The AHRC Culture and the Mind project is a major new five-year interdisciplinary research project based in the Philosophy Department at the University of Sheffield. The project is funded primarily through a major research grant of £538,000 from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (to the project director, Stephen Laurence).

The project will bring together top scholars in a broad range of disciplines-including anthropology, archaeology, cognitive psychology, comparative psychology, developmental psychology, economics, history, neuroscience, and philosophy-to investigate the philosophical consequences of the impact of culture on the mind and the cognitive and evolutionary foundations of culture. (See also the related AHRC Innateness and the Structure of the Mind project).

The AHRC Culture and the Mind Project will be organized around three subprojects.

1. Folk Psychology & Folk Epistemics (2006-2009)
2. Norms & Moral Psychology (2007-2010)
3. Artefacts & Material Culture (2008-2011)

Each subproject will involve a number of workshops and philosophically informed anthropological fieldwork, and will culminate in a major international conference that will be open to the public.

Project Fieldsites

• BRAZIL Fieldsite — Primary Site Researcher Emma Cohen
• CHINA Fieldsite - Primary Site Researcher Jianxin Wang
• ECUADOR Fieldsite — Primary Site Researcher Clark Barrett
• EAST AFRICA Fieldsite — Primary Site Researcher Pierre Lienard
• FAROE ISLANDS Fieldsite — Primary Site Researcher Richard McElreath
• FIJI Fieldsite — Primary Site Researcher Joseph Henrich
• INDIA Fieldsite — Primary Site Researcher Peggy Froerer
• KENYA Fieldsite — Primary Site Researcher Tanya Broesch
• LESOTHO Fieldsite — Primary Site Researcher Joel Mort
• MADAGASCAR Fieldsite — Primary Site Researcher Maurice Bloch
• PAPUA NEW GUINEA Fieldsite — Primary Site Researcher Alexander Bolyanatz
• TANZANIA Fieldsite — Primary Site Researcher Joel Mort
• UKRAINE Fieldsite — Primary Site Researcher Martin Kanovsky
• WESTERN AUSTRALIA Fieldsite — Primary Site Researcher Brooke Scelza

Funding

This project is sponsored by the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council with additional funding provided by the University of Sheffield Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies and the Rutgers University Research Group on Evolution and Higher Cognition.