Network

The Applied Cultural Evolution (A.C.E.) Network is an international network of researchers and practitioners applying the science of cultural evolution to encourage beneficial social change around the world.

The network has more than 150 members across 26 countries. Researchers and practitioners working to apply the science of cultural evolution to encourage beneficial social change may apply here to join.

Global Partners

History

2013. The ACE Network began as an email list for researchers interested in developing cultural evolution as an applied framework for solving environmental and sustainability challenges. It was called Evolve & Sustain.

2013. Not long after I hosted a workshop at the Schoodic Institute, where we wrote the framework paper: A multilevel evolutionary framework for sustainability analysis in Ecology and Society.

Schoodic Institute Workshop

2014. Marco Janssen, Karolina Safarzynska and I lead a working group at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis to build mathematical models of the cultural evolution of environmental behavior (NIMBioS). Two models from that project are Reducing global inequality increases local cooperation: a simple model of group selection with a global externality [paper], and Adoption as a social marker: Innovation diffusion with outgroup aversion [paper]

NIMBioS Working Group

2014. Jeremy Brooks and I lead a working group at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), to explore social-environmental change using the theory and empirical data.

SESYNC Working Group

2016. At the first meeting of the Cultural Evolution Society in Jena, Germany, Evolve and Sustain became the unofficial communication tool for the Society’s Sustainability Working Group.

2018. We publish the SESYNC workshop papers in a special issue on Applying Cultural Evolution to Sustainability Challenges in Sustainability Science.

2019. Evolve and Sustain grows to over 100 members.

2022. Maja Schlüter and I lead a working group at the KLI in Austria on Evolutionary Theories for Social-Ecological Change. COVID-19 causes havoc. We publish an paper on how to integrate evolutionary theory with social-ecological systems research.

KLI Working Group

2022. Rebecca Koomen and I lead the Cultural Evolution Society’s Sustainability Applied Working Group with funding from the John Templeton Foundation.