The next Asian Cultural Evolution seminar is happening next Monday!! Come join the talk & discussion if you are interested in philosophy + agent-based modelling!

🚨 Last days to submit! 🚨 Join the Workshop on Cultural Evolution of Planet X at @alife2025.bsky.social (Kyoto, Oct 7). We welcome abstracts on cultural evolution and emergent culture in artificial systems. Work presented elsewhere too! 📅 Deadline: Sept 20 🔗 sites.google.com/view/planetx...

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!

Abstract submission now open for the next Cultural Evolution Society conference in Rabat, Morocco next May @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social @ces2026.bsky.social

Abstract submission now open for the next Cultural Evolution Society conference in Rabat, Morocco next May @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social @ces2026.bsky.social

We are delighted to announce that the CES2026 conference website is now live! We invite you to submit your presentation proposals using the link on the webpage, deadline November 16th: airess.fgses-um6p.ma/ces2026

The count down starts for #CESRabat! Follow @ces2026.bsky.social and join us May 11-13 next year for an exciting meeting in Rabat, Morocco. Massive thanks to the #CESRabat organising committee: Sarah Alami (co-chair) Mathieu Charbonneau (co-chair) Zachary Garfield Edmond Seabright

@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/...

@helenamiton.bsky.social and I have a new paper out: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Past theories focus on how we evolve complex technologies (jet engines), but neglect cultural innovations that help us operate these technologies (pilot checklist) Paper has tons of examples and new theory!

Friends and colleagues in the Berlin area: Next week (8-12 Sep) I will be visiting the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fur Sozialforschung (WZB) (Berlin Social Science Centre) @wzb.bsky.social Let me know if you'd like to meet for a coffee / drink / currywurst

Physical copies of this 71-chapter tome now exist. Do encourage your library to buy a copy…also doubles as excellent door stop! Co-edited with Jamie Tehrani and @rachkendal.bsky.social. @oxunipress.bsky.social @durhamanthropology.bsky.social

⚡ Autumn 2025 Cooperation Colloquia ⚡ We are excited to announce the next run of Cooperation Colloquia. With @talbotmandrews.bsky.social, @setayeshradkani.bsky.social, @kris-smith.bsky.social, @alexmesoudi.com, & more. Every second Friday, 15:00 CE(S)T Sign up here: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...

🧠 Want to integrate cultural evolution into your course using award winning materials created by the field's experts, and get paid $2000 to do it? 💵 🚨 The Cultural Evolution Society is seeking applications for the ACE Teaching Innovation Awards. 🔖 Apply here: vuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

📣 Interested in cultural evolution and artificial life? Call for abstracts for our upcoming workshop at @alife2025.bsky.social. Accepted abstracts will be presented as flash talks, and are not archival. Deadline is the September 12, w/ rolling acceptance. Details: sites.google.com/view/planetx... 🧪

"Trusting the experts" is not just a feature of modern science and democracy, it's a feature of our evolved capacity for culture, and a major driver of human cultural evolution more broadly. For more, see this paper called, coincidentally, "Trusting the experts". journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

We are pleased to announce our newly elected committee members of the Cultural Evolution Society: Minhua Yan @minhuayan.bsky.social Helena Miton @helenamiton.bsky.social Wataru Toyokawa @watarutoyokawa.bsky.social & Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social Welcome and congratulations!!

We're thrilled to announce upcoming ACE Teaching Innovation Awards, made possible by Eric & Peggy Peterson. This aims to empower teachers through access to course materials in the CES Teaching Library. Selected applicants will also be able to consult with winners of the ACE Course Design Awards.

Thrilled that our paper on the mechanisms underlying social learning strategies is out! First big paper from my @erc.europa.eu & @kawresearch.bsky.social funded group. More to come! I'm currently looking to recruit two post docs, get in touch if you find this line of research interesting.

If you are an active member of @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social, please go vote for our new Executive Ordinary Members. You will have received an email with voting instructions. Voting closes Tuesday!

The CES officer elections have now launched! Active members of the society should have received an email from Election Runner with the title "Cultural Evolution Society Elections 2025", so pls check your inbox. Voting closes on 29th July at 23:59 BST. culturalevolutionsociety.org/news-and-eve...

Wondering how you build a cathedral without the transmission of knowledge about how to build a cathedral

Cool new @PeerCommunityIn.ecoevo.social.ap.brid.gy recommendation by @alexmesoudi.com of an article on melodic evolution by @johnmcbride4lyf.bsky.social et al. evolbiol.peercommunityin.org/articles/rec...

💥New postdoc position! 💥 Join us to explore how people learn from each other—and how that drives cultural evolution. Run experiments, build computational models & collaborate across Europe w. @lucasmolleman.bsky.social 📍 Stockholm More info: shorturl.at/CY4wk

New 2 year post-doc position on cultural adaptation in complex environmental management.

