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Tracking deep into our evolutionary history, anthropological science has begun to unravel one particular feature that sets us apart from the many, many animals that came before us – our uniquely long childhoods. In the Blackham Lecture 2024, Brenna Hassett will look at how we have diverged from our ancestral roots to stay 'forever young' – or at least what seems like forever – and how the evolution of childhood is a critical part of the human story.

Using observations of our closest primate relatives, the tiny relics of childhood that come to us from the archaeological record, and the bones and teeth of our ancestors, science has started to unravel the evolution of our childhood right down the fossil record. In our species, investment doesn’t stop at birth, and we can make comparisons with other animals on every aspect of our care and feeding – from the chemical composition of our milk, to our fondness for formal education from ancient times onwards. In the Blackham Lecture 2024, Brenna Hassett will pull this all together, in order to understand just what we evolved our weird and wonderful childhoods for.

About Brenna Hassett

Brenna Hassett is a biological anthropologist whose career has taken her around the globe, researching the past using the clues left behind in human remains. She has a PhD from University College London, where she is currently a researcher, and she is also a Scientific Associate at the Natural History Museum, London. Brenna specialises in using clues from the human skeleton to understand how people lived and died in the past. Her research focuses on the evidence of health and growth locked into teeth to investigate how children grew (or didn’t) across the world and across time. Her first book – Built on Bones: 15,000 Years of Urban Life and Death, published by Bloomsbury – was well received by critics at the LA Times, the Guardian, and The Times, which named it one of the top 10 science books of the year. She followed this up with Growing Up Human: The Evolution of Childhood in 2022. Brenna is a founding member of the TrowelBlazers Project, dedicated to increasing the visibility of women in the digging sciences.

About the Blackham Lecture series

The Blackham Lecture explores an aspect of education, childhood, or lifelong development, either philosophical, practical, or social, that relates to humanism. The Blackham medallist has made a significant contribution in one of these fields.

The lecture and medal are named for the educationist and activist Harold Blackham, first executive director of Humanists UK and first general secretary of Humanists International.