Aarhus University Seal

Aaron Lightner - New Postdoc at the Department of the Study of Religion

Aaron Lightner will be affiliated the project "Gods, Games, and the Socioecological Landscape" from 1 September 2021.

Portrait of Aaron Lightner

Aaron is an anthropologist from Washington State University and is working with Benjamin Purzycki on the project "Gods, Games, and the Socioecological Landscape." This project will involve developing game theoretic models of real-world scenarios that can help us better understand religion in a cross-cultural context. The goal is to better understand why different gods are believed to have different concerns about human behavior, and specifically what social and ecological functions these beliefs can serve in different environments. The results of this project will help inform future empirical and ethnographic work on religious belief systems across cultures.