Looking for Al Qaeda: The Evolution of Terror Networks

Scott Atran is Adjunct Research Scientist, Research Center for Group Dynamics; Associate Research Scientist, Anthropology Department; Adjunct Professor, Psychology Department; Visiting Professor, Ford School of Public Policy; Presidential Scholar in Sociology, John Jay School of Criminal Justice, New York City; and Directeur de Recherche, Anthropologie, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris.

Atran has written many papers and 5 books covering topics in anthropology, psychology and sociology. In his most recent book, The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature (MIT Press, March 2008) Scott Atran and Douglas Medin trace the cognitive consequences of many people's diminishing sense of human contact with nature. Drawing on nearly two decades of cross-cultural and developmental research, they examine the relationship between how people think about the natural world and how they act on it and how these two phenomena are affected by cultural differences. He also coedits (with Douglas Medin) Folkbiology (MIT Press, 1999).

Reception to follow. Free and open to the public.