Café Culture

Brought to you in association with the Missing Bean in Turl Street, Oxford.

You are here because you found our art installation in the Missing Bean, created by the School's Artist in Residence, Miranda Creswell.  Given where you are, it's likely that you are currently sipping tea or coffee from a ceramic cup. Who made that cup, how and why? What were they thinking when they created it? What can it tell us about them, and the society in which they live(d)? 

These are just the sort of questions which two of our graduate researchers at the School, Catherine O'Brien and Anna Barona, think about and investigate for their doctoral research. 

Cathy and Anna both specialise in an interdisciplinary field of study called COGNITIVE ARCHAEOLOGY.  Employing ideas and methods from archaeology, psychology, anthropology, philosophy of the mind and evolutionary biology, they want to understand the past - and the present - of the human mind.

Click below to read more from Cathy and Anna as they give you a brief introduction to their thinking in the time it takes for you to finish your drink.