Marschak Colloquium: A Presentation by Louise Barrett

Speaker: Louise Barrett, Professor of Psychology and Canada Research Chair in Cognition, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Lethbridge

Facutly Host: Dan Blumstein, Professor of Ecology of Evolutionary Biology, UCLA

Sociality is one of the defining features of the primates and has been argued to have selected for their large brain size and associated cognitive capacities.

In this talk Louise Barrett will discuss how, given a particular evolutionary heritage and developmental environment, primate social contexts and cognitive capacities combine to produce individuals that can track change adaptively. Using examples from her long-term studies of chacma baboons and vervet monkeys, she will argue for the necessity of attending to patterns of historical contingency and suggest that sometimes the answers researchers find are not quite those they might have expected.

Barrett is a professor of psychology at the University of Lethbridge and a Canada Research Chair in Cognition, Evolution, and Behaviour. Orginally from the UK, she earned a BSc in ecology and a PhD in anthropology from University College London. Her research interests center on how ecology shapes patterns of sociality and cognitive evolution and include work on thermal physiology and responses to climate change, parental investment strategies, cooperation, sexual conflict, movement ecology, and infant development in both human and non-human primates.

Light refreshments will be served. RSVP is requested.