This page is archived

Links to external sources may no longer work as intended. The content may not represent the latest thinking in this area or the Society’s current position on the topic.

/ Events

Evolutionary analysis beyond the gene

17 - 18 November 2014 09:00 - 17:00

Theo Murphy international scientific meeting organised by Professor Christopher Howe and Dr Jamie Tehrani

Event details

This strongly interdisciplinary meeting reviewed how the principles of phylogenetic analysis can be applied to datasets other than DNA or protein, including linguistics, archaeology, behaviour, anthropology and literature. It identified the technical difficulties in this approach, and, with input from phylogenetics experts, suggested ways of dealing with the difficulties.

Download meeting programme

Attending this event

This event has already taken place.

Enquiries: Contact the events team

Organisers

  • Professor Chris Howe, University of Cambridge, UK

    Chris Howe’s research interests in molecular evolution began with an interest in the origin of chloroplasts in plant and algal cells.  However, he has collaborated with textual scholars over a number of years in extending the application of the techniques of molecular phylogenetics from biological sequence data to the analysis of written texts. Beginning with a landmark Nature paper on the phylogenetic analysis of the Prologue to The Wife of Bath’s Tale in The Canterbury Tales, his group has extended this approach to a wide range of textual traditions. These range from the New Testament, through Dante’s Monarchia, to poems by Robert Herrick.

  • Dr Jamie Tehrani, University of Durham, UK

    Jamie Tehrani was trained in social anthropology at the London School of Economics (BA) and biological anthropology at University College London (MSc), gaining his PhD from the University of London (UCL) in 2005. He carried out postdoctoral research at the AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity (2006-7) before moving to Durham University on a RCUK Fellowship in 2007. He is now a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Durham, where he helped to establish the interdisciplinary Centre for the Coevolution of Biology and Culture. Jamie’s research is concerned with how cultural information evolves as it gets transmitted between individuals, generations and societies. What kinds of things remain stable, get forgotten or transformed? How are they affected by the specific ways in which they are learned and taught? His work on these questions has focused principally on material culture and narratives, including Iranian rug-weaving traditions and international fairy tales.