Our proposed Centre of Excellence in Human Diversity Through Contacts, HuDi-Con, will capitalise on the unique concentration of world-leading researchers in genetic, cultural, linguistic and contemporary human diversity at the University of Turku. The human biological, linguistic and cultural diversity present in today's world are products of a long history of continuous contacts between populations. We will reveal how contacts have shaped human diversity as we know it now, and how they will continue to shape future generations. Our team includes archaeologists, linguists, AI specialists, evolutionary demographers and geneticists, and unique data compiled by us that does not exist elsewhere in the world. The results have relevance for developing better policies concerning migration, social integration and population health, better understanding of epidemics, and forecasting how our genomes, cultures and diseases will change in future.

2026

2028