Date/Time
Date(s) - 09/10/2025
2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

This week, Dr. Ed Hagen will give the 2025 Margo Wilson Memorial Lecture. Please join us Thursday, October 9^th in PC 155 at 2:30 PM for what promises to be an interesting and informative talk!

The title of this talk: The Pleistocene transition to meat eating and the evolution of “recreational” drug use

There will be snacks and refreshments before the talk (2:00 PM) and a reception after the talk (3:30 PM), both in PC Lobby, where you can mingle with colleagues and chat with the speaker. We hope to see you all there!

Abstract Blurb: Psychoactive drugs appear rewarding because they hijack neural circuits, but their toxicity suggests an evolutionary role in parasite defense. As humans faced greater pathogen pressure after shifting to a carnivorous diet, plant-based self-medication was favored, leaving cultural and biological traces in drug use today.

Bio: Ed Hagen is a professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Washington State University, and the Director of the Bioanthropology lab. He received his BA in mathematics from UC Berkeley, spent some time working in the organic polymer lab of Bruce Novak, before deciding to pursue anthropology at UC Santa Barbara, where he got my Ph.D. in 1999. Shortly thereafter, he took a postdoc position in Peter Hammerstein’s group at the Institute for Theoretical Biology, Humboldt University, Berlin. He moved to Washington State University in 2007.

His research takes an evolutionary approach to non-infectious diseases, with a focus on mental health. He investigates tobacco use in the larger context of human use of plant secondary compounds. He investigates depression, suicide, and deliberate self-harm as potential signaling strategies. Child growth and development is a research theme that grew out of his work on postpartum depression. He has also recently begun testing evolutionary models of leadership and knowledge specialization as part of his more general interest in the evolution of human social organization. Finally, he has published a number of theoretical papers on evolutionary approaches to ontogeny, cognition, and behavior.

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