New research on wild chimpanzees shows juvenile innovation is not play but a cultural engine. Young chimps invent tools, refine adult techniques, and introduce novelty. What if childhood experimentation drove early human cultural evolution too? #Primatology #Anthropology #Archaeology #HumanOrigins

New paper! We found that intensifying market integration in Rep. Congo does not uniformly shape BaYaka and Bantu adolescent behaviour and consumption, and that adolescents may be contributing to shifts in norms regarding the sharing of money. rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Karen's work on how children's contributions to the family are essential in underwriting high fertility is really excellent, and described nicely in this podcast. Also something that doesn't get enough attention in current debates about low fertility onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

I’ll be considering graduate school applications for Fall 2026 – positions are fully funded, typically for 5 years. Deadline to apply to the Cognition program is December 1. Come do science with me in beautiful Amherst, Massachusetts! www.umass.edu/natural-scie...

I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be joining the faculty at @umassamherst.bsky.social next year as an assistant professor in Psychological & Brain Sciences! 🥳

👋 Meet Sarah, our Secretary! @anthrosarah.bsky.social is an Assistant Professor at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University. As secretary, she helps connect with the evolutionary social sciences community, planning events and collaborating with the team to shape the future of W+EBS. (1/2) #WplusEBS

Sustainable education should include Indigenous knowledge "In our research with hunter-gatherer communities in the Global South, we see that participation in education often undermines Indigenous knowledge systems and cultural integrity." www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper out on the important role of social learning in breastfeeding! academic.oup.com/emph/article...

Fully-funded 4-year #PhD in Cultural Evolution! Join my @erc.europa.eu project exploring how compression & compositionality drive cultural innovation: hmc-lab.com/ERCPhDCultur... Apply by Nov 12! Maybe of interest to folks from #COSMOS2025 or @eslr.bsky.social? Please feel free to share! 🙏

👋 Meet Abbey, our Chair! @abbeyepage.bsky.social is a lecturer in Psych at @brunelcce.bsky.social ! As chair, she sets the agenda and overall direction of W+EBS to best support our members. She arranges and chairs meetings and hosts W+EBS events at HBES and other conferences. 1/2 #WplusEBS

I am happy to announce that our project on risk and social learning is now in press at Psychological Review. Several new additions and revisions thanks to detailed feedback from colleagues and anonymous reviewers. osf.io/preprints/so... @psmaldino.bsky.social @babeheim.bsky.social

How to quantify the impact of AI on long-run cultural evolution? Published today, I give it a go! 400+ years of strategic dynamics in the game of Go (Baduk/Weiqi), from feudalism to AlphaGo!

Cover reveal for my forthcoming book, WE HAVE COME TO BE DESTROYED: GROWING UP IN COLD WAR BRITAIN which tells the history of Cold War Britain (c.1956-89) through the eyes of children & young people! Out with @yalebooks.bsky.social 28 April 2026 #booksky #skystorians yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300...

It’s really funny that you can amass hundreds of billions of dollars, and still Be desperately uncool and dull. I know that’s gotta hurt.

💙New paper!💙 How is knowledge transmitted across generations in a foraging society? With @danielredhead.bsky.social we found: In BaYaka foragers, long-term skills pass in smaller, sparser networks, while short-term food info circulates broadly & reciprocally academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

“individuals tend to report more accurately about the partners with whom they shared knowledge than about those from whom they received knowledge….findings provide important empirical evidence on how community-wide cultural transmission is structured by demography and perception”

Can't recommend these two enough. Fantastic women, amazing projects 👏👏👏

Durham's Dunagree Lab continues to be the most wonderful workplace. Thank you to @sheinalew.bsky.social, @chimpanzeve.bsky.social, @fhillemann.bsky.social, @amandinevisine.bsky.social and others not on Bluesky for the surprise baby shower today 🥹

@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised! 3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution 2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions. Please share and apply! www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...

Super proud of this work and very grateful for all the amazing people who provided valuable feedback along the way @remivantrijp.bsky.social @sheinalew.bsky.social @cedricboeckx.bsky.social @inbalarnon.bsky.social ❤️❤️❤️🙏

I’ve been frustrated to see so much of the ongoing story about asylum seekers and the protests against them covered without hearing from those seeking asylum and now being met with hostility and hatred I set out to speak to those directly affected to find out about the impact this is having 👇

Mourning ritual participation, subjective well-being and prosocial behaviour among the Luhya people of Kenya #ProcB #OpenAccess #Evolution @sheinalew.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

🚨 New paper led by ‪@asatsa.bsky.social‬! We show that participation in Luhya mourning rituals overall increases well-being and cooperation among the bereaved, yet qualitative findings show they can also be perceived negatively by some community members royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Just causally dropping this here

A lot of evo anth people are trying extremely hard to fight the researgence of eugenic thinking using their own disciplinary toolkit.

The transphobe argument against trans women in sports is also inherently misogynistic as it assumes all women are inherently inferior to men.

Bel article qui met en valeur notre site d’étude au Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary, Ghana, ainsi que les recherches de ma doctorante (Marine Larrivaz) et de mes étudiants à la maîtrise (Médrick Heppell, Francis Latour) sur les colobes femelles et leurs petits.🧪 nouvelles.umontreal.ca/article/2025...

