Human Diversity

The human diversity present in today’s world are products of a long history of local developments concurrent with continuous contacts between populations. Human contacts and communication networks do not only influence how we communicate today in the internet, but over centuries and millenia they have also influenced our material and immaterial culture, genes, disease burden, transgenerational effects and evolutionary fitness.

We will focus on how contacts have shaped humanity as we know it now, and how they will continue to shape future generations.

HUDI capitalises on the unique collaboration of AI specialists, linguists, archaegeneticists and evolutionary demographers at the University of Turku, Finland. Our work builds on the unique data and computational approaches contributed by the partnership. Human Diversity links to the University of Turku’s strategic research and education profile “Cultural memory and social change”.

The fundings of the Human Diversity team include two major grants by Research Council of Finland, both having Prof Virpi Lummaa as main PI.

Evolution through Contact and Communication Networks (2023-2028), HuDi, Profi7

Human Diversity Through Contacts (2026-2030), HuDi-Con, Centre of Excellence