Professor Alex Mesoudi

Alex Mesoudi is Professor of Cultural Evolution at the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus. His research focuses on (i) how humans evolved an unprecedented capacity for culture, accumulating vast bodies of socially transmitted knowledge that has allowed our species to culturally adapt to virtually every environment on the planet; (ii) how culture forms a second evolutionary process – cultural evolution – that exhibits key similarities to, but also important differences from, genetic evolution; and (iii) how human behaviour and cognition are jointly shaped by genetic and cultural evolution, aka gene-culture coevolution. His work intersects evolutionary biology, experimental psychology, biological anthropology and the computational social sciences. He uses theoretical models, lab experiments and real-world data to address a diverse range of topics relating to human social learning and cultural evolution, including: the cultural transmission of stone tools in the archaeological record; the emergence of prestige hierarchies and prestige-biased social learning; the drivers of cross-cultural variation in psychological traits; immigrant acculturation and migration-driven cultural change; and the cultural evolutionary dynamics of contemporary phenomena such as copycat suicide, pop music, conservation attitudes and football tactics. 

Find out more about Alex Mesoudi's research on his personal website or Google Scholar page.