🎉🍾 very excited to see this out before 2025 ends doi.org/10.1111/2041... with Will Hoppitt in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social. This paper is an overview of our new R package STbayes, a user-friendly toolkit for performing Bayesian NBDA analyses. @cbehav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social

In this blog post, Guest Editor @rachkendal.bsky.social discusses their #PhilTransB issue, 'Transforming cultural evolution research and its application to global futures': royalsociety.org/blog/2025/12...

1/ In a recent @britishacademy.bsky.social video @rebeccasear.bsky.social from @brunelpsy.bsky.social takes a clear-eyed look at the 21st‑century rise of eugenics - an ideology that should have been left behind, yet is now re‑emerging in a number of troubling ways ⚠️🧬 🧪 Watch the full talk here 🎥👇

Academics talk a lot about sustainability, but not always in ways practitioners can use. We spent 3 days with NGOs, businesses & community organizers to understand what actually works. New paper in Phil Trans B: royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article... #AcademicSky #ScienceCommunication 🧪

Gentle reminder that John Odling-Smee, who is now in his 90s (!) published his big update on #NicheConstruction last year. It's open access and can be downloaded here: direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon... ( #pleasecite )

New in Proceedings B, led by Jaspreet Singh: "Comparing expert assessments of research quality between the Global North and East Africa" royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article... We found that Kenyan assessors were more optimistic about the quality of 80 papers than were Global North assessors 1/

Excited to get this paper published! 🌟 We argue that men exaggerate patriarchal beliefs in an effort to signal conformity to others, which in turn fuels misperceptions about peers - making patriarchal norms resistant to change. royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...

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

I am pleased to announce that from Jan 1 2026 I take over as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Biological Theory. My first act, with the support of the editorial team, is to bring the journal to BlueSky from X. Please follow us @biologicaltheory.bsky.social. We will be posting about all our articles.

Why do people endorse seemingly extraordinary beliefs such as in pseudoscience & supernatural entities? Leading approaches stress cognitive biases (like agency detection) & social dynamics (like signaling). Eli Stark-Elster & I argue that experience matters too & put fwd a framework explaining how.

⏰ Reminder: 10 days left to submit your abstract for Culture Conference 2026! 🧠 Workshop details are now live! Join us for a hands-on day on cutting-edge tools for analysing social networks & social transmission (registration opens soon). Find all details here: culture-conference.com/workshop/

Thanks @patrickesavage.bsky.social great to see the door stop being used in great teaching @durhamanthropology.bsky.social @durhamdcerc.bsky.social

This graph never fails to be shocking: "The US has experienced the earliest and greatest slowdown in life expectancy improvements among higher-income countries, reported Eileen Crimmins. “We have horrible life expectancy—and it’s getting worse and worse”" www.prb.org/resources/se...

First paper out in FACE-UP project on protecting children from urban air pollution www.growkudos.com/articles/10.... with Judith Covey and @clairehorwell.bsky.social. @durhamanthropology.bsky.social

Standing up for science is one way to push back against political attacks on the university sector 👇 Experts in biology and anthropology have put together this statement to counter misinformation about race. Please consider signing and sharing

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

Cool stuff!

💙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...

Apply now to study at Durham! Not only would you be working with Sheina or Lynda, both fantastic scholars, but you'd be part of a department with a thriving PGR community, and a member of DCERC!

PhD post! 2 students sought to join the BIRES project, taking a body image intervention developed in Nicaragua and Colombia and examining how (and if!) It can be adapted in other LatAm and African youth. Please share with your students. #PsychSciSky #Anthropology www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...

What a week that was!

A project started shortly before Covid hit has finally arrived in print, phew!

New comparative paper on sequence cognition led by the wonderful @missdaffodil.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Very cool!

Fantastic new paper 👏

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!

The International Society for Neuroethology has a grant for disadvantaged scientists investigating the mechanisms of animal behaviour. Apply for funds to help overcome any barriers you face! Membership fees can be included in your application. Details here: www.neuroethology.org/diversity-aw...

A fab little book giving first hand insights

Great paper featuring @brucerawlings.bsky.social and @sheinalew.bsky.social from @durhamdcerc.bsky.social

Join us in Durham Anthropology - we’re hiring an Assistant Prof in Anthropology of Data Science. durham.taleo.net/careersectio...

Fab project to postdoc in if you are into cultural evolution and modelling 👇

Guaranteed to be a great book

Reupping this POSTDOC position - deadline Dec 20th Some more info 👇 1/3

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 very happy to have been involved in this paper. Understanding children is key to understanding culture change - past, present, future - and here we get a glimpse onto some ice age kids doing their thing.

The 9th "national IQ" paper of 2024 has just dropped. Anyone want to place bets on whether there'll be a nice round 10 papers using this thoroughly discredited dataset before the end of the year?

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

Accelerate your Hashtag#research impact and join a global network of changemakers—apply for the Jacobs Foundation Fellowship today! jacobsfoundation.smapply.org/prog/jacobs_... @isle-uzh.bsky.social @nccrlanguage.bsky.social @jacobscenteruzh.bsky.social @imprs-life.bsky.social

Lots of cultural evolution content to read in latest PNAS! www.pnas.org/toc/pnas/121...

New blogpost: deevybee.blogspot.com/2024/11/why-...

Announcement! The next @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social CES conference will be at UM6P in Rabat, Morocco, provisional dates 11-13th May 2026! Hosted by Mathieu Charbonneau, @sarahalami.bsky.social, @zhgarfield.com & @edseabright.bsky.social. Save the dates! culturalevolutionsociety.org/news-and-eve...

🐦📢🧪 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/...

So happy to finally have Camila’s wonderful PhD work out www.durham.ac.uk/news-events/...

We have a postdoc position available in my lab at UC Berkeley, 2 years+, flexible start date, research focus is social reasoning and cultural evolution from a computational perspective. Deadline = November 29th. aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF04639

Next deadline for proposals to edit an issue of Philosophical Transactions B is on 17 January. These issues are a great opportunity to shape the conversation in your field, while being supported by an excellent editorial team & a publisher with integrity royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/submit-...

A journal copy editor has just accused me of using profanity and asked me to rephrase my sentence to convey intended meaning. I was referring to 'great tits and whales'. Cue funniest copy editor stories....

📢Announcing #EHBEA2025 ’s 1st plenary: The unparalleled Prof Christine Anna Caldwell! 📢 Prof Caldwell researches the distinctiveness of human culture and cognition, including cumulative cultural evolution. (1/2) ⬇️ @ehbea.bsky.social

Nearly a month since #CES2024Durham and we are delighted to share the names of our nine prize winners who were all judged independently by volunteers. *drumroll*...

Couldn’t hope for a better PhD topic and supervisor 👇

Cultural Evolution PhD Alert 🚨