Dr. Tim Waring is an associate professor of applied cultural evolution at the University of Maine. He studies how human cultural change can determine social and environmental outcomesand drive long-term human evolution. Waring’s work ranges from theoretical model development and fundamental research to applied science, and from individual behavioral choices to the evolutionary futures of homo sapiens. He is driven by a fundamental question: how do human groups solve collective problems? Waring uses this question to support three distinct research programs in sustainability, organizational change, and human evolution.

Sustainability. Environmental challenges are often problems of collective action. Waring has developed a theory which proposes that sustainable human systems evolve when the balance of competing evolutionary forces across levels of organization favors group-level cultural adaptation. This theory helps explain how and when cooperative governance emerges to solve collective environmental challenges from fish stock depletion to pollution and deforestation. The theory has been simulated and applied to case studies around the world. Related ongoing empirical research on industrial agriculture has used the lens of cultural evolution to study how culture adapts in the context of in the face of climate change.

Organizational Change. The same theory helps explain the evolution of organizations and human social structure. Dr. Waring uses multilevel cultural evolution to study the evolution of organizations, especially cooperatives. This research combines simulation models, measures of altruism and economic reciprocity among cooperative members, with historical reconstruction of the transmission of key institutions over 170 years among English-speaking cooperatives worldwide. The results help us understand the processes that shape organizational change in any organization.

Human Evolution. Dr. Waring also studies the role of culturally organized groups in long-term processes and patterns in human evolution. This has led to an integrative theory that human evolution is characterized by an accelerating evolutionary transition from individual-level genetic evolution to group-level cultural evolution. With collaborators, Waring is working to model and test the novel predictions of this theory with empirical datasets. The theory has potentially dramatic implications for the evolutionary futures of homo sapiens.

An Applied Science of Beneficial Social Change. Finally, Dr. Waring is also a pioneer in the development of an applied science of cultural evolution for beneficial social change, and leads a global applied research network on the topic.