Development in Past and Present
Contemporary science is a product of historical trajectories as well as current social, political, cultural and economic developments.
How did particular approaches, fields and disciplines studying human development come to be? How did they formulate their research questions, models and methods? This area of research aims to show that history informs contemporary science to better align with societal needs.
A related field of inquiry concerns the relationship between social and biological sciences. Does the disciplinary organisation created in the nineteenth century make sense in the twenty-first? Would some of the major problems (e.g. around environment, nutrition) have a better chance of finding solution if the barriers between the "social" and "biological" were lower?