The aims of the Calleva Research Centre are to investigate key questions about the origins, development, causes and functions of human behaviour by bridging the humanities, and the social, cognitive, and biological sciences in an evolutionary framework. The Centre's work is embodied through successive three-year interdisciplinary research programmes that draw on unique collaborations between Magdalen Fellows working in these diverse fields.
The Centre was inaugurated in October 2010. Its first project brings together psychologists, neuroscientists, economists, evolutionary biologists and historians to study the ways in which human social behaviour develops and changes across the lifespan, and how these processes may vary across individuals from unique historical and cultural contexts.
The Centre is based in Magdalen College and organised within the governance of the College. The Centre's first Director is Dr Jennifer Lau, Tutorial Fellow in Psychology. The Centre was made possible by a generous donation.
