BEDLAN (Biological Evolution and the Diversification of Languages) is a research initiative funded by the Kone foundation. The central aim of the cross-disciplinary project is to investigate how the theories and methods of evolutionary biology can help to explain the diversification of languages. The initiative, which involves researchers from the universities of Helsinki, Tampere and Turku, combines linguistic and evolutionary biological approaches; its purpose is to contribute both to linguistics and to the study of adaptation and speciation in biology.

The focus of the project is on Uralic languages and variation within the Finnish language. A central research material will be the 80-year-old extensive Finnish dialect data of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland. BEDLAN also cooperates with the Research Institute to collect a database of Uralic languages. The microevolutionary changes within the Finnish language will be further compared to the variation found in Latin and other Romance languages.

The BEDLAN research initiative is organizing the third BEDLAN seminar focusing on cross-disciplinary evolution-related topics, including linguistic and cultural evolution.