Adam Baimel

Had you met me 10 years ago, I would have probably told you that all I wanted to do with my life was become a Rabbi. Despite these ambitions, I have opted to pursue my fascination with religions, religious thought and behaviours from within the frame work of evolutionary psychology.

I completed my PhD in Social Psychology (Minor in Quantitative Methods) at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. My dissertation work focused on further specifying existing and testing novel accounts of when and in what ways social cognitive intuitions come to be implicated in religious beliefs, and particularly beliefs about gods in diverse religious contexts. As a postdoctoral researcher, I am pursuing research regarding whether ‘religion’ and supernatural beliefs can be harnessed to motivate pro-environmental behaviours; and in what ways different religious traditions do (or don’t) support caring for the natural world. 

Awards

2018: University of British Columbia Arts Graduate Research Award – “The cultural and cognitive effects of religious beliefs on proenvironmentalism”

2016 - 2019 SSHRC-Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship

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Dr. Adm Baimel is now a post-doctoral researcher at the Center for Anthropology and Mind, Oxford University.