CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny

Today is Triton Giving Day at UC San Diego! If you like what CARTA does, consider supporting us at our TGD page!
https://tritongivingday.ucsd.edu/campaigns/center-for-academic-research-and-training-in-anthropogeny-carta-fund

TODAY is Triton Giving Day at UC San Diego! Show your support for CARTA and help fuel our quest to understand the human story!

https://tritongivingday.ucsd.edu/campaigns/center-for-academic-research-and-training-in-anthropogeny-carta-fund

Big news from the CARTA community! Hande Sever, a PhD candidate in Visual Arts, and CARTA Graduate Specialization in Anthropogeny student, has been awarded a UC President's Dissertation Year Fellowship for 2026–2027. The competitive fellowship, which includes a $37,500 stipend plus tuition and fees, supports promising doctoral students in the final stages of their research.

Sever’s work operates at a critical intersection of art history, archaeology, and contemporary visual practice. Her dissertation examines sites such as Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe in Anatolia (among the earliest known monumental structures in human history) and traces their mobilization within artistic discourse, particularly by artists engaging questions of human origins. Rather than treating these sites as neutral archaeological referents, her work interrogates how they are reframed within modern visual culture as origins to be claimed, interpreted, and aestheticized. A central focus of the project is Anatolian Humanism, a 20th-century Turkish intellectual formation that positioned modern Turkish culture as the sole inheritor of all civilizations that have inhabited Anatolia. Sever critically examines how this framework operates as a nationalist historiographic apparatus, one that produces continuity through selective appropriation while obscuring and erasing the historical presence of indigenous Anatolian communities.

Join us in congratulating Hande on this incredible achievement!

We are proud to highlight Raihan Alam, a third-year PhD student in Management, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, and CARTA Graduate Specialization in Anthropogeny student, for his recent publications! Raihan researches the causes and consequences of moral disagreement, with applications to criminal justice, extremism, and political polarization.

In his work “Profitable third-party punishment destabilizes cooperation,” he shows that paying third parties to punish undermines cooperation by degrading the socio-moral signal of punishing, leading people to become less trusting of punishers and less cooperative with anonymous strangers.

In “Partisan Animosity as Blame: A Unifying and Generative Framework for Understanding and Transforming Affective Polarization in the Political Sphere,” he argues that partisan animosity is best understood as a form of blame toward political outgroups for perceived norm-violations, offering a unifying framework for understanding rising affective polarization and offers new strategies for reducing it.

To read his papers and learn more about Raihan’s work, check out the links below!

Read his papers:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2508479122
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10888683251407825

Learn more about Raihan: https://carta.anthropogeny.org/users/raihan-alam

Citations:
Alam, R., & Gill, M. (2026). Partisan Animosity as Blame: A Unifying and Generative Framework for Understanding and Transforming Affective Polarization in the Political Sphere. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 0(0).

R. Alam, & T.S. Rai, Profitable third-party punishment destabilizes cooperation, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (34) e2508479122 (2025).

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the success of “The Idea Organ,” on Friday, Feb 27, 2026! 🧠💭There were over 500 online viewers watching “The Idea Organ,” from around the world! Livestream viewers joined from 15 countries: Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Mexico, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

If you would like to enjoy the experience again, or if you missed all or part of the symposium, please stay tuned! All talks were recorded and will air on UCSD-TV in the coming months.

We hope you will join us for upcoming symposia, such as “We Are What We Ate: The Diets That Fueled Human Evolution” on Friday, October 30, 2026.

If CARTA adds value to your thoughts or conversations, please consider a gift to our general use fund to keep CARTA resources FREE for all to enjoy.

Couldn't catch Andrés Moreno-Estrada’s talk, “Population genetics of Latin America and Oceania?” 👣🧠 Don’t worry! It’s available to watch here:

CARTA: Population Genetics of Latin America and Oceania with Andrés Moreno-Estrada Genetic data is transforming the understanding of our own species and refining historical chapters at different scales around the globe. However, despite the...

Did you miss Maanasa Raghavan’s talk, “Genetic history of humans and animals in South Asia?” 👣🧠 No problem! It is available to watch at:

CARTA: Genetic History of Humans and Animals in South Asia with Maanasa Raghavan The human genetic history of South Asia has been shaped by its pivotal location at the crossroads of East and West Eurasia, dramatic landscapes such as the H...

TODAY! CARTA presents The Idea Organ: a free virtual symposium exploring how the human brain gave rise to ideas, language, culture, and innovation! 🧠💭

From stone tools to abstract thought, our brains are engines of imagination-shaping both our species and the world around us. Discover how biology and culture intertwine to create the “idea organ” that drives human innovation.

Date: Friday, February 27, 2026
Time: 10:00 AM - 2:30 PM Pacific Time
Registration & Webcast: https://carta.anthropogeny.org/
events/idea-organ

See you soon!

Couldn’t make it to Ainash Childebayeva’s talk, “Central Asian population genetics and natural selection?” 💡🧬 Don’t worry, it is available to watch at:

CARTA: Central Asian Population Genetics and Natural Selection with Ainash Childebayeva Ancient DNA has revolutionized the study of the human past, providing unprecedented insights into ancient migrations and interactions among populations. Cent...

THIS FRIDAY! CARTA presents The Idea Organ: a free virtual symposium exploring how the human brain gave rise to ideas, language, culture, and innovation!🧠💭

From stone tools to abstract thought, our brains are engines of imagination—shaping both our species and the world around us. Discover how biology and culture intertwine to create the “idea organ” that drives human innovation.

Date: Friday, February 27, 2026
Time: 10:00 AM – 2:30 PM Pacific Time
Registration & Webcast: https://carta.anthropogeny.org/events/idea-organ

Hope to see you there!