New Substack post It's very personal: my story of a 20-year academic career, and the many challenges of theoretical and cross-disciplinary work As I put it in the subtitle: There is a lot of success and a lot of pain here, and no happy ending thomscottphillips.substack.com/p/happy-in-t...

I am excited to announce that the position of a senior postdoc (3 +3 years) in the field of theoretical biology is available in my group. The position provides the opportunity to closely interact with experimentalists and develop own research projects. Please RT. Details 👇: shorturl.at/iiiOv

Just got this book by one of my favourite anthropologists (and people) in the mail - if it's only half as good as the gushing advanced praise, this'll be an instant classic! Also, brilliant title, immediately putting to bed the notion that long lifespan is a new thing; we've evolved to live to ~70

1/6 A plea to Lisa Nandy from a very concerned citizen & historian: I’m not so naive to believe that the BBC has or can ever be completely impartial. It has always been a site of struggle. www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthe...

Peter Taylor Professorship at Queen's University in any area of mathematics. The Professorship includes a fund to support mathematical scholarship, and educational and outreach activities. universityaffairs.ca/search-job/?...

This should have been big news! Ten funding agencies from eight European countries have pledged to support a public infrastructure that is poised to replace academic journals: FWF 🇦🇹 RCN 🇳🇴 Forte 🇸🇪 ARIS 🇸🇮 SRC 🇸🇪 FCT 🇵🇹 CSIC 🇪🇸 DFG 🇩🇪 Formas 🇸🇪 ANR 🇫🇷 Only two of them issued press releases in […]

Amazing! Full article here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

“Other books teach you how to write beautiful sentences and paragraphs; Nunez tells you how to get your imperfect writing submitted and published.”

Our article "Impediments to countering racist pseudoscience" (with @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social, @kztwyman.bsky.social & Marc Feldman) is now published online. We describe five factors that contribute to the spread of racism and suggest strategies for countering them. doi.org/10.1017/ehs....

🚨 We're hiring! PhD position in Evolutionary Systems Biology at Stockholm University & SciLifeLab 🎓 Focus: evolution, development, computational & mathematical modeling, prediction 📍 Stockholm, Sweden 🕒 4 years, fully-funded 🔍 Details: su.varbi.com/en/what:job/... Please share!

Five 3-year Postdoc positions open at @ebdonana.bsky.social. I am happy to sponsor and mentor good candidates working in my field, but note that these are quite independent positions aimed at helping stabilize new researchers in the system. www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/4nqkq...

Excited to present at the Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology this Thursday! Find me at the Craniofacial Evolution Session-09 at 3.15 pm!

The new left party must be different: member-led, shaped by the people it serves, honouring and learning from the past, and building the future. Me in the New Left Review: newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

How to convince your friends, family and networks to support wealth taxes. A step-by-step guide

🚨 New, short article by myself, Clark Barrett and @kevinlala.bsky.social on the legacy of Wilson's 'Sociobiology: The New Synthesis', which was published 50 years ago. @science.org #ehbea #histbiol #evobio #psyscisky Revisiting the human sociobiology debate |Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Happy to see some principled and courageous academics signing this letter. That said, I wish the list of signatories was much longer. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

This is amongst the most impactful two minutes of broadcasting I’ve ever seen. By Emma Murphy, International Editor, ITV News. #Gaza

Here's a quick blogpost about alternative publishing models. You can bring a horse to water, and indeed wave the bucket temptingly under its nose, but it is likely to gallop off elsewhere. deevybee.blogspot.com/2025/07/new-... @ec.europa.eu @wellcometrust.bsky.social

How can we beat the Farage-Badenoch-Starmer axis of cruelty in the UK? A strong @greenparty.org.uk with a *fearless* leader is part of the answer. Join the party now and make it happen by voting for @zackpolanski.bsky.social Less than 10 days left! join.greenparty.org.uk #BackZack

Interesting analysis from @ersatzben.bsky.social on what makes good interdisciplinary research. UKRI doesn’t come out well. ‘Despite integration within single UKRI umbrella, UK government funding seems to remain unusually focussed on silos of activity….’ johnsonb.substack.com/p/what-actua...

Nice news piece giving a brief summary of our new paper posted in my current institution: www.kli.ac.at/en/the_kli/n...

"I’ve met more than a dozen children who lost everyone. I don’t mean mom and dad—I mean cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents." www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

Useful perspective incorporating GRNs & gene modules into theory of evolutionary novelty Parker & Pennell emphasise gene modules, not individual genes, as fundamental units of phenotypic evolution Provides a needed evolutionary lens for analysing scRNAseq & cell types www.cell.com/current-biol...

