Rebecca Sear
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rebeccasear.bsky.social
Rebecca Sear
@rebeccasear.bsky.social
11K followers 3.7K following 2.8K posts

Director of the Centre for Culture and Evolution, Brunel University London @brunelcce.bsky.social. President of the European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association @ehbea.bsky.social

https://www.rebeccasear.org/

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Rebecca Sear, is a British anthropologist and academic, who specialises in evolutionary anthropology, demography and human behavioural ecology. Since 2024, she has been director of the Centre for Culture and Evolution at Brunel University London. She previously taught at the London School of Economics, Durham University and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. .. more

Psychology 45%
Sociology 15%
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rebeccasear.bsky.social
Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 7d
In case it's relevant: as I'm in the UK, I can't access direct messages without providing more information to a social media platform than I'm comfortable with (a likely pointless gesture, given how much they already know about me 🤷‍♀️). Contactable the old-fashioned way

Reposted by Charles Forsdick, Rebecca Sear

hetanshah.bsky.social
Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 4h
Over 24 years, Louise Cocker has captured almost half a million Norfolk Gravestones. ‘As a result, she has produced a remarkable dataset… which experts consider one of the most comprehensive photographic records of gravestones and memorials in England.’
www.theguardian.com/education/20...
‘The hidden engine room’: how amateur historians are powering genealogical research
Wealth of datasets compiled as private passions are now a goldmine for those hunting for their ancestors
www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Dorothy Bishop, Philip N. Cohen, Lesley A. Hall , and 2 more

drjenndowd.bsky.social
Jenn Dowd @drjenndowd.bsky.social · 2d
I finally got some time to flesh out my rant about these headlines...
TL;DR: age differences ≠ aging
jenndowd.substack.com/p/does-adole... #demography #episky #medsky #neurosky
Does adolescence really last until age 32?
Those “turning points” in brain aging aren’t quite what you think
jenndowd.substack.com

Reposted by Rebecca Sear

ehbea2026.bsky.social
EHBEA 2026 @ehbea2026.bsky.social · 3d
Joy to All! ❄️
We wish you all a very festive Christmas and a happy New Year!🎄✨ EHBEA is approaching, and we’re excited to welcome you! Check www.ehbea2026.com for new info on hotel deals and room-sharing options.
Don’t forget: the abstract submission deadline is 9 January. See you in Leiden in 2026!
Overview | EHBEA2026
The upcoming conference of the European Human Behaviour & Evolution Association will take place in Leiden, The Netherlands, 14th-17th of April 2026. EHBEA conferences bring together researchers applyi...
www.ehbea2026.com

Reposted by Rebecca Sear

goodlawproject.bsky.social
Good Law Project @goodlawproject.bsky.social · 3d
Are corporate social media posts about pride the most important part of building an inclusive society? Of course not.

But is a 92% reduction in them a worrying sign? Almost certainly:
https://bit.ly/4j6ezPI
Revealed: how big businesses are rolling back public support for Pride
Guardian analysis of 20 major companies in UK and US shows mentions of Pride on social media have fallen substantially in past two years
www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Rebecca Sear, Patrick S. Forscher

carlbergstrom.com
Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 3d
One of the most important books I've read this year, from
@adambecker.bsky.social.

It's a devastating read at times—you'll find yourself shouting at the book "how can they be that goddamn crazy???!!!"

But it's critical to realize that they are.
justinhendrix.bsky.social Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 3d
12. @adambecker.bsky.social is a science journalist and author of MORE EVERYTHING FOREVER: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, a book that chronicles the stew of nonsense that informs and motivates many of tech’s leaders.
Adam Becker Takes Aim at Silicon Valley Nonsense | TechPolicy.Press
In a new book, the science journalist Adam Becker skewers the more outlandish ideas and motivations in the tech industry.
www.techpolicy.press

Reposted by Rebecca Sear

wiringthebrain.bsky.social
Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 3d
Telling good science from bad – a user’s guide to navigating the scientific literature www.wiringthebrain.com/2021/08/tell...
Telling good science from bad – a user’s guide to navigating the scientific literature
“Did you find it convincing?” That’s what one of my genetics professors used to ask us, a small group of undergraduates who blinked in respo...
www.wiringthebrain.com

Reposted by Lesley A. Hall, Rebecca Sear, Lucy Munro , and 1 more

eicathomefinn.bsky.social
Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 4d
Not just a national asset but an international asset. Trashed, ignored, diminished.
The worst of times: Trouble at the British Library
Cyber chaos, striking staff and a crisis of leadership. Claudia Cockerell investigates a national treasure’s year of reckoning
www.standard.co.uk

Reposted by Lesley A. Hall

rebeccasear.bsky.social
Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 4d
The motivation to establish universals of cognition - the foundation of cognitive psychology- may have resulted from a desire to remove racist & sexist assumptions from previous approaches. The development of theories & methods in pursuit of cognitive universals continues to uphold scientific racism
Color-Evasive Cognition: The Unavoidable Impact of Scientific Racism in the Founding of a Field - Ayanna K. Thomas, Maxine McKinney de Royston, Shameka Powell, 2023
Cognitive psychology has traditionally focused on investigating principles of cognition that are universal across the human species. The motivation to identify ...
doi.org

Reposted by Lesley A. Hall, Rebecca Sear

vaclavhrncir.bsky.social
Václav Hrnčíř @vaclavhrncir.bsky.social · 4d
** CALL FOR PAPERS **

I am co-organizing a session for the #EAA2026 conference in Athens on

"Cross-cultural patterns in small-scale societies: Insights from comparative ethnology"

Submit through EAA website: www.e-a-a.org/EAA2026/EAA2...

and please share with others who might be interested!

