Very nice modeling work by a great team: @drelenamiu.bsky.social @ndersen.bsky.social @sheinalew.bsky.social @felixthehauskat.bsky.social 👇

Really great new paper using agent-based modelling to show how an exploratory childhood can lead to innovation in the population at large. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

"The relationship between childhood exploration and population-level innovation in cultural evolution" with @ndersen.bsky.social @sheinalew.bsky.social @felixthehauskat.bsky.social out in Proc B royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Proc B with @sampassmore.bsky.social! We used simulations to explore the innovation strategies of speed climbers 🧗‍♀️ Innovation is higher among slower athletes and lower when the population size is larger, and the overall balance of innovation and copying appears to be suboptimal 🔗 bit.ly/499QjZM

Today sees the publication of the Theme Issue featuring the CES Transformation Fund grant scheme. Enjoy! royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3... @durhamdcerc.bsky.social @durhamanthropology.bsky.social @cultevolfunding.bsky.social @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social

Huge thanks to @drelenamiu.bsky.social @felixthehauskat.bsky.social @sheinalew.bsky.social @ndersen.bsky.social for organizing an excellent & true _work_-shop @aiasdk.bsky.social. I go back with a long reading list, tons of notes & food for thought re: extended childhood, innovation & evolution 🙏

Super proud to have hosted at @aiasdk.bsky.social an excellent group of researchers to think through all things play, childhood, and innovation. I'll be buzzing about this for a while!

Young chimps play weird with tools and other objects & this can lead to innovation! Moss sponging, doll play, leaf clipping to ask for carrying. If copied and retained, rare kid innovations can contribute to cultural complexity 🧪🔬🐵 My fav article I've ever worked on: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How do humans keep inventing tools and technologies that no single person could create alone? Our new preprint, led by @anilyaman.bsky.social & @ts-brain.bsky.social shows that semantic knowledge guides innovation and drives cultural evolution. 🧠📘 arxiv.org/abs/2510.12837

@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/...

🚨 Kids LOVE fear?!🚨 Our new study led by Mihaela Taranu from the Recreational Fear Lab uncovers something surprising: Children across all ages actively seek out scary experiences - for fun! 📄 doi.org/10.1007/s105... [1/🧵]

A study of 22 rural communities in Poland looks at how female friendships influence women’s decisions about how many children to have. Educated women with more emotionally supportive friends outside their kin networks have fewer children. In PNAS Nexus: academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Join us in congratulating Robert Boyd, a SHESC professor and research scientist with the @asuiho.bsky.social, who has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences — one of the highest honors a researcher can receive! 🌟 news.asu.edu/20250505-uni...

I'm THRILLED that our book is out. This book, with other 60 contributors from across the globe (!!!) is a love letter to the science we want to do, and a how-to guide for how to do it. Please read it and share it!

Job announcement 🚨: paid fieldwork opportunity with Sanguatsiniq research project! Details in thread ⬇️ Please share!

So much fun, thanks @masonyoungblood.bsky.social for putting it all together!

New paper out with @heidicolleran.bsky.social in @pnasnexus.org academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ad...

This paper is now published. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

“the prolonged period of post-natal dependency experienced by infants contributes to development of social learning. Because of motor limitations, infants learn to interact with & act through caregivers, establishing social learning skills that continue to develop as children become less dependent”

With @sheinalew.bsky.social: Teaching is associated with the transmission of opaque culture and leadership across 23 egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies, in @naturecomms.bsky.social #evolution #culture 🧪 #LeadSciSky #CultEvo www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New pre-print out with @ndersen.bsky.social @sheinalew.bsky.social @felixthehauskat.bsky.social on how childhood exploration drives population-level innovation in cultural evolution www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🚀COSMOS is BACK!!!💫 The Computational School on Modeling Social and collective behavior (COSMOS) will take place in RIKEN, Tokyo, between 29 Sept - 3 Oct, organised by me and fantastic @thecharleywu.bsky.social ! Application deadline: 25th April. For more details see 👉️ cosmossummerschool.github.io

amazing body of work and showcase of the value of long-term studies. beautifully illustrated summary 🧵 👇 saw this come to life years ago and am in awe of friend Sara Keen’s inspirational blue sky thinking and how @nilomr.bsky.social carried it forward, to new heights and Open Science excellence 🧪

Do whales optimize their vocalizations for efficiency, just like human language? 🐋🎶 My latest study in Science Advances (@science.org) suggests they do—following linguistic laws seen in human speech. 🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🏰 PhD position on computational modelling | collective dynamics | cultural evolution 🏰 Get in touch with any questions you might have and join me in beautiful Marburg! stellenangebote.uni-marburg.de/jobposting/c... (Deutsch) stellenangebote.uni-marburg.de/jobposting/3... (English)

💥Postdoc Opening! 💥We (@lucasmolleman.bsky.social & Piet van den Berg) seek a postdoc to study social learning and cultural evolution. We are looking for someone with math/computational modeling skills & interest in human behavior. Get in touch if you have any questions! shorturl.at/W6Qsb

We're hiring! Are you a cultural evolutionary modeller who wants to understand how and why children's peer cultures evolve? Here's a postdoc position for you! @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social @durhampsych.bsky.social @ehbea.bsky.social @eslr.bsky.social Apply here: durham.taleo.net/careersectio...

Today, not one, but two(!!) articles about my latest paper about children, toys and innovation have been published online

I am excited finally to have my hands on the very first copy of the third edition of "Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour", co-authored with @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social. The paperback will be available in just over two weeks time, from Oxford University Press.

I'm so excited about our (>60 contributors) forthcoming edited volume! A Field Guide to Doing Cross-Cultural Research on Childhood Learning journeys through history, theory, fieldwork near or far, and policy, with loads of personal stories in between. tinyurl.com/mvxxus55

Hi y'all, I have this really awesome 2.5y postdoc open in my group here @aarhusuni.bsky.social, on gene-culture coevolution in the European Upper Palaeolithic. international.au.dk/about/profil... - deadline Jan 15; get in touch if you are interested.

Job posting for a 2.5 year postdoc with Dr. Felix Riede in Aarhus on Palaeolithic gene-culture coevolution: international.au.dk/about/profil... 🏺

🐦📢🧪 very pleased to share our freshly published cultural diffusion experiment w/ Gustavo Alarcón-Nieto @lucymaplin.bsky.social @ PLOS Biology that explored decision-making of immigrant great tits after moving into a new social group: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

New paper with @lottybrand.bsky.social and @verwirrt.bsky.social. We use some cool modeling to argue for a central role of analogy in the evolution of both language and high-fidelity social learning, using multiple NK landscapes. Feedback welcome. osf.io/preprints/ps...

ICYMI postdoc available on creativity in music and language, w/our interdisciplinary team at Stony Brook! Looking for ppl w/experience building agent-based models and running online experiments. Due 11/15, start 1/1(ish)! @cogscisociety.bsky.social @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social bit.ly/creativity_d...

New paper out, a long time in the making, with a stellar list of co-authors journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...