Our innovative educational, research, and outreach initiatives work to advance Big History around the world.

Big History connects knowledge. Big History tells the story of the universe from the Big Bang to our complex modern societies by drawing on insights from disciplines such as astronomy, physics, biology, archaeology, history,
and economics.

Big History empowers students by showing how different knowledge disciplines are connected, and helps them reflect on the big questions: Why does our universe exist? Where do we come from? What challenges will the future hold for our planet and ourselves?

Big History enables scholars to pursue research questions across disciplinary boundaries, and offers fascinating possibilities to test new ways of thinking. Big History provides a powerful framework to address complex real-world problems.

Research in Big History is interdisciplinary by its very nature. The pursuit of important questions across many disciplines offers a range of fascinating possibilities to test new ways of thinking. Big History allows researchers to explore projects that cross the three large domains of the physical world, the biological world, and the human world.

Research themes that the Big History Institute currently focuses on include:

Anthropocene - The human race has had such a profound impact on the climate and environment of the Earth that some have proposed we have entered a new geological era. What does the future hold for the planet and humanity?

Complexity - The nature and evolution of complexity at different scales and the 'Goldilocks' conditions under which different types of complexity can emerge

Cooperation - The nature and evolution of different forms of cooperation, from the levels of physics and chemistry to those of biology, as well as the communities of social animals including human beings

Collective Learning - In the idea of collective learning, will there emerge a Kuhnian paradigm for the study of human societies?

Intelligence and Information - What is intelligence? What is information? What is learning? Is information as fundamental a property of reality as matter and energy?

The Big History Institute welcomes higher degree research students to both the MRes and PhD programs at Macquarie University, and is supportive of cotutelle and joint PhD programs with Macquarie's partner research universities.

Our innovative educational, research, and outreach initiatives work to advance Big History around the world.

Big History connects knowledge. Big History tells the story of the universe from the Big Bang to our complex modern societies by drawing on insights from disciplines such as astronomy, physics, biology, archaeology, history,
and economics.

Big History empowers students by showing how different knowledge disciplines are connected, and helps them reflect on the big questions: Why does our universe exist? Where do we come from? What challenges will the future hold for our planet and ourselves?

Big History enables scholars to pursue research questions across disciplinary boundaries, and offers fascinating possibilities to test new ways of thinking. Big History provides a powerful framework to address complex real-world problems.