‘The uses of ethnography in the science of cultural evolution’. Commentary on Mesoudi, A., Whiten, A. and K. Laland ‘Toward a unified science of cultural evolution’

There is considerable scope for developing a more explicit role for ethnography within the research program proposed in the article. Ethnographic studies of cultural micro-evolution would complement experimental approaches by providing insights into the “natural” settings in which cultural behaviours occur. Ethnography can also contribute to the study of cultural macro-evolution by shedding light on the conditions that generate and maintain cultural lineages

Self-consistency of Conformally Coupled ABJM Theory at the Quantum Level

We study the $\mathcal{N}=6$ superconformal Chern-Simons matter field theory (the ABJM theory) conformally coupled to a Lorentzian, curved background spacetime. To support rigid supersymmetry, such backgrounds have to admit twistor spinors. At the classical level, the symmetry of the theory can be described by a conformal symmetry superalgebra. We show that the full $\mathcal{N}=6$ superconformal algebra persists at the quantum level using the BV-BRST method