio:
I am from Australia, where I did an undergraduate degree in Speech Therapy and then later one in Physics. My honors (like Masters here) research was in materials science. I worked for a geophysics software company before going to Oxford to do theoretical physics. I love this but care too much about the state of the world to not do something more applied, which is why I am changing fields.
Laura Fortunato
Abstract:
The majority of human societies allow polygynous marriage, and the prevalence of this practice is readily understood in evolutionary terms. Why some societies prescribe monogamous marriage is however not clear: current evolutionary explanations --- that social monogamy increases within-group co-operation, giving societies an advantage in competition with other groups --- conflict with the historical and ethnographic evidence. We show that, within the framework of inclusive fitness theory, monogamous marriage can be viewed as the outcome of the strategic behaviour of males and females in the allocation of resources to the next generation. Where resources are transferred across generations, social monogamy can be advantageous if partitioning of resources among the offspring of multiple wives causes a depletion of their fitness value and/or if females grant husbands higher fidelity in exchange for exclusive investment of resources in their offspring. This may explain why monogamous marriage prevailed among the historical societies of Eurasia: here, intensive agriculture led to scarcity of land, with depletion in the value of estates through partitioning among multiple heirs. Norms promoting high paternity were common among ancient societies in the region, and may have further facilitated the establishment of social monogamy. In line with the historical and ethnographic evidence, this suggests that monogamous marriage emerged in Eurasia following the adoption of intensive agriculture, as ownership of land became critical to productive and reproductive success.
Bio:
My background is in biology and anthropology. My education includes a Laurea in Biological Sciences (5-year programme, Integrative Biology track) from the University of Padova, Italy (awarded in 2003), and an MRes (Master of Research) and a PhD in Anthropology from University College London, UK (awarded, respectively, in 2004 and 2009). Given the multidisciplinary nature of my research, my PhD programme included an extra year of cross-disciplinary training in the Department of Biology at University College London (2006-2007). From July to October 2009 I have worked in Kevin Laland's lab in the School of Biology, University of St Andrews, UK, as a post-doctoral research associate. Since February 2010, I have been an Omidyar Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, USA.