Reposted by Lesley A. Hall, Luke Rendell

rebeccasear.bsky.social
Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 4d
"Behavioural scientists are increasingly calling for context as a key to addressing pressing problems caused by human behaviour. However, despite its powerful ability to generate contextual hypotheses on the basis of relatively simple rules, ecological thinking is rarely applied to human behaviour"
Behavioural sciences need behavioural ecology - Nature Human Behaviour
Behavioural scientists want to see more consideration of context — so why are they not using tools derived from ecology, the science of all life in context? We invite behavioural scientists to align t...
www.nature.com

Reposted by Rebecca Sear

mkellyirving.bsky.social
Michelle Kelly-Irving @mkellyirving.bsky.social · 5d
Once again, great stuff from Rolling Stone on the enshittification of the science publication system

www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...

Reposted by Rebecca Sear

anthrofuentes.bsky.social
anthrofuentes.bsky.social @anthrofuentes.bsky.social · 6d
2025: an annus horribilis for health in the USA - The Lancet www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
2025: an annus horribilis for health in the USA
The US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices vote on Dec 5 to no longer recommend the hepatitis B vaccine birth dose, which had ensured that babies exposed to hepatitis B would not later develo...
www.thelancet.com

Reposted by Lesley A. Hall

rebeccasear.bsky.social
Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 6d
Highly recommended read about the politicisation of science in the US and how this will help the resurgence of eugenic ideology and scientific racism.

“For the first time, there is a political appointee in the NIH communications operations”

www.statnews.com/2025/12/18/t...
As dangerous eugenic ideas spread, NIH falls silent
Federal research agencies are pulling back from fostering public discussions about science after the hollowing out of government communications offices.
www.statnews.com

Reposted by Nathan Nunn, Lesley A. Hall

rebeccasear.bsky.social
Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 6d
“A better understanding of how cultures evolve—how info is transmitted & modified, how we make decisions, how culture interacts with biology & other species—is a pressing issue in an increasingly interdependent world where cultural activities are causing rapid, drastic social & environmental change”
royalsocietypublishing.org Royal Society Publishing @royalsocietypublishing.org · 8d
In this blog post, Guest Editor @rachkendal.bsky.social discusses their #PhilTransB issue, 'Transforming cultural evolution research and its application to global futures': royalsociety.org/blog/2025/12...

Reposted by Rebecca Sear

brunelcce.bsky.social
Centre for Culture and Evolution @brunelcce.bsky.social · 6d
1/ 👩‍🎓 Big shout-out to Brunel PhD student Hannah Mays and supervisor @nelliferenczi.bsky.social from @brunelpsy.bsky.social for contributing written evidence on misogyny in the manosphere and online content to a major policy consultation
https://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/brunel-public-policy/news-and-events/news/Written-evidence/Misogyny-the-manosphere-and-online-content-–-Hannah-Mays-and-Nelli-Ferenczi

Reposted by Rebecca Sear

jaeggiadrian.bsky.social
Adrian Jaeggi @jaeggiadrian.bsky.social · 8d
Oxytocin varies across the lifecourse in a sex-specific way - new paper in @pnas.org working with Tsimane communities. For women, OT looks like a sex hormone and is linked to breastfeeding and childcare. For men, probably more related to health and aging.
www.linkedin.com/posts/uzh-me...
Oxytocin varies across the life course in a sex-specific way in a human subsistence population | PNAS | UZH Faculty of Medicine
🧠 We often call oxytocin the "love hormone," but could it actually be the key to healthy aging? In an impressive recent study published in PNAS, researchers from the University of Zurich analysed the...
www.linkedin.com

Reposted by Lesley A. Hall

rebeccasear.bsky.social
Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 8d
“Low birth rates are not the end: they are the catalyst for a more humane, sustainable world – one where all the people live richer, fuller lives”

Reposted by Rebecca Sear

bylines.scot
Bylines Scotland @bylines.scot · 8d
A quiet revolution may be required to reverse economic policies causing this attack on humanity’s advancement | David Murray
Why falling birth rates might be the wake-up call we need
A quiet revolution may be required to reverse economic policies causing this attack on humanity’s advancement
bylines.scot

Reposted by David Lazer, Rebecca Sear

carlbergstrom.com
Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 8d
Surely the people who file hundreds of demands that libraries they've never been to remove books that they've never read — surely those people wouldn't abuse an open syllabus law to harass professors teaching topics they don't like the sound of.

