Job posting: Associate Professor in behavioral ecology and cultural evolution within the Department of Ecology and Evolution (DEE) at the University of Lausanne. Deadline for applications is 30.09.2026: wwwfbm.unil.ch/releve/appli... (there is a button to switch to English at the top right)

I summarised my path in (social) science as a love story for cultural evolution: selfmademodeler.wordpress.com/2026/07/28/c...

Cultural Evolution, a Love Story

I recently read this quote from Albert Camus. “A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those great and simple images in whose presence his heart first …

selfmademodeler.wordpress.com

Cultural Evolution of Perfumes since 1900 https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.19520 Perfumes are cultural artifacts and works of sensory art, composed from a finite, recombinable palette of notes that together evoke a distinctive scent impression. Here, we assemble the largest perfume corpus compiled ...📈🤖

Feels like GenAI still has some ways to go

Deadline for these funded MbyRes ecosystem resilience positions is in a week and a half!

Alex Mesoudi@alexmesoudi.com · last mo.

My department has funding for 2-year MByRes studentships (full tuition fees and research allowance) on ecosystem resilience, broadly defined. Apply to do a project with me modelling social-ecological networks. #culturalevolution #socialnetworks ecologyconservation.exeter.ac.uk/masteer-coho...

I really like this paper I did with @nathan-gabriel.bsky.social and @avbell.bsky.social, now out in EHS. It's an unusual paper because we tried to model the emergence of complex, multidimensional and intersectional identity structures from a signaling perspective. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Trial and error only gets you so far in Klondike search spaces. To frog leap in these, it's much much better to go the collective intelligence route. And teaching is the fastest elevator for such leaps. @johanlind.bsky.social

Thomas Talhelm@thomastalhelm.bsky.social · 3w ago

Lessons are more effective than practice, according to a new study of 40,000 chess players on Chess.com. @psychscience.bsky.social

Save the date! 📅 PSGB is hosting an online workshop on the topic “Cognition for Conservation and Captive Care” (2nd September 2026). Check out the first look for our speakers working across primate behaviour and cognition & register your interest to receive the workshop link! 🐒 shorturl.at/HDvXA

Are there typical patterns in global fertility decline? In my new paper, I show that it can be largely described by just two pathways. This paper also proposes a mechanism behind two pathways, and a possible policy for fertility recovery: lowering education costs. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Two universal pathways in demographic transition | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core

Two universal pathways in demographic transition - Volume 8

cambridge.org

When we consider children in cultural evolution, we tend to cast them as recipients of adult culture. In our BBS target article, @sheinalew.bsky.social & I argued there's more: through 'peer cultures', children actively drive cultural adaptation. Our final paper + a rich set of responses is out now!

📣 I'm hiring! Two positions (PhD student & Postdoc) in my ERC project Macroevolution of European Literature. Let's study the cultural evolution of literature using massive data 📚📈 📍Frankfurt | Apply by August 15 Details: www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/career/jo... Please repost to help spread the word!

New paper with Ángel Jiménez, @keith-jensen.bsky.social, Lei Chang and Hui Jing Lu Limited evidence that reputation-based partner choice facilitates information sharing in humans royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Limited evidence that reputation-based partner choice facilitates information sharing in humans

Abstract. A necessary prerequisite for the accumulation of beneficial knowledge, or ‘cumulative cultural evolution’, is the sharing of information via soci

royalsocietypublishing.org

New paper with Ángel Jiménez, @keith-jensen.bsky.social, Lei Chang and Hui Jing Lu Limited evidence that reputation-based partner choice facilitates information sharing in humans royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Limited evidence that reputation-based partner choice facilitates information sharing in humans

Abstract. A necessary prerequisite for the accumulation of beneficial knowledge, or ‘cumulative cultural evolution’, is the sharing of information via soci

royalsocietypublishing.org

My department has funding for 2-year MByRes studentships (full tuition fees and research allowance) on ecosystem resilience, broadly defined. Apply to do a project with me modelling social-ecological networks. #culturalevolution #socialnetworks ecologyconservation.exeter.ac.uk/masteer-coho...

My department has funding for 2-year MByRes studentships (full tuition fees and research allowance) on ecosystem resilience, broadly defined. Apply to do a project with me modelling social-ecological networks. #culturalevolution #socialnetworks ecologyconservation.exeter.ac.uk/masteer-coho...

New preprint led by @lucasmolleman.bsky.social investigates social information use across the human lifespan. Testing >40,000 participants aged 6-80 in museums in Berlin and Japan. psyarxiv.com/hec96

🚨 ACE Seminar We’re excited to host Dr. Patrick Savage @patrickesavage.bsky.social in our upcoming ACE Seminar! 🗓 Tuesday, Jun 16, 2026 🕖 2:00 PM JST (UTC+9) 💻 Online via Zoom 🔗 To receive the Zoom link, please send a blank email to ace-seminar+subscribe@googlegroups.com

New episode!! 🎙️🎉 A conversation w/ @vivek123.bsky.social about Man the Hunter. The idea that male hunting propelled our evolution is old and contested. Yet it endures, especially in the popular imagination. Is it merely a "paleofantasy," or is there more to it? Listen: disi.org/is-man-the-h...

Our latest episode of Transmissions is out! This one features Prof. Dr. Lucy Aplin, a leading cognitive ecologist from the University of Zurich and Australian National University. This marks our very first episode dedicated entirely to understanding animal culture! youtu.be/M7qCTKRNVuA?...

Transmissions Episode 6 with Dr Lucy Aplin

YouTube video by Cultural Evolution Society

youtu.be

Here's a proper mathematical model of the interaction between conformity and migration www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... mostly coming to the same conclusions as the simulations I did here journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Interaction of migration and frequency dependence in cultural populations

Migration has shaped cultural and genetic diversity. Population genetics shows that low migration rates between populations can homogenise them. Howev…

sciencedirect.com

Great opportunity for anyone wanting to get involved in the direction Cultural Evolution institutions go. You get to work with lovely people and help guide this nascent organization.

Cultural Evolution Society@culturalevolsoc.bsky.social · 3mo ago

🚨 CES Elections 2026–2029 🚨 We’ve got SIX Executive Committee positions open — including President-Elect, Treasurer, Secretary, Executive Ordinary Members (x2), and Student Rep! 🗓 Nominations close: May 31 🗳 Voting: June 15–24 📢 Results announced this summer forms.gle/9yX2SLcf82Vk...

Here's @ruthmace.bsky.social giving the inaugural Tinbergen lecture @uniexecec.bsky.social today, asking why there are so many celibate monks in Tibet

Thanks to the organisers of @ces2026.bsky.social : @anthrosarah.bsky.social , @zhgarfield.com , @matcharbonneau.bsky.social and @edseabright.bsky.social plus their student helpers for organising an amazing conference

Rob Boyd reflects on his and Pete Richerson's early work on cultural evolution

It's an all-star cultural evolution / evolutionary psychology / human behavioural ecology panel, with Joe Henrich, Fiona Jordan, @edhagen.net and Monique Borgerhoff Mulder

Supercool work by @sobchuk.bsky.social mapping dynamic networks of books / literature

Or this one. It was a great talk.

Phenomenal plenary at CES 2026 by Nicole Creanza on the links between birdsong and human language

would this one work?

Sadly I couldn't get a photo of @stephenvaisey.com 's earlier plenary, which placed the field of cultural evolution in sociological context, but that was great too