A research group at the University of Exeter's Cornwall Campus using evolutionary theory to explain human behaviour, cognition, culture and society

  • Dr Shakti Lamba running economic games at one of her fieldsites in Chhattisgarh, India
  • Dr Kimberley Hockings collecting behavioural data on wild chimpanzees in west Africa
  • Dr Alex Thornton's Cornish Jackdaw Project is exploring social learning and cognition in wild jackdaws
  • Dr Tom Currie studies the evolution of social complexity with phylogenetic methods
  • Dr Alex Mesoudi runs lab experiments examining how people design and copy artifacts like handaxes or arrowheads
  • Dr Erik Postma uses genealogical data from Swiss communities to study human life-history evolution
  • Dr Shakti Lamba is studying how people cooperate to build wells in Chhattisgarh, India
  • Prof Mike Cant studies the evolution of menopause in humans and killer whales
  • Dr Jamie Hampson studies rock art. These painting in west Texas range from c. 4,000 years old to the nineteenth century.
  • Recent HuBCEG publications

Human Behaviour and Cultural Evolution Group

Members of the Human Behaviour and Cultural Evolution Group (HuBCEG) at the University of Exeter's Cornwall Campus apply evolutionary theory and methods to study human behaviour, cognition, life histories, cultural evolution and social complexity.

 

We conduct research in cultural evolution (Currie, Mesoudi, Lamba, Thornton), human life history evolution (Postma, Russell), human behavioural ecology (Cant, Lamba), comparative cognition and animal behaviour (Cant, Dall, Russell, Thornton), primatology and conservation (Hockings), theoretical ecology (Dall, Kuijper) and nongenetic inheritance (Dall, Kuijper, Mesoudi).

 

We bring together expertise in lab experiments, ethnographic fieldwork, field experiments, historical and cross-cultural analyses, theoretical modelling, and non-human comparative methods.

 

Please see the People and Publications pages for more details.

Events / news

HuBCEG meets every week during term time to discuss papers or hear talks from our members or external guests. Please contact Dugald Foster for information.

 

For more details of past and future events see the Events page.

Our location

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