Events
Past Event
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Joshua Jackson, The University of Chicago "The History of our Minds Evidence for Co-Evolution of Cultural and Psychological Processes"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details

Speaker:
Joshua Jackson, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Title:
The History of our Minds: Evidence for Co-Evolution of Cultural and Psychological Processes
Abstract:
Biologically modern humans are more than 100,000 years old. Many scientists have devoted their lives to understanding how architecture, social structure, and language has changed over this history. Yet we know much less about the history of human minds. Behavioral science research has instead focused nearly exclusively on contemporary people, and psychological theories often draw from taxonomies which assume a culturally and historically stable structure to emotion, personality, morality, and other psychological processes. In this talk, I discuss new methods of studying the “psychological fossil record,” with emerging insights that challenge existing psychological taxonomies. Psychological change is often patterned and predictable based on cultural change, and general evolutionary principles may explain psychological changes in multiple domains. We now have the methodological and theoretical tools to build a more historically enriched science of human cognition and behavior, with a basic capacity to make foundational discoveries and an applied capacity to predict human futures.
Speaker Bio:
Joshua Conrad Jackson is an assistant professor of behavioral science at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. He studies how culture has shaped the mind throughout human history, and how it continues to shape human futures. He has published over 50 papers examining how historical and contemporary changes in technology, conflict, and migration have influenced moral psychology, emotion, prejudices, and belief systems. Prior to joining Booth, Josh was a DRRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kellogg School of Management. He earned his PhD from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his BA from McGill University.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/99952026190
Passcode: NICO2023
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems and data science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, October 25, 2023 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO Fall Seminar Series returns on Sept 24th! Emma Alexander, Northwestern University
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
//
Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details

The Wednesdays @ NICO Fall Seminar Series returns on September 24th and will run through November 12th, 2025. Detailed speaker information, talk titles, abstracts, and zoom links will be available soon.
This fall, we are honored to host the following distinguished speakers:
9/24 - Emma Alexander, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University
September 24, 2025 | 12:00 PM US Central
Chambers Hall, Lower Level, 600 Foster Street, Evanston, IL
Constrained Information Optimization in Visual Cortex
Animal brains represent information to complete a variety of tasks under systematically-changing conditions. The Bio-Inspired Vision Lab at Northwestern is developing tools to identify signatures of optimality in neural population codes, so that we can interpret the computational goals of visual neurons from cell measurements. Results include evidence of hierarchical visual processing in primate stereo vision and a biophysically-grounded model of metabolic stress in calorie-restricted mice.
10/1 - Sebastien Martin, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University "When algorithms meet policy - Changing the school bus system of Boston and San Francisco"
10/8 - Tomer Ullman, Dept of Psychology, Harvard University "Good Enough: Approximations in Mental Simulation and Intuitive Physics"
10/15 - Patrick Park, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University "Back to ‘Data’ Science in the Age of AI"
10/22 - Max Kreminski, Midjourney "Tracing and Shaping Paths in Design Space"
10/29 - Elizabeth Gerber, Mechanical Engineering and Communication Studies, Northwestern University "Richer Together: Human–AI Systems That Amplify Human Connection at Work"
11/5 - Julio Ottino, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Northwestern University "From Clocks to Clouds: The Complexity Revolution"
11/12 - Blaise Aguera y Arcas, Google Research "Symbiogenesis, Computational Parallelism, and Complexity in Evolution"
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option: TBA via Zoom
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, data science and network science. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, September 24, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)