My excellent colleague, Dr Sophie Hodgetts is running a public webinar about teaching about sex and gender in psychology. 'Sharing reflections and practical strategies for delivering education that is accurate, evidence-based, and just.' It's free to join and you can register below:

"in England & Japan, identity development seems an important part of being a teenager. However, teenagers in Japan may think about themselves differently than in England. Results highlight the importance of understanding & considering culture when thinking about developmental processes and pathways"

This is not caused primarily by "screen time". It's been caused by the mass eradication of third places for young people in basically every city over the past three decades - and a society that's hostile to the concept of teens socialising in public spaces. www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Varieties of childhood 🏺🧪 disi.org/varieties-of... Dr. Dorsa Amir & Dr. @sheinalew.bsky.social discuss different ways childhood differs, in terms of parents’ attitudes toward risk, in terms of social structures and activities in which kids are embedded, and in terms of freedom children are granted.

Science and society thrive through collaboration! Meet our Feodor Lynen Research fellow @fhillemann.bsky.social ‬ and her host @sheinalew.bsky.social, as they reflect on the importance of shared learning in both indigenous communities and academia. www.humboldt-foundation.de/en/explore/n...

Children are often cast as passive vessels into which we pour culture. But children create cultures of their own—vibrant ones with special properties. Just one of the topics discussed in our recent episode with @dorsaamir.bsky.social & @sheinalew.bsky.social! Listen: disi.org/varieties-of...

Thank you to all 🗳️ Durham University voters 🗳️ who gave my poster the 1st place in the DCAD Poster competition! 🥇 This means a lot! All your comments and feedback were highly useful 🌸

📑 Most read in Hunter Gatherer Research this month: 'A behavioural ecological approach to a proposed middle Holocene occupational gap' by Raven Garvey Read the article online: bit.ly/HGR-Garvey @dstibbardhawkes.bsky.social @rcgd-isr.bsky.social @sheinalew.bsky.social

New episode!! 🎙️📣 A chat w/ @sheinalew.bsky.social & @dorsaamir.bsky.social about childhood across cultures. Humans everywhere go through childhood—a time of learning, growth, and play. But this universal stage of life can look very different in different places. Listen: disi.org/varieties-of...

5/ Plus, personal reflections and vivid photographs transport you to classrooms, villages and labs around the globe 📸✨ if you care about truly inclusive, culturally responsive child-development research, this is for you 🫵

4/ Need fieldwork tips? The guide dives deep into ethics, community engagement & policy outreach - arming researchers with practical tools to center local voices and amplify community agency 🛠️🤝

3/ This isn’t just theory: anthropology, psychology, education & more interlock in each chapter, weaving diverse insights on cultural learning, childhood practices & the historical/social forces shaping development 🧩🌱

2/ It’s the antidote to WEIRD bias in developmental studies. Over 60 contributors from 21 countries unite to broaden our lens beyond post-industrial Western norms 🌍📖

🧵 1/ CCEs @michelleakline.bsky.social , @nicolewen.bsky.social and Nachita Rosun all contributed to ….“Meet A Field Guide to Cross-Cultural Research on Childhood Learning” 📣💪🤩 edited by the lovely @sheinalew.bsky.social

Want a summary of our new paper on the impact of delayed ADHD diagnosis in women? Well I have just the ticket! Perfect for people who don't have an academic background, or those looking for a lighter read :) otherprimates.wordpress.com/2025/07/04/u... #ADHD #DelayedDiagnosis #WomensHealth

I'm hiring a full-time #labmanager for my new Lab for Infant Learning and Cognition (LILAC) at UCSB! The start date is flexible, but could be as early as August 1, 2025. Application review begins July 17th and will continue until the position is filled 👶🪴 recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/JPF02992 #academicjobs

New paper in @natureportfolio.nature.com's Scientific Reports! We investigated emotional & psychological impact of late ADHD diagnoses in women Highlighting how undiagnosed ADHD contributes to life-long challenges & how diagnosis in adulthood can be life-changing #ADHD #WomenWithADHD #ADHDawareness

New preprint w/ Nathan Gabriel & @avbell.bsky.social: The Evolution of Identity Signals for Coordination in Diverse Societies The model tackles multiple nested/overlapping identities and complex signaling structure. Recovers lots of old results and adds several new ones osf.io/preprints/so...

🚨New paper alert!!!🚨 "Adverse experiences of women with undiagnosed ADHD and the invaluable role of diagnosis" Unbelievably proud of this work w Helena Kobayashi-Wood which is an extension of her *undergraduate* @standrewspsyneuro.bsky.social dissertation project open access here: rdcu.be/eukfd

Intense but fun day as the (almost) full editing team for 'the @ehbea.bsky.social textbook' met to go through the entire book post 'user' peer review. Glad to say we've got some amazing reviewers in @durhampsych.bsky.social - I'll never write student-facing material without their input again! #LTHE

A MASSIVE WIN AT NEWCASTLE UNI ICU

The second keynote of the #SSCIP2025 is live. @kalexand.bsky.social is going to talk about the history of childhood and polycrisis. Very excited 👏🏻 @sscipchildhood.bsky.social @aiasdk.bsky.social @au.dk

The utter JOY of watching your PhD clean house on awards ❤️❤️❤️❤️😍😍😍😍