Simon J. Greenhill

@simongreenhill.bsky.social

1.8K followers 940 following 590 posts

I study how languages and cultures evolve. Primarily with phylogenies and other assorted computational methods. Based at @Biology_UoA. Never met a language phylogeny or a cultural phylogeny I didn't like. #phylolinguistics .. more

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Simon James Greenhill is a New Zealand scientist who works on the application of quantitative methods to the study of cultural evolution and human prehistory. He is well known for creating and building various linguistics databases, including the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database, TransNewGuinea.org, Pulotu, and many others. In addition to Austronesian, he has contributed to the study of the phylogeny of many language families, including Dravidian and Sino-Tibetan. .. more

Computer science 19%

Communication & Media Studies 19%

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Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 6d

CCD's are going to huge.

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 7d

The Tiffany Aching books are a bit more suitable for the younger kids. My 9y/o loved her.

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 7d

No, they know...

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 7d

yes, but he's not a god 🎅

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 7d

www.mdpi.com/2411-5150/6/...

www.mdpi.com

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 7d

Does Father Christmas Have a Distinctive Facial Phenotype?
"...Father Christmas has a distinctive face that can be discriminated from other adult men and elderly bearded men, lending weight to the widely held belief amongst children that he is a real person and recognisable anywhere"

#AcademicXmas

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 7d

Oh! Is this why snowmen have carrots for noses instead of a stone ??

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 7d

Final preprint in this year (I guess), by our doctoral student David Snee, Luca Ciucci, and myself:

Variation in Language Phylogenies May Result From Variation in Concept Translation

doi.org/10.17613/dpa...

Variation in Language Phylogenies May Result From Variation in Concept Translation

Phylogenetic reconstruction in historical linguistics now typically relies on cognates sets assembled from multilingual wordlists. While more and more scholars now trust in the robustness of the algor...

doi.org

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 7d

I agree, I like this paper a lot and think it raises a lot of interesting issues (people sort of worship Santa but not quite. Why not and what’s different etc)

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

The Cathy Wilcox @cathywilcox.bsky.social · 7d

Bondi tears.
My @smh @theage cartoon.

Single frame. Title: “An ocean full of salty tears.” Image is the sweeping vista of waves rolling in at Bondi beach, recognisable by the northern headland of blocks of flats.

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 7d

"Santa has failed to develop a community of true believers and cult. Nevertheless, Santa concepts approximate a successful god concept more closely than ... Mickey Mouse and the Tooth Fairy, in part explaining Santa’s relative cultural prominence"

doi.org/10.1163/1567...

#AcademicXmas

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 7d

The Scandi Journal of Hospitality and Tourism asking the big questions. #xmas #santa

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill, Alex Mesoudi, Olivier Morin

Oleg Sobchuk 🇺🇦 @sobchuk.bsky.social · 8d

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

The building of the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 8d

www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademi...

From the AskAcademia community on Reddit

Explore this post and more from the AskAcademia community

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Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 8d

yikes.

Hello Reddit! I have a bit of a sad and unusual question. Last weekend, a horrific shooting took place at/near the university where I did my PhD. I am now living in another country on a postdoc, but I feel sad and angry thinking about the loss of life and the grief and anxiety that I expect my colleagues and friends there are still feeling. That town was my home for so long, and I have been thinking about it a lot.

Yesterday, I unexpectedly received a request for more information from a search committee for a tenure track position, and the request asks for letters of recommendation. I feel conflicted asking my advisors for a letter right now (even in the best of circumstances, I hate asking for letters). The timing would be bad even without the tragedy, because it's the end of the year and the letters would be due in early January

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 8d

this sounds like a good cultural evolution research project: are recipes evolved just enough to balance tastiness vs. effort. Lots of field work needed.

Reposted by Martín Haspelmath, Simon J. Greenhill

Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 9d

Final blog post in our CALC-Journal in this year.

"Towards a Unified ConversionTable for Semitic Transcriptionsand Transliterations"

With our new project member Carlo Meloni.

calc.hypotheses.org/9109

Towards a Unified Conversion Table for Semitic Transcriptions and Transliterations

In this study we present a preliminary conversion table that can be used for transcriptions and transliterations across different Semitic languages. We introduce the basic idea behind the table, show ...

calc.hypotheses.org

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill, Rebecca Sear

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.

Peter Brannen @peterbrannen.bsky.social · 9d

An absolute bedrock institution for understanding how the planet works, just civilization-scaled vandalism by the most incurious morons on Earth

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 9d

Thank you for your efforts here -- SAPIENS was a great thing and I'm sad it is closing.

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

Chris Brockett @chrisbrockett.bsky.social · 9d

This is a wonderful essay. Language models preserve the written language of the past, and often that past is an imperial past that impinges on the present. marcusolang.substack.com/p/im-kenyan-...

I'm Kenyan. I Don't Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me.

I'm calm. I'm calm. I promise.

marcusolang.substack.com

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill, Markus Klein

Arielle Keller @ariellekeller.bsky.social · 9d

Our paper on the ☀️ "summer slide" 🛝 is out now @pnas.org!
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Summer slide is a replicable phenomenon across diverse datasets that's more than "forgetting" school material in vacation months, but effects of socioeconomic inequality are ➡️ 7x bigger! ⬅️
#PsychSciSky #DevPsy
🧵👇

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 10d

putting on my editor hat: note to self, Paul still has some capacity!

Reposted by Niklas Johansson

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 10d

New paper: Three evolutionary radiations shaped the evolution of global religious diversity

Three evolutionary radiations shaped the evolution of global religious diversity | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core

Three evolutionary radiations shaped the evolution of global religious diversity - Volume 7

www.cambridge.org

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 11d

Ew the Kindle app now has an AI button so I can hear made up shit about the book I’m reading 🤢

Reposted by Joanna Bryson, Niklas Johansson

Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 14d

A curated global dataset of social contact between diverse language communities

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

Mark Hudson @barbarianniche.bsky.social · 14d

Really proud of the whole team for the all the hard work they put into this. Our database lists depictions of fish and other marine organisms in prehistoric Japan, something not previously available even in Japanese.

openarchaeologydata.metajnl.com/articles/10....

A Database of Pictorial Evidence of Aquatic Animals and Fishing Practices in Prehistoric Japan | Journal of Open Archaeology Data

openarchaeologydata.metajnl.com

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill, Adrian Vickers

Eleanor Ridge @eleanorridge.bsky.social · 17d

Very excited to announce that our three Special Issues on Vanuatu languages are out in Te Reo. Thank you to all the authors, reviewers, my co-editors, our brilliant typesetter, and NZLingSoc. 43 authors, 5 introductions, 25 articles and a book review... nzlingsoc.org/journal/curr...

Current issue - Linguistic Society of New Zealand

Te Reo is the Journal of the Linguistic Society of New Zealand (ISSN 2703-4135). The words Te Reo are the Māori term for ‘the language’ or ‘language’. The Journal is published annually and has been ru...

nzlingsoc.org

Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

NTEU ACT @nteuact.bsky.social · 17d

With the Senate report on university governance due this week, @nteunion.bsky.social's @lachlanclohesy.bsky.social writes on the current state of university governance.

"It is now clear that university councils and their executives have been acting as a law unto themselves."