On Tuesday March 12, 6:30pm London time, Shakti Lamba will be speaking LIVE @UCLAnthropology in the Daryll Forde Room, 2nd Floor, Dept of Anthropology, UCL, 14 Taviton St, London WC1H 0BW (please use the Archaeology Institute entrance, Gordon Square), Before her talk, Shakti presents a video exhibition from 5:45 to 6:30pm in Room 129, (floor below the Daryll Forde). You can also join us on ZOOM (ID 384 186 2174 passcode Wawilak)
Shakti is a biologist, anthropologist and ecologist who studies the evolution of cooperation and culture in humans. An emphasis of her work is to understand how humans organise to build and maintain commons systems which rely on voluntary community participation, using methods from across the biological and social sciences. She took her PhD in Biological Anthropology, and a PostDoc at UCLUniversity College London. A Senior Lecturer at University of Exeter for several years, she left the University last year to become an independent scholar.
Shakti writes: “I will present a long-term field study investigating the effects of the demographic and social structure of communities on cooperative behaviour. The study has been conducted with the matrilocal Khasi and the patrilocal Pahari Korwa peoples in India over the past decade. Our multilevel and longitudinal study design allows us to tease apart the effects of different facets of community structure on cooperation. We have measured cooperation in a variety of different ways including surveys, experiments and a novel community well building project, which allows us to understand how people’s behaviour differs across different contexts.
My talk will be accompanied by an exhibition exploring the story and science of the community well building project via videos of the project as it unfolded. I hope to highlight the ways in which this project contributes to a growing movement for open, transparent, inclusive and engaged research.”