News from the SHIRE Lab
Congratulations to Matthew Conrad for two successful presentations at the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in Minneapolis. And congratulations to the entire Ritual for the Nonreligious team: Wesley Wildman, Richard Sosis, David Rohr, Matthew Conrad, and Sam Cole-Osborn.
Congratulations to the Evolutionary Demography of Religion team for recent publications in Proceedings of the Royal Society B and Evolutionary Human Sciences. These new publications explore the relationship between religiosity and alloparenting in Bangladesh and India.
Rich delivered a presentation on his table tennis research, entitled Sound and Spin, for a workshop (Concepts in Dynamic Assemblage) at Macquarie University.
The Evolutionary Religious Demography project received a 2-year subgrant (SPARRC RFP) from the University of San Diego: A Longitudinal Observational Study of Religion and Cooperation in Bangladesh, Fiji, and The Gambia: Developing New Methods to Improve Causal Inference. Congratulations team!
The Evolutionary Religious Demography project presented four papers in a special session at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Culture (ASREC) in Washington DC.
Congratulations to Fatima on the acceptance for publication of her article “Zar: Cultural Beliefs, Symptoms, and Healing Ritual” in Culture & Psychology!
Congrats to Matthew for publishing a new article in Collective Intelligence: Intermediate flexibility in cooperation games prevents free riding, polarization, and societal disintegration.
The Evolutionary Religious Demography project received a 2-year grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation. Congratulations team!
Fatima received a subgrant from Ben Purzycki’s ethnographic project Gods, Games, and the Socioecological Landscape. Congratulations Fatima!
The Evolutionary Religious Demography project published five recent articles in the American Journal of Human Biology, Social Science and Humanities Open, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, and two in Evolution and Human Behavior. Congratulations team!
Matthew received a summer internship at the prestigious Pew Research Center in Washington D.C. Congratulations Matthew!
Sarah Giusti has been accepted to UConn’s Department of Anthropology graduate program and will be joining the SHIRE Lab in the Fall. Congratulations Sarah!
Minutes after the solar eclipse, honorary hobbit Elic Weitzel, withstood some tough questioning from the Wizard and brilliantly defended his dissertation. Congratulations Dr. Weitzel!
Matthew has taken on an apprentice for the spring term. The SHIRE Lab welcomes Chelsea Betts, who will be learning data analysis in R.
Ben Purzycki received funding from the Templeton Religion Trust for his 3-year ethnographic project Gods, Games, and the Socioecological Landscape. Congratulations Ben!
John Shaver will be moving from the University of Otago to Baylor University in the fall. He has accepted a position as an Associate Professor in Baylor’s exceptional Department of Anthropology. Congratulations John!
Rich will teach Anthropology 5308: Human Evolutionary Theory in the Spring 2024 semester on Mondays, 1:25pm-3:55pm.
The Wizard’s anthropological memoir, The Ping Pong Player and the Professor, is published by Wildhouse Publications.
After a long delay, Fatima Saki finally arrives at UConn from the University of Tehran. Welcome Fatima!
New grant from the John Templeton Foundation: Ritual for the Non-Religious: A Research Study with
Practical Applications. With Wesley Wildman of the Center for Mind and Culture (CMAC), Sosis (co-PI)
and Conrad (researcher) will be conducting research aimed at documenting and understanding ritual
practices within SBRN (spiritual but not religious) communities.
Bagel Hour resumes! Bagel Hour will meet biweekly on Wednesdays from 12:15-1:00 p.m. in the
Anthropology Colloquium Room, beginning September 6.
New subgrant from Princeton University: Sport and Spin as Concepts in a Table Tennis Community. This
ethnographic research will extend earlier fieldwork and explore cultural concepts within a diverse
sporting community. This work is funded by a subgrant from Agustin Fuentes and Greg Downey’s
Concepts as a Dynamic Assemblage: Cultural Evolution and the Human Way of Being, which is exploring
new ways to conceptualize and analyze culture within anthropology, philosophy, and cultural evolution.
Richard Sosis 