Foundation for Psychocultural Research

The FPR was founded in December 1999 with a gift from Robert Lemelson,[1] a documentary filmmaker and psychological anthropologist on the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Participants in the FPR's inaugural interdisciplinary workshop at Ojai in June 2001 advocated research strategies that recognize and integrate multiple levels of analysis – from biological processes like postpartum olfactory learning, to psychological concepts like attachment, to social, cultural, economic, and political conditions affecting mother-infant interactions – and provide a better understanding of culture and context, including local variations in environments, behaviors, beliefs, and experiences.

The FPR CBD programs were designed to foster integrative, cross-disciplinary research that focuses on how culture and context interact with brain development.

Through a series of planning workshops and conferences, the FPR continues to bring together scholars, researchers, and clinicians with overlapping interests to think across disciplinary boundaries in order to address social and clinical issues.

CMB is an integrative approach to understanding human evolution, cognition, emotion, self, agency, ritual, religion, and other concepts that are not confined to any one scientific discipline.