May 16–17, 2019 at the University of Pennsylvania

How do we bridge the gap between small-scale human behaviors and the large-scale social structures that humans inhabit? How do we get from human brains to languages, from small-scale interactions to large-scale social norms, legal systems, governments? A big part of the answer involves cultural evolution, and over the last few decades this has attracted increasing research attention, with strands of research from a number of fields finally beginning to consolidate into a new discipline.

The Penn Symposium on Cultural Evolution and Global Social Dynamics has two goals. The first is to bring together experts from across the world, and across Penn, to share insights on cultural evolution and its role in bridging gaps between individual human minds and the social structures they inhabit. The second goal is to provide a focus of attention for Penn researchers interested, or potentially interested, in cultural or social evolution.