We have extended the nomination period to this Friday 11th July. If you are a @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social member, consider running from Secretary or Executive Ordinary Member! Happy to answer any questions if you have them!

【🚨ACE Seminar Alert🚨】We're excited to have Dr Ryutaro @uchiyama.bsky.social joining from Singapore on Tuesday 29th July at 7pm in Tokyo (6pm in Singapore/12am in Berlin)! You can sign up for the mailing list to get the zoom link by sending a blank email to [email protected]

In an effort to make old papers more reproducible, I’ve put the code on GitHub for: Kempe, Lycett & Mesoudi (2014) From cultural traditions to cumulative culture: parameterising the differences between human and nonhuman culture. Journal of Theoretical Biology 359, 29-36 github.com/amesoudi/kem...

Nominations are still open for the @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social executive committee roles of Secretary (non-male) and Ordinary Members (any gender). It’s not too much work and very rewarding!

Don't forgot to nominate for positions in our Cultural Evolution Society Elections 2025! Nomination period now closes July 11th, see the nomination form below for more information: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Join us on the @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social executive committee! Shape the field of cultural evolution alongside amazing colleagues @maximederex.bsky.social, @nicolewen.bsky.social, @hyperadapthyrax.bsky.social, @lucymaplin.bsky.social, @ferylbadiani.bsky.social & incoming President Fiona Jordan

New head of MI6 studied social anthropology at Cambridge. Not sure what that says about social anthropology, or MI6, or both.

Quite pleased with this paper. Usually in #culturalevolution experiments, people choose who to copy. We flipped it so that people chose with whom to share their information. Sharers got reputation increases for sharing, which we expected would allow partner choice, i.e. people share with sharers.

#HBES2026 will be a joint meeting with the Cultural Evolution Society in Rabat, Morocco: CES is May 11-13, HBES is May 13-16, with one day of planned overlap. It’ll be a great chance for cross-pollination between the two evolutionary societies. Come for one conference, stay for both!

Fascinating conversation on the Renaissance. Interesting cultural dynamics where Florence survived by transmitting its prestige to other more dominant states. Also, England was a ‘weirdo island’ back then too, just like today.

Join us on the @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social executive committee! Shape the field of cultural evolution alongside amazing colleagues @maximederex.bsky.social, @nicolewen.bsky.social, @hyperadapthyrax.bsky.social, @lucymaplin.bsky.social, @ferylbadiani.bsky.social & incoming President Fiona Jordan

It's CES election time! We have FOUR positions that have come up for renewal, so please consider nominating yourself or your colleagues. Nominations close June 20th, with voting from June 30th -July 4th.

If you haven't been looking recently at the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (oecs.mit.edu), here's your reminder that we are a free, open access resource for learning about the science of mind. Today we are launching our new Thematic Collections to organize our growing set of articles!

3 days left until the deadline for these @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social grants

Fascinating latest model of Homo sapiens evolution within Africa. Interesting finding that cultural innovation was accelerated by both population size increases, but also recombination across partially isolated regions (e.g. Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa)

Today is publication day for my book, Shamanism: The Timeless Religion. To celebrate, here are some of the most striking clips of shamanic rituals that I came across while working on the book:

👋🏻Are you a woman and/or member of the SGM community working in the evolutionary human sciences? We've relaunched W+EBS (@w-plus-ebs.bsky.social) to provide mentorship, networking, and advocacy at major EHS conferences, including HBES, CES, and EHBEA! 👇🏻Will you be at HBES in 2 weeks? 👀 If so... (1/2)

Well at least they’re up front about their terrible gender balance royalsociety.org/news/2025/05...

Plus these awards are still open for applications, deadline end of May. Grants for Outreach, Early Career Research, and making links with under-represented scholars, all in the field of cultural evolution

Do you teach cultural evolution? Then take a look at this opportunity to get money to release it open source for others to teach it, plus some additional funds for your research

📢 CES launches Advancing Cultural Evolution (ACE) Course Design Awards! 🎉 $4000 award + global impact for your cultural evolution course materials. Course must be college/grad level with 10+ hrs content. Application link: vuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_... #CulturalEvolution #Education #Grants

Updated the reinforcement (+social) learning models in my cultural evolution agent-based modelling in R tutorial. Now uses cmdstan rather than rstan (and more importantly now works again). On github (Model 17): github.com/amesoudi/cul... and bookdown: bookdown.org/amesoudi/ABM...

Don't miss the new special issue in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B on animal culture and conservation Edited by @pbrakes.bsky.social, @ellengarland.bsky.social, @lucymaplin.bsky.social, @emma-carroll.bsky.social, Alison L Greggor, and Andrew Whiten. royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202...

Don't forget to put in your application for our 2025 awards!

Did not see that coming…

Imaginary worlds like Star Wars and Game of Thrones dominate global culture. Are they really a recent phenomenon, or have they always been central to storytelling? In our latest paper, we investigate the historical trajectory of imaginary worlds with new large-scale data.