Evolution, Culture and Human Behaviour

Bruce Rawlings is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Durham University, and co-director of the Durham Cultural Evolution Research Centre (DCERC). His research uses developmental, cross-cultural, and comparative methods to study cognition, with a particular focus on the psychology of cultural evolution.

Sheina Lew-Levy is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Durham University, and the co-founder and co-director of the interdisciplinary collaborative Forager Child Studies. Using methods from anthropology and psychology, she conducts research in hunter-gatherer societies to understand cultural diversity in, and evolution of social learning in childhood. For Open Book she co-edited 'A Field Guide to Cross-Cultural Research on Childhood Learning', https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0440.

Yan Birch is Assistant Professor (Education) in the Department of Psychology at Durham University. His work has predominantly focussed on the investigation of evolutionary theories of low mood. More recently he has become interested in how an individual's metacognitive beliefs about their own ruminative processes may moderate rumination's effect on problem-solving. He is developing pedagogical strategy within the department and will lead on study activities in the textbook.

Rohan Kapitanyis Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Durham University. He is an experimental and quantitative psychologist with an interest in cultural evolution and understanding human cumulative culture. Specifically, he studies ritual, groups, social learning, and supernatural beliefs, working with both children and adults across diverse cultures.

Linda Lidborg is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Psychology at Durham. She does research on sexual selection in humans, investigating how and why humans have evolved sex-typical traits (masculinity vs femininity) and what role such traits play in attraction and other social interactions. She also studies face recognition, namely how the brain stores and processes familiar faces.