Talk on Networks by Robin Dunbar

Talk

Networks

 

Abstract 

I will summarise a large volume of studies published in rather a diverse range of journals in which we have explored the social physics that underpins the structure and dynamics of social networks. Surprisingly, the same rules turn out to describe both bottom-up (personal ego-centric) networks and top-down (community) networks in both humans and anthropoid primates. I will discuss both the structural regularities in networks, the neurobiological mechanisms that underpin them and the behavioural processes that maintain them.

 

Bio

Robin Dunbar, Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of Magdalen College, and an elected Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Finnish Academy of Science & Letters and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His principal research interests focus on the evolution of sociality (with particular reference to primates and humans). He is best known for the social brain hypothesis, the gossip theory of language evolution and Dunbar’s Number (the limit on the number of manageable relationships we can have). His publications include 34 authored and edited books and more than 500 journal articles and book chapters. His popular science books include The Trouble With Science; Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language; The Science of Love and Betrayal; Human Evolution; Evolution: What Everyone Needs To Know; Friends: Understanding the Power of Our Most Important Relationships; How Religion Evolved; and The Social Brain: The Psychology of Successful Groups.