Culture is not ecology www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Today's highlighted talk is by Maurico Gonzalez-Ferrero @mauriciogforero.bsky.social, talking about evolutionary expansion of the human brain @royalsocietypublishing.org youtu.be/vhqKSSYMPaQ

Your next Fall read, my new book: SEVEN DECADES: HOW WE EVOLVED TO LIVE LONGER Longevity is shaped by our evolutionary past—imagine aging as opportunity rather than burden. Out Sept 16, preorder w/ code PUP30 for 30% discount: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco... @princetonupress.bsky.social

New paper with Aida Gómez-Robles: “Why did the human brain size evolve: a way forward”. We propose that this seemingly unanswerable question can be tackled with simulation-based inference. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Very excited about this paper led by Erika Castro. She has shown that Heliconius were ancestrally plastic in how they acquired their cyanogens, but some species have lost the ability to biosynthesise toxins, and have lost genes involved www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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...

New paper with Aida Gómez-Robles: “Why did the human brain size evolve: a way forward”. We propose that this seemingly unanswerable question can be tackled with simulation-based inference. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Selection Shapes Diverse Animal Minds: our special issue of @royalsocietypublishing.org Phil Trans B on the diverse evolutionary processes underlying cognitive evolution is out today. Thanks to all our contributors! royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202...

Behind many scientists is a lifetime of invisible, unsustainable costs. From unpaid internships to underpaid postdocs, the economic toll of a STEM career is staggering—and it's pushing talent out. My new perspective explores this crisis. #STEM #AcademicBlueSky journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Interested in predator / prey / collective behaviour in fishes? With or without anthropogenic change? I am keen to help develop MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship applications - get in touch! Please spread the word! marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/actions/post... @erc.europa.eu @asab.org

🚨Anyone want a job?🚨 We have two #postdocs up for grabs! 🧪 - cell developmental biology/#evodevo/#neuroevodevo - bioinformatics and molecular biology Both working on brain evolution in Heliconiini butterflies Details below! Please repost 🙏 1/n

I'm guessing this is probably very well worth the read! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Research funders at all levels must get past this fascination with unicorns and superstars. Invest broadly, and in enabling research infrastructures.

Just read an extremely amazing paper: "Multifactorial causal model of brain (dis)organization and therapeutic intervention: Application to Alzheimer’s disease" by Iturria-Medina et al. It combines data and control to predict interventions for Alzheimer's www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Remember when you first learned about genetics at school? All those fascinating examples of human traits that are each apparently determined by just a single gene? Time to check in on some of your favourites to see how they’re doing. 🧬🧵🧪 1/n

Debunking “nature versus nurture”, a thread. Different people in a population carry variations in their DNA; the science of genetics makes it possible to assess if/how that correlates with individual differences in any observable trait, from medical conditions to aspects of cognition/behaviour.🧪1/9

Heritability = one of the most commonly confused concepts in public (mis)understanding of genetics. Let’s break it down. Imagine studying a cohort of people in a specific set of environmental circumstances. You assess everyone for an observable trait & find it varies from one person to another. 🧪1/5

My post this morning reflects on the new editorial from @holdenthorp.bsky.social in @science.org noting how “scientific consensus” may mislead the public about scientific evidence. My personal view: Old-school “consilience” of different kinds of evidence is strongest. johnhawks.net/weblog/consi...

I am really happy to share information about the 2nd Workshop on Modeling and Applications of Evolutionary Game Theory, which will be held virtually on Thursday, May 8, and Friday, May 9. sites.google.com/view/2nd-evo... I enjoyed organizing this workshop with Olivia Chu and Alex McAvoy.

Great piece. www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/my-f...

Applications now open for UNIL Summer School on Modelling for Evo Bio (1–6 Sept 2025, Lausanne)! Aimed at PhD students interested in formal approaches to evolutionary ecology questions like sexual selection, social & life-history evolution. Scholarships available. Pls share! www.shorturl.at/znk5g

I know it's a rough time to be talking science, but in case anyone wants some distraction, I wrote about the Tan et al (2024) analysis of heritability and polygenic indices for complex human behavior. Title: Is Tan et al The End of Social Science Genomics?

New preprint: "Evidence that human skill level is more reactive to developmental history than to genes or environment". Comments welcome! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Wow this is a game changer. PhD scholarships and postdoctoral fellowships are now open to non-Canadians.

Please repost to get the word out! @nkgarg.bsky.social and I are excited to present a personalized feed for academics! It shows posts about papers from accounts you’re following bsky.app/profile/pape...

A theoretical biology PhD position at the University of Leiden on the coevolution of aging and sociality with awesome @lottedevries.bsky.social please spread the word! www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/vacancies...

A friend included this anti-acknowledgement section on her PhD thesis. She also added the proposition: “Systematic bullying and undermining of girls and women in STEM starts early on and is the reason why they do not stay in science and related fields.” Absurd we still need to go through this 🧪👩‍🔬