This event is fully booked and the waiting list is closed. Please note the start time is now 18:30 and the venue is Waterstones on Union Street.
The 2023 Darwin Day Lecture is given by Professor in Evolution and Behaviour Nichola Raihani.
Why should we cooperate? This may be the most important scientific question we have ever, and will ever, face. After the last few years of enforced distancing and solitude, the challenges and importance of cooperation have never been greater. Written against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, psychologist Nichola Raihani’s book The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World explores the science behind this phenomenon.
The science of cooperation tells us not only how we got here, but also where we might end up. Cooperation explains how strands of DNA gave rise to modern-day nation states. It defines our extraordinary ecological success as well as many of the most surprising features of what make us human: not only why we live in families, why we have grandmothers and why women experience the menopause, but also why we become paranoid and jealous, and why we cheat.
Nichola Raihani also introduces us to other species who, like us, live and work together. From the pied babblers of the Kalahari to the cleaner fish of the Great Barrier Reef, species that cooperate with one another are some of the most successful on this planet. What do we have in common with these other species, and what is it that sets us apart?
In partnership with
Nichola Raihani is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Professor in Evolution and Behaviour at UCL. Her group’s research focuses on the evolution of social behaviour in humans and non-human species. She has been widely published in scientific journals, won the 2018 Philip Leverhulme Prize in Psychology for her research achievements, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 2018. Her first book, The Social Instinct, was published in 2021 and won the Humanists UK’s 2021 Voltaire Medal.
Image credits: Jake Fairnie
Nichola Raihani’s The Social Instinct will be available to buy from Waterstones on the night.
You can also buy it from bookshop.org now. If you buy books linked to our site, we may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops.
Booking Information
Ticket booking is via Eventbrite. Please review Eventbrite’s terms and conditions and Privacy Policy as Bristol Ideas do not accept any responsibility or liability for the policies. You can read Bristol Ideas’ Privacy policy here.
Please note we only refund tickets if the event is cancelled. Events start punctually and, out of consideration to other audience members and speakers, our policy is not to admit or issue refunds to latecomers. Full Terms and Conditions here.
Ticket booking is via Eventbrite. Please review Eventbrite’s terms and conditions and Privacy Policy as Bristol Ideas do not accept any responsibility or liability for the policies. You can read Bristol Ideas’ Privacy policy here.
Please note we only refund tickets if the event is cancelled. Events start punctually and, out of consideration to other audience members and speakers, our policy is not to admit or issue refunds to latecomers. Full Terms and Conditions here.
Accessibility
More information about Waterstones Bristol – Galleries can be found on the Waterstones website and on AccessAble.
• There are Blue Badge parking spaces on Union Street.
• There is level access to the event space.
• Events are amplified but there is no loop system.
• There are toilets for public use.
• Guide and assistance dogs are welcome.