Luke Glowacki

Affiliations

Center for Innovation in Social Science, African Studies Center

Areas of Expertise

Human evolution; warfare; small-scale societies; Ethiopia; complex social behavior; cultural evolution

Website
https://www.hsb-lab.org/
https://www.omovalleyresearchproject.org/

About 

Luke Glowacki is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Boston University and a faculty affiliate of the Center for Innovation in Social Science. He studies the evolution of complex social behavior, including cooperation and war.

Dr. Glowacki has done extensive fieldwork among nomadic pastoralists along the Ethiopian / South Sudanese border studying inter-ethnic violence. His research has been published in leading journals including Science, Current Biology, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In addition to his scientific publications, he has also written for the New Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. In 2019, he co-founded the Omo Valley Research Project, a non-profit organization advancing scientific research and philanthropy in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley where he continues to conduct and direct research.

Selected Publications

• Mehr, S. A., Singh, M., … & Glowacki, L. (2019). Universality and diversity in human song. Science, 366(6468).
• Glowacki, L. Isakov, A., Wrangham, R., McDermott, R., Fowler, J., & Christakis, N. (2016). Formation of raiding parties for intergroup violence is mediated by social network structure. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(43), 12114-12119.
• Glowacki, Luke, and Lucas Molleman. “Subsistence styles shape human social learning strategies.” Nature Human Behaviour 1.5 (2017): 1-5.

Courses

• CAS AN 562 The Evolution of Warfare
• CAS AN 321 Cognition and Culture