Panmure House Prize - 2023 Winner Lecture
The Panmure House Prize is an annual award for research that explores the relationship between long-term thinking and radical innovation. The Prize enables research that embodies Adam Smith's own approach to rigorous empiricism and long-term, inter-disciplinary thinking.
The opportunity is open to academics whose entries are shortlisted and judged by our specially appointed Panmure House Prize Panel. The Prize is administrated in partnership with FCLTGlobal and supported by Baillie Gifford.
The 2023 Prize was awarded to Dr Joseph Henrich from Harvard University.
Building on ideas developed in his fascinating book The Secret of Our Success, Dr Henrich will share his research into the ‘collective brain’. Long before the origins of agriculture or the rise of the first cities, our species spread out across the globe into an immense diversity of environments, from the frozen tundra of Siberia to the arid deserts of Australia. Dr Henrich will build on his thesis that our species’ immense ecological success in these environments depended not on our vaulted intelligence or rationality, but rather on the assembly of large bodies of culturally transmitted information that accumulated adaptively over generations. We will explore recent insights and evidence suggesting that our species’ capacity for cumulative cultural evolution—including the creation of sophisticated tools, complex technologies and advanced cognitive abilities—depends on our social norms and institutions, as well as our species’ ability to learn from each other in large networks and pass this information down to future generations.
This special lecture will bring an invited audience together with Doctor Henrich for an interactive session.
His book The Weirdest People in the World is also available in to purchase in our shop.
This event is available to attend to the general public. Tickets will be issued through a ballot system which will take place on the 9 April 2024. Tickets will be issued at random and applicants will be notified via email. Please note that if successful the number of tickets applied for could also differ from those number applied for.
Register for ballot tickets using the form below. Alternatively you can Register in advance for this livestream on Zoom or be notified to watch on our YouTube channel.
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The Secret of Our Success and The Weirdest People in the World are available to purchase from our online shop.