Social trust & Fragile States – a 1-day workshop on possible uses of the historical database Seshat at Aarhus University

 What causes social trust to arise? How does it spread and evolve? And under what conditions is social trust destroyed? These are some of the research questions we would like to address with a newly started interdisciplinary research consortium at Aarhus University. We propose to explore and test theories of cooperation, based on quantitative modeling, by combining experimental methodology with a large-scale historical database. Specifically, we want to test theoretical assumptions and predictions through controlled observation and use the historical database Seshat to understand long-term evolution and oscillations of social trust. Seshat (http://evolution-institute.org/seshat) is a historical database developed through the collaboration of several universities in order to facilitate scientific inquiries into social and cultural dynamics. At the organizational level, we wish to make Aarhus University the national hub of Seshat.

Program

11.15 - 11:30   Kristoffer L Nielbo

Seshat @ Aarhus University, Seshat & H2020 Session

11.30 - 12:15   Peter Turchin

Introduction to the Seshat project: general philosophy and an example of how we code data

12:15 - 12:45   Kevin C. Feeney

Lessons of War: the Seshat proposal targeting the Global Systems Science call in Horizon 2020

12:45 - 13:30   Lunch

Aarhus University Session

13:30 - 14:00   Andreas Roepstorff

Social Trust and civilian cyber science

14:00 - 14:30   Michael Bang Petersen

Bringing the Mind In: Using Experiments to Investigate the Mind as a Selection Environment in the Development of Institutions of Trust

14:30 - 14:45   Coffee

14:45 - 17:00   Open floor debate