Important reporting from @stephaniemlee.bsky.social
When Everyone Can See Your Syllabus
More states are requiring public colleges to make class syllabi available to the masses. Proponents say these measures boost higher ed’s credibility, while faculty fear being targeted.
www.chronicle.com

rebeccasear.bsky.social
Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 8d
"The pandemic fertility pattern reflects temporary changes in the timing of childbearing, more specifically a preponement of births that occurred in 2021 with resulting shortfall in 2022"

link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Swedish Fertility Developments Before, During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic - European Journal of Population
Many affluent societies saw a temporary increase in their fertility rates in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. This included a number of countries that had experienced fertility decline during the 2...
link.springer.com

Reposted by Rebecca Sear

royalsocietypublishing.org
Royal Society Publishing @royalsocietypublishing.org · 8d
In this blog post, Guest Editor @rachkendal.bsky.social discusses their #PhilTransB issue, 'Transforming cultural evolution research and its application to global futures': royalsociety.org/blog/2025/12...

Reposted by Rebecca Sear, Holger Nehring

hetanshah.bsky.social
Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 9d
Good piece from @gabyhinsliff.bsky.social on how an increasing number of young people continue to live with their parents. Includes research from Emily Grundy FBA
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
For home, it turns out, is an important safety net. The ISER team at the University of Essex found that far from being depressed about moving back into their old teenage bedrooms, on average boomerang kids' mental health scores improved after they returned home, suggesting that they found it a relief. "A lot of young people who are living independently are often in rather poor housing, with a lot of stress, living in unstable private rented housing," notes Prof Emily Grundy, the study's co-author. Going home may feel like going backwards, but it often beats whatever sent you there.

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill, Rebecca Sear

acerbialberto.com
Alberto Acerbi @acerbialberto.com · 9d
New preprint: "The Cultural Ecology of Social Media"

osf.io/preprints/so...

Thread
⬇️⬇️⬇️
Abstract: Most research on social media considers them as supports for transmission of information, explaining online success (and pathologies) by focusing on consumers’ biases and interests. This article takes a different perspective, applying ideas from an ecological approach to culture to social media informational dynamics. It argues that success online depends both on the intrinsic appeal of content to receivers and on how well content serves producers’ strategic goals within the constraints and affordances of specific platforms. These goals include reputation management, coalition building and identity management, and coordination or participation in shared activities. Transmission is often a by-product of these motivations, and replication fidelity plays a limited role compared with transformations that adapt content to local incentives. Finally, the article suggests that platforms and communities can be understood as distinct ecological niches, each characterised by different audience structures, affordances, metrics, and algorithmic pressures. This perspective offers novel insight to persistent debates on social media dynamics, such as misinformation, radicalisation and polarisation, and the reasons behind online success.

Reposted by Rebecca Sear

ruthmace.bsky.social
Ruth Mace @ruthmace.bsky.social · 9d
Really looking for to the evolutionary demography conference in Fort Collins in June! Includes lots of human evolutionary demography interest (and not far from Yellowstone...)
evodemos11.weebly.com/program.html
Program
The meeting will start on Tuesday morning and will end on Thursday evening, June 16-18th 2026 .  All sessions will take place at the Lory Student Center at Colorado State University in Fort Collins,.....
evodemos11.weebly.com

Reposted by Andreas J. Bäumler, Jesse M. Shapiro, Philippe Huneman , and 7 more

carlbergstrom.com
Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 9d
Just decline the peer review invitation.

What are you people even doing?
More than half of researchers now use AI for peer review — often against guidance
A survey of 1,600 academics found that more than 50% have used artificial-intelligence tools while peer reviewing manuscripts.
www.nature.com

rebeccasear.bsky.social
Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 10d
yes, he has, such as the paper linked to in the post I'm quoting. My post was intended to highlight the work he's done pushing back against eugenics

Reposted by Margot C. Finn

rebeccasear.bsky.social
Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 10d
From Joseph Graves: “Attacks on gender biology reflect a wider assault on science, universities, and democratic inquiry”

Reposted by Dave O’Brien, Rebecca Sear

cmonden.bsky.social
Christiaan Monden @cmonden.bsky.social · 10d
New year, new job? Join us at the Department of Sociology & Nuffield College. The post is open to candidates from different areas of empirical specialisation and at different levels of experience. Please consider applying! closes Jan 5th. www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/event/associ...

Reposted by Brigitte Nerlich, Scott L. Greer, Rebecca Sear

brunelcce.bsky.social
Centre for Culture and Evolution @brunelcce.bsky.social · 10d
1/ In a recent @britishacademy.bsky.social video @rebeccasear.bsky.social from @brunelpsy.bsky.social takes a clear-eyed look at the 21st‑century rise of eugenics - an ideology that should have been left behind, yet is now re‑emerging in a number of troubling ways ⚠️🧬 🧪

Watch the full talk here 🎥👇
The 21st Century Resurgence of Eugenics
YouTube video by The British Academy
www.youtube.com