our new paper with @plechac.bsky.social puts thousands of poems across languages in one shared space of poetic form! we use sequence alignment on rhyme schemes to investigate 'fixed forms' and all things between: not only 'sonnets', but 'sonnet-like' things. doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Look and share widely! A new center starting up with great ideas and cool vibes! Highly recommended for digital humanities, cultural evolution and related folks interested in literature, history, and the arts. #culturalevolution #digitalhumanities #jobs

Oleg Sobchuk 🇺🇦@sobchuk.bsky.social · last mo.

📣 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!

Check out our (@sobchuk.bsky.social) special issue on the cultural evolution of the arts in Evolutionary Human Sciences, with papers from @mikekestemont.bsky.social @babeheim.bsky.social @svalver.bsky.social and more! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

New special issue on "Cultural evolution of the arts" led by @sobchuk.bsky.social and @masonyoungblood.bsky.social confirms my intuition that this field has taken off in the past two decades, with a particularly strong representation from music! doi.org/10.1017/ehs....

Pat Savage@patrickesavage.bsky.social · 4mo ago

@culturalevolsoc.bsky.social conference draft programme is up: airess.fgses-um6p.ma/CES2026 Psyched to see so much music! (at least 13 presentations on human music, plus more on bird/whale song etc.)

What function did ~100k-year-old engravings from Blombos Cave & Diepkloof serve? Decoration, identity marking, proto-writing? osf.io/preprints/ps... uses transmission chains + cognitive experiments to find out & help answering one of the hardest questions in cognitive archaeology. long thread! 1/

someone recently called poetree "an essential DH infrastructure", and it was the best award we could ever asked for. but! it's a standardized collection of poetry corpora in 11 languages and counting, with regular processing and annotation, API, R and Python access points, fully open, has a map..

Versification Research Group@versification.bsky.social · 4mo ago

PoeTree has been nominated for the DH Awards! We’d be really happy if you dropped us a vote here: forms.gle/FvWp3NYs8hv1... More on DH Awards: dhawards.org

#jobklaxon Lecturer in #digitalhumanities Application Deadline: 29.03.2026 Very sensible language policy, B1 after 2 years and B2 after five years. Maybe of interest to the members of @digitalmedievalist.bsky.social

Andres Karjus@andreskarjus.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Come work with us! Tallinn Uni is hiring a second lecturer in DH&AI. Estonian proficiency not required, foreign applicants welcome, required phd can be in progress (expected to be completed), competitive salary+benefits, nice working environment close to the sea candidate.recrur.com/public/jobad...

Come work with us! Tallinn Uni is hiring a second lecturer in DH&AI. Estonian proficiency not required, foreign applicants welcome, required phd can be in progress (expected to be completed), competitive salary+benefits, nice working environment close to the sea candidate.recrur.com/public/jobad...

🚀 Postdoc Alert! Are you passionate about social learning & cultural evolution? @dominikdeffner.bsky.social & I have a 3-year position with freedom to develop your research and work on cutting-edge multiplayer and immersive experiments. Apply by March 30! hmc-lab.com/SocialLearni... Pls share 🙏

CALL: a PhD grant (3 years) to do a PhD with me at @cognitionens.bsky.social on the evolution of graphic codes. euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/410213

PhD student grant (3 years) on the evolution of written communication

My team recruits a PhD student to work under the supervision of Olivier Morin on the evolution of written communication, within a project jointly led by Olivier Morin, Hugo Mercier, and Marc Allassonn...

euraxess.ec.europa.eu

In a new paper, we find that judging facts by messenger rather than content leads to polarising belief packages (e.g. latte liberals, leftist support for wind power, rightist for nuclear). Worryingly, recommender algorithms use this strategy. No need to read the paper; you can just trust me on this.

The emergence of polarised groups through source filtering - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications - The emergence of polarised groups through source filtering

nature.com

MAJOR NEWS! We just launched an awesome new tool! The illustrated Birds of the World Phylogeny Explorer lets users trace any bird’s lineage, compare species relationships, and explore major evolutionary milestones with a click of a button. SHARE and EXPLORE! birdsoftheworld.org/bow/news/phy...

Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out. As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class. Here's what happened:

A colleague at MPI asked how to get better at math. My vote is Thompson and Gardner's classic *Calculus Made Easy* (originally published in 1910!) I've uploaded my own (almost complete) worked problem sets from this classic book. A few thoughts.../

I started reading up on the whole "loneliness pandemic" narrative because this seems like a literature where the age-period-cohort problem may be relevant (or maybe it isn't?). Here's data from Australia (HILDA), average agreement with the statement "I often feel very lonely" (SD of ca. 1.8).>

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

Simulation-based inference with deep learning suggests speed climbers combine innovation and copying to improve performance

Abstract. In the Olympic sport of speed climbing, athletes compete to reach the top of a 15 m wall as quickly as possible. Since the standardization of the

bit.ly

The rise of AI tools that let you do anything to your data makes me want all of my data to be in more open formats. I want access to my Photos library as files, not an opaque archive. I want my journal entries in markdown, not locked down in Day One. The open standards people were always right.

Historians rock.

Marc Morris@marcmorris.bsky.social · 8mo ago

The complete Bayeux Tapestry has finally been released and proves that Bishop Odo had absolutely nothing to do with the illegal Norman invasion of England.

Good luck to Oleg!! I can say from experience that Oleg is a great person to know and work with: thorough, thoughtful, and with a clear big plan. He's been trailblazing the new field for almost a decade now. Look out for the job offers in the spring and the papers that follow! It's gonna be great! 🎉

Oleg Sobchuk 🇺🇦@sobchuk.bsky.social · 8mo ago

I got wonderful news: I was granted a position of Max Planck independent group leader at the MPI for Empirical Aesthetics ⬇️ (@ae.mpg.de) in Frankfurt, which I'll join in early 2026. It's a huge honor: being trusted with academic freedom offered by MPG. My group will study the evolution of arts. 1/3

New paper out today w @dalmaijer.bsky.social @barbaraklump.bsky.social and @lucymaplin.bsky.social as part of the Phil Trans special issue doi.org/10.1098/rstb.... Over 2 years, we studied a population of cockatoos thought to be the source of the innovation of bin-opening.

Cool paper on how experiences from pilot studies can become useful knowledge. Build analysis and transparent reporting into the process! 'Thick description' and iterated game design can show the way. Esp for complex objects like in #languageevolution, #experimentalsemiotics. Examples from Minecraft!

Seán Roberts@seangroberts.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Last month we published a new experiment into how symbolic languages evolved. Today, we've published a follow-up, REVEALING WHAT REALLY HAPPENED. New paper with Kateryna Krykoniuk, Fiona Jordan and @gamemakerstoolkit.com. academic.oup.com/jole/article...

Join us today @cudanlab.bsky.social for a lecture and discussion feat. Oleg Sobchuk @sobchuk.bsky.social, of @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social on "Evolution of Literature and the Arts" 16:00-18:00 Tallinn time (UTC+2) i.e. 60 minutes from this post. Details & zoom: cudan.tlu.ee/events/2025-...

Great news! This is out: Opening the black box of EEBO academic.oup.com/dsh/advance-...

Opening the black box of EEBO

Abstract. Digital archives that cover extended historical periods can create a misleading impression of comprehensiveness while in truth providing access t

academic.oup.com

The story of board game GO strategies from feudal era to AI, analyzed and visualized by @babeheim.bsky.social! The disruption from AI players is visible but small compared to innovations from generations of humans. Many more bites here:👉 doi.org/10.1017/ehs.... #digitalhumanities #history #games

Bret Beheim@babeheim.bsky.social · 11mo ago

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!

Congratulations to Oleg Sobchuk and Arthur Kocher on being awarded @erc.europa.eu Starting Grants!! 🥳 @sobchuk.bsky.social will be exploring the macroevolution of European literature, while Kocher will be studying ancient pathogen dynamics. See: tinyurl.com/mr2m2zms & tinyurl.com/9cwdnc54

Why I 🧡 the web. drawafish.com Just draw the fish. Trust me. 🐟

Excited to see 1st of the Evoluionary Human Sciences special issue on scientific racism come out! @kevinlala.bsky.social @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social @kztwyman.bsky.social & Marcus Feldman discuss impediments to countering racist pseudoscience & present 5 solutions www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Humanities methods breaking new grounds! Poetic meters can be studied like gene sequences to trace their evolution in time and space. The method, evaluation, and case studies! Lots to learn from and reuse. #DH Also, congratulations to @comphumresearch.bsky.social on the first published volume!

Artjoms Šeļa@artjomshl.bsky.social · last yr.

✍️ Our paper is finally out! All poetic forms come from somewhere, but figuring out their relationships is hard. We use sequence alignment on scansion (010.10) to measure metrical similarity between poems. This allows us to detect related forms across languages and times 1/ tinyurl.com/metronome25

✍️ Our paper is finally out! All poetic forms come from somewhere, but figuring out their relationships is hard. We use sequence alignment on scansion (010.10) to measure metrical similarity between poems. This allows us to detect related forms across languages and times 1/ tinyurl.com/metronome25