Wired for culture: the origins of the human social mind, or why humans occupied the world

Published: 29 August 2018

Mark Pagel is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Reading University in the UK. He is best known for his work on building statistical models to examine the evolutionary processes imprinted in animal and human behaviour, from genomics to the emergence of complex systems, including language and culture.

Prof Mark Pagel

GLASGOW GIFFORD LECTURES AUTUMN 2019 - PROFESSOR MARK PAGEL

Glasgow Gifford Lectures
Date: Wednesday 23 October 2019 - Tuesday 29 October 2019
Time: 18:15 - 19:45
Venue: Sir Charles Wilson Building
Category: Public lectures 
Speaker: Professor Mark Pagel
Website: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/glasgow-gifford-lectures-autumn-2019-mark-pagel-tickets-62269196844?utm_term=eventurl_text

Series Title:
Wired for culture: the origins of the human social mind, or why humans occupied the world

The series will comprise four lectures, all will take place in the 
Sir Charles Wilson Building

  1. 23 October at 6.15 PM:The evolution of language: from speech to culture
  2. 24 October at 6.15 PM:The evolution of creativity: you’re not as clever as you think
  3. 28 October at 6.15 PM:Human tribalism – a curse of our evolutionary past?
  4. 29 October at 6.15 PM:The end of Anthropology? What does the future hold for the world’s languages and cultures?

Mark Pagel is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Reading University in the UK. He is best known for his work on building statistical models to examine the evolutionary processes imprinted in animal and human behaviour, from genomics to the emergence of complex systems, including language and culture.

He is the Editor-in-Chief of the award-winning Oxford Encyclopedia of Evolution and co-author of The Comparative Method in Evolutionary Biology which is regarded as a classic in the field. He is widely published in Nature and Science. His book Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind was one of the Guardian newspaper’s ‘best science books of 2012'.

For more information, please see our Gifford Events page.


Mark Pagel is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Reading University in the UK. He is best known for his work on building statistical models to examine the evolutionary processes imprinted in animal and human behaviour, from genomics to the emergence of complex systems, including language and culture.

He is the Editor-in-Chief of the award-winning Oxford Encyclopedia of Evolution and co-author of The Comparative Method in Evolutionary Biology which is regarded as a classic in the field. He is widely published in Nature and Science. His book Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind was one of the Guardian newspaper’s ‘best science books of 2012'.

For more information, please see our Gifford Events page.

First published: 29 August 2018