£3m donation funds new research centre at Magdalen

University 03 Nov 10 The largest single donation in Magdalen College's 552-year history will fund a new centre to study evolution and human science. The Calleva Research Centre for Evolution and Human Science has been made possible by a donation of £3m from a Magdalen alumnus and his wife. The Calleva centre will bridge the humanities and the social, cognitive, and evolutionary sciences to study profound questions about human nature and how it has evolved. The first Director is Dr Jennifer Lau, Tutorial Fellow in Psychology at Magdalen. The centre will work with academics from across Oxford, especially those departments involved in the human and evolutionary sciences. Its first project will bring together psychologists, anthropologists, zoologists and economists from across the collegiate University to study key questions on how social behaviour develops and changes. The college system is one of Oxford's distinctive features: academics and students belong both to a department and to a college.