Exploration question
What can the world’s diverse child-rearing rituals, many of which are disappearing in the age of secularization, teach us about helping children and parents thrive, and how might we reclaim that knowledge?
Dimitris is an anthropologist, Director of the Cognitive Science Program, and leader of the Experimental Anthropology Lab at the University of Connecticut. His research focuses on the things that make us human, but not the obvious ones: he is rather interested in understanding why people everywhere engage in behaviors that seem puzzling or pointless, but feel deeply meaningful to us. This has led him to spend over four years doing field work in various parts of the world.
His research is unusual, in that it combines methods and techniques from the sciences and the humanities. Rather than studying people in the lab, he prefers to take the lab into the real world by moving it into the field, conducting experiments in real-life settings that range from sports stadiums to religious temples. His award-winning book, Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Act Make Life Worth Living, has been translated into ten languages. He has lived in seven countries and travelled to more than eighty.
