As an anthropologist with a background in philosophy, I am thrilled to be one of the postdoctoral fellows working on the Geography of Philosophy Project (GPP), and also to work alongside the biological anthropologist Clark Barrett, one of the PIs of the GPP, at the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). To introduce myself, I will say a few things here about my education, research projects, and interests in the GPP.
My educational background is highly interdisciplinary. After obtaining an M.A. in philosophy from Colorado State University, where I concentrated on metaethics and the philosophy of cognitive science, I obtained an M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology as well as graduate certificates in cognitive science and human rights from the University of Connecticut.
The central theme in my research is human cooperation and conflict. To explore these issues, I have drawn from a number of disciplines, including anthropology, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, law, and philosophy. I have also conducted extensive fieldwork in post-conflict regions and undertaken experiments in moral psychology. For my dissertation research, I examined the causes of collective violence and incitement propaganda during periods of social unrest and military campaigns targeting recognizable civilian populations. My focus was the Yugoslav Wars and included interview and survey data with ex-fighters and survivors, which I collected in former conflict regions of the Balkans.
Based on my background and research interests, I appreciate the goals of the GPP. Most scholars working at the intersections of the social sciences and humanities are all too familiar with the tension of balancing fundamental philosophical concepts with the question of whether such concepts are, in fact, shared across cultures. The GPP aims to address this problem by involving anthropologists, economists, linguists, neuroscientists, and psychologists in a multicultural, interdisciplinary investigation of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. I am especially interested in these concepts as they relate to indigenous epistemologies, culturally specific lexicalities and semantics, mental state categories, moral responsibility, religious systems, and, of course, conflict and cooperation. Moreover, I look forward researching these issues with—and continuing to learn from—the many talented scholars working on the GPP.
If you would like to learn more about my work, please visit my webpage: https://www.jordankiper.com.
