Human Diversity seminar 16.4.2025, Dunn
Dr. Michael Dunn, University of Uppsala, Sweden
Transmission processes in language and culture of the Middle Ages and beyond
Location: Natura Lecture Hall IX
Zoom link: https://utu.zoom.us/j/61515345616
Abstract
In this talk I will discuss some of my current projects investigating what we can infer about how language and other cultural artifacts have been transmitted in the historical past. My approach is broadly evolutionary and takes a data science perspective.
- Runestaves — What can we learn about folk literacy and folk scientific knowledge through errors in the production of runestaves, medieval perpetual calendars from the Swedish-speaking world.
- Letters of Jerome – What can we learn about the original publication of these letters in late Antiquity from the surviving corpus of copies from the subsequent 1000 years
- Dialect geography and individual migration – How does marital migration map onto the diversity of Finnish dialects in pre-industrial Finland.
While quantitative approaches are relatively unusual in humanistic studies, judicious quantification allows for robust analysis of linguistic and cultural phenomena. The understanding of linguistic and cultural transmission forms the basis for an integrated evolutionary model of human diversity.
