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Storytelling – from cell to society

ASG 2025

Storytelling surrounds us and we love it. We tell stories, we listen to them, and we study them and our interpretation of them.

People sit around a campfire, night time, talking with each other.
Photo: Rachel Claire/Pexels

Storytelling plays an essential role in human society. It has been intensely studied throughout history, but with little interaction between academic disciplines. Telling stories and understanding them is a highly complex behavior that is unique to the human species. It has been viewed as something that lies beyond our body, in the same way that the evolution of human sociality and cooperation has been considered as a process driven by cultural mechanisms separate from traditional gene selection theory.

New knowledge has been gained about storytelling that can help us overcome interdisciplinary boundaries and improve our understanding of storytelling as a phenomenon in itself: from communication between cells to the stories of creation. The foundation of this bridge is that the art of storytelling can be connected with the biological evolution of humankind. 

This ASG aims to find a common definition and collaborative methods to increase and transfer knowledge of storytelling, as well as of communication and cooperation, over the boundaries of the great scientific branches.