SYNAPSE is a monthly series of trans-disciplinary seminars that the ANU School of Culture, History & Language has hosted since 2019.
The seminars showcase the research of scholars committed to exploring questions about human history that emerge at the intersection of multiple disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, archaeology, cultural evolution and ontogeny, genetics, history, linguistics, palaeoecology and philosophy.
Presentation and participation in the seminar contribute to the development of a community of trans-disciplinary practice, building on networks that integrate ANU researchers with national and international colleagues.
SYNAPSE seminars are presented live but also mostly recorded and made available here for those unable to participate in the initial event.
A synapse is a gap, a specialised port of communication between neurons, through which one nerve cell, or neuron, can send an impulse to another neuron.
Collectively, synapses constitute the wiring for the nervous system. While synapses can connect neurons to each other, they also link neurons and muscle, or the brain and the body, allowing us to move from thought to action, or theory to practice.
So, synapse is an appropriate metaphor for a project that tries to identify the gaps and build the connective tissue between different disciplines, while also insisting we move from theory to practice, as well as generate concrete projects to develop and test a set of robust procedures and methods for doing this kind of work.
10/7/2023 - Ancestral Remains and Personhood in the Southern Massim: An Ethnoarchaeological Approach to Interpreting Secondary Burials
Simon Coxe (School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics at The Australian National University)
Video recording coming soon
31/7/2023 - When ordinary processes lead to extraordinary outcomes: The emergence of the mixed language Light Warlpiri
Associate Professor Carmel O’Shannessy (School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics at The Australian National University)
Video recording coming soon
17/4/2023 - Flow piracy and percolation in a hydropower watershed: interceptions of Indigenous languages in upland Laos
Professor Nick Enfield (University of Sydney)
27/2/2023 - Understanding human history from ancient & modern genomes
Dr João C. Teixeira (ARC DECRA Fellow, ANU School of Culture, History & Language and affiliate of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage)
27/3/2023 - The global variability and recurrence of kinship terminology
Dr Sam Passmore (Research Fellow, Evolution of Cultural Diversity Initiative, ANU School of Culture, History and Language)
05/12/2022 - Cultural evolution of birdsong: how environments help shape the dawn chorus
Dr Dominique Potvin (Senior Lecturer, Animal Ecology, University of the Sunshine Coast)
Video recording not available
24/10/2022 - Material traces of movement: objects as evidence of trade and connection in Melanesia
Video recording not available
01/07/2022 - No community is an island: unpacking a tricky terminology using Oceanic examples
James L. Flexner (Senior Lecturer, Historical Archaeology and Heritage, University of Sydney)
Video recording not available
06/06/2022 - Rejecting ‘natural fertility' Online only 5pm
Heidi Colleran (BirthRites Max Planck Research Group, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig)
Video recording not available
02/05/2022 - "The disease spread like fire among flax” (Thomson 1859). Questioning in the 21st Century the timing, magnitude and consequences of Pacific depopulation following European contacts
Christophe Sand (Head Archaeologist, New Caledonia Government and Director of the Institute of Archaeology of New Caledonia and the Pacific, or IANCP)
02/05/2022 - Politics of migration: New perspectives on the 3rd millennium in Europe
Daniela Hofmann (Professor of Archaeology at the University of Bergen in Norway)
Martin Furholt (Professor at the Institute of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo, Norway)
06/09/2021 - How useful is the ‘hunter-gatherer’ label in explaining the diversification of Indigenous Australian societies?
Professor Laurent Dousset (Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur l'Océanie) (online-only event)
02/08/2021 - The body as archive: debates around the genetic reconstruction of African ancestries in post-slavery American societies
Dr Sarah Abel (University of Cambridge) (online-only event)
05/07/2021 - Lapita-Papuan interaction in New Guinea: Implications for Pacific colonisation and regional social histories
Dr Ben Shaw (ANU)
07/06/2021 - Searching for a sixth sense with Gurindji people
Professor Felicity Meakins (University of Queensland)
03/05/2021 - Reading landscapes: tracing the nature of being human through the palaeoecology of extinction, domestication, translocation and invasion
Professor Simon Haberle
12/04/2021 - Palaeodemographic advances and potential applications in the Pacific region
Dr Clare McFadden
01/03/2021 - Leadership and its Social Correlates in Contact-Era New Guinea
Professor Paul "Jim" Roscoe
7/12/2020 - The Interplay of Headhunting, Pacification and Epidemic Diseases Among the Marind-Anim
Dr John Richens
30/11/2020 - Innovation as Process: A Social Archaeological Approach
Associate Professor Cate Frieman
16/11/2020 - Comparative Cultural Psychology – Envisioning a Research Program
Professor Daniel Haun
Video recording not available
26/10/2020 - Children's Language Learning and the Making of Human Lifeworlds
Professor Alan Rumsey
12/10/2020 - Relatively Speaking: The Cultural Evolution of Kinship Diversity
Dr Fiona Jordan
28/09/2020 - Language Diversification Through a Biogeography Lens
Dr Hannah Haynie
24/08/2020 - Dealing with Sahlins’ Legacy: What criteria for a Comparison of Past and Present Sociopolitical Systems in Melanesia?
François-Xavier Faucounau
Video recording not available
27/07/2020 - Speculation Made Material: Experimental Archaeology & Maker’s Knowledge
Dr Adrian Currie
29/06/2020 - The earliest sea voyages to Australia: Maps, models, and anecdotes from the field
Dr Shimona Kealy
30/01/2020 - Unravelling human history with ancient DNA
Dr Ray Tobler
Video recording not available
29/11/2019 - Trans-Disciplinary thinking and teamwork: Reflections on the successes and challenge of two major ARC-Funded Programs spanning the natural sciences and humanities
Dist. Prof. Richard (Bert) Roberts
Video recording not available
30/09/2019 - Signal and Process: reconstructing language histories in Melanesia
Dr Bethwyn Evans
12/08/2019 - Cooking across time and space: Food and language in the Amazigh/Berber area (Africa)
Prof. Amina Mettouchi
08/07/2019 - Words and Genes as Windows on our Past
Prof. Russell Gray
27/06/2019 - The Dynamics of Language Diversity
Prof. Nick Evans
31/05/2019 - Genetics and Geography: Using genomic data to infer fine-scale population structure and population history
Assoc. Prof. Stephen Leslie
Video recording not available
29/04/2019 - Deep Histories - A trans-disciplinary approach to the past
Assoc. Prof. Chris Ballard
25/03/2019 - What expertise do you need to be an effective transdisciplinarian?
Prof. Gabriele Bammer
25/02/2019 - Interactional Foundation of Language: The Interaction Engine hypothesis
Prof. Stephen Levinson
