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Biology and Society

Event Image

Event Details

  • Place Bilimler Köyü
  • Registration Deadline June 26, 2026
  • Arrival Date June 28, 2026
  • Start Date June 29, 2026
  • End Date July 5, 2026
  • Quota 20 people
  • Target Audience Undergraduate and Graduate Students
  • Event Fee 12.500 TL
The participation fee covers tent accommodation within the Village campus, use of all common areas, three meals and one snack. Tea, water, and coffee are included. Our coordinators organize the events on a voluntary basis.

Event Purpose

This activity will consist of a focused introduction to the interactions between biology and society, how biology can inform social policy but has sometimes been misused, and how social institutions and ideologies are reflected back in the practice of biology at different levels. A hybrid event, with in-person daily instructors and online lecturers each evening, the activity brings together an international group of biologists, philosophers, and historians to address issues across the life sciences. The topics to be covered include the conceptual structure of biology; social Darwinism and eugenics;behavior genetics, race and IQ; development and reductionism, and biodiversity conservation.

Additional Info

Everyone, provided that the participants are able to read and discuss fluently in English.

Schedule

Day Content
Day 1

Sahotra Sarkar (in person): Overview of Biology and Society

Evening lecture (virtual):

Stuart Newman, “How Development Explains Evolution; How Evolution Explains Development”
Day 2

Pınar Önal (in person): "Regulating Patterning in Time and Space: The Role of Cis and Trans Factors"

Transcriptional regulation during development; the interplay between cis and trans regulatory factors. The role of flexible disordered regions of transcription factors in transcriptional regulation and development; how antagonistic gradients precisely position gene expression in Drosophila embryo through modular cis-regulatory elements.

Evening lecture (virtual):

Victoria Shmidt; “Race in Science and Reproduction of Colonial Order”
Day 3

Matteen Rafiqi (in person): “Belief Biology and Evolution.”

Evening lecture (virtual):

Phila Msimang: race science
Day 4

OFF
Day 5

Gökhan Akbay: "Hereditarianism: then and now".

The development of hereditarian ideology, its history and modern repercussions. Measurement of intelligence,The Bell Curve debates, heritability analysis and the genomics of social-behavioral traits."

Evening lecture:

Çağlar Karaca: “Self-organization and biological agency”
Day 6

Ozan Altınok: “Disease vulnerability metaphysics for evolutionary medicine: A practice-based approach from the repertoires of evolution.”

Short-term inheritance research in evolutionary biology, accounts of disease vulnerability that can enhance patient autonomy and socialization of causation around disease.

Evening lecture (in person):

David Suárez; "Biology, democracy and the fact-value distinction (or why biology does not justify social inequality).”
Day 7

Graduate student presentations, summary and conclusion
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