advancing cultural evolutionary studies

Working Group: Evolutionary Approaches to Sustainability

The Sustainability Working Group of the CES

We believe that sustainability is an urgent applied problem, and that sustainability solutions can be enhanced and accelerated through the use of cultural evolutionary frameworks.

Join the Group

During the recent CES 2018 in Tempe, a group of about twenty researchers met to discuss our shared interests in using cultural evolutionary approaches to sustainability. Our group, composed of academics, consultants and non-academic researchers is seeking to create an official Sustainability Working Group of the CES.

Generally, we believe that sustainability is an urgent applied problem, and that sustainability solutions can be enhanced and accelerated through the use of cultural evolutionary frameworks. The working group contains members of a growing international network of researchers who share this goal, with a membership of around 35 participants, many of whom have published on the topic ([1][2][3]).

The group hopes to increase the scope and reach of research that draws on cultural evolutionary approaches to sustainability and applications of cultural evolution research generally. We invite CES members or cultural evolutionists with an interest in sustainability to join our group (join here). We are especially looking for more female representation, so women evolutionists who care about the planet are especially invited!

Our Members

Monique Borgerhoff Mulder

University of California—Davis

Taylor Davis

Department of Philosophy, Purdue University

Tim Waring

School of Economics, Mitchell Center for Sustainable Solutions

University of Maine

Daniel Kelly

Department of Philosophy, Purdue University

James Liu

School of Psychology, Massey University (New Zealand)

Igor Nikolic


Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management
Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Karthik Panchanathan


Department of Anthropology
University of Missouri

Christine Beitl


Department of Anthropology
University of Maine

Luke J. Matthews


RAND Corporation

John Gowdy


Economics of the Anthropocene Program
McGill University

Marcel Harmon


Research & Development Lead, 
BranchPattern

Joshua Rottman


Department of Psychology, Franklin & Marshall College

Kelly Claborn


Conservation Evidence Analyst, World Wildlife Fund

Dwight Collins


Presidio Graduate School

David J. Yu


Lyles School of Civil Engineering & Department of Political Science
Purdue University

Steven R. Smith


Centre for Environment and Sustainability
University of Surrey, UK

Jeremy Brooks


Ohio State University

Maria J. Santos


Department of Geography
University of Zurich, Switzerland

Adrian Viliami Bell


Department of Anthropology
University of Utah

Vicken Hillis


Human-Environment Systems
Boise State University

Kristin Hagel


Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Peter J. Richerson


Department of Environmental Science and Policy
University of California—Davis

We believe that sustainability is an urgent applied problem, and that sustainability solutions can be enhanced and accelerated through the use of cultural evolutionary frameworks.