Aislinn Keogh
@mandolinguist.bsky.social
Linguist, musician, and aspiring adrenaline junkie 🧗 Postdoc at Durham University, researching children's role in cultural evolution
@durhampsych.bsky.social
@durhamdcerc.bsky.social
(she/her) 🌈
https://aislinnkeogh.github.io/
@durhampsych.bsky.social
@durhamdcerc.bsky.social
(she/her) 🌈
https://aislinnkeogh.github.io/
⚠️ New paper! Why do words sound so similar? In an agent-based model + communication game, we show that production/comprehension pressures trade off to shape lexicon structure.
In @cognitionjournal.bsky.social w/ @simonkirby.bsky.social & Jenny Culbertson.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
In @cognitionjournal.bsky.social w/ @simonkirby.bsky.social & Jenny Culbertson.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
The lexicon adapts to competing communicative pressures: Explaining patterns of word similarity
Cross-linguistically, lexicons tend to be more phonetically clustered than required by the phonotactics of the language; that is, words within a langu…
www.sciencedirect.com
November 10, 2025 at 11:59 AM
⚠️ New paper! Why do words sound so similar? In an agent-based model + communication game, we show that production/comprehension pressures trade off to shape lexicon structure.
In @cognitionjournal.bsky.social w/ @simonkirby.bsky.social & Jenny Culbertson.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
In @cognitionjournal.bsky.social w/ @simonkirby.bsky.social & Jenny Culbertson.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Thoughts and prayers please: I have reached the stage of pregnancy where I'm having to pirate e-books of books I already physically own because my belly is in the way of holding up a hardback 😭
November 3, 2025 at 11:23 AM
Thoughts and prayers please: I have reached the stage of pregnancy where I'm having to pirate e-books of books I already physically own because my belly is in the way of holding up a hardback 😭
Reposted by Aislinn Keogh
Fully-funded 4-year #PhD in Cultural Evolution! Join my @erc.europa.eu project exploring how compression & compositionality drive cultural innovation: hmc-lab.com/ERCPhDCultur...
Apply by Nov 12!
Maybe of interest to folks from #COSMOS2025 or @eslr.bsky.social? Please feel free to share! 🙏
Apply by Nov 12!
Maybe of interest to folks from #COSMOS2025 or @eslr.bsky.social? Please feel free to share! 🙏
ERC funded PhD position on Cultural Evolution
ERC funded PhD position on Cultural Evolution
posted on October 16, 2025
We are currently seeking a highly motivated individual for a ful...
hmc-lab.com
October 20, 2025 at 9:32 AM
Fully-funded 4-year #PhD in Cultural Evolution! Join my @erc.europa.eu project exploring how compression & compositionality drive cultural innovation: hmc-lab.com/ERCPhDCultur...
Apply by Nov 12!
Maybe of interest to folks from #COSMOS2025 or @eslr.bsky.social? Please feel free to share! 🙏
Apply by Nov 12!
Maybe of interest to folks from #COSMOS2025 or @eslr.bsky.social? Please feel free to share! 🙏
Walking down a narrow pavement at peak times with an umbrella is antisocial behaviour, change my mind
October 21, 2025 at 1:34 PM
Walking down a narrow pavement at peak times with an umbrella is antisocial behaviour, change my mind
Reposted by Aislinn Keogh
New paper in @openmindjournal.bsky.social with @simonkirby.bsky.social, @kennysmithed.bsky.social and Fiona Jordan! Kinship terms overwhelmingly exhibit predictive structure - terms in one part of the system help us predict other terms - a pattern which emerges because it helps us generalise better.
Predictive Structure Emerges During the Generalisation of Kin Terms to New Referents
Abstract. Despite cross-linguistic diversity in how kin relations map to terminology, there are constraints on which kin may be categorised together. But what are the constraints on kin term variation...
direct.mit.edu
October 1, 2025 at 10:47 AM
New paper in @openmindjournal.bsky.social with @simonkirby.bsky.social, @kennysmithed.bsky.social and Fiona Jordan! Kinship terms overwhelmingly exhibit predictive structure - terms in one part of the system help us predict other terms - a pattern which emerges because it helps us generalise better.
Reposted by Aislinn Keogh
The count down starts for #CESRabat! Follow @ces2026.bsky.social and join us May 11-13 next year for an exciting meeting in Rabat, Morocco.
Massive thanks to the #CESRabat organising committee:
Sarah Alami (co-chair)
Mathieu Charbonneau (co-chair)
Zachary Garfield
Edmond Seabright
Massive thanks to the #CESRabat organising committee:
Sarah Alami (co-chair)
Mathieu Charbonneau (co-chair)
Zachary Garfield
Edmond Seabright
September 13, 2025 at 3:14 AM
The count down starts for #CESRabat! Follow @ces2026.bsky.social and join us May 11-13 next year for an exciting meeting in Rabat, Morocco.
Massive thanks to the #CESRabat organising committee:
Sarah Alami (co-chair)
Mathieu Charbonneau (co-chair)
Zachary Garfield
Edmond Seabright
Massive thanks to the #CESRabat organising committee:
Sarah Alami (co-chair)
Mathieu Charbonneau (co-chair)
Zachary Garfield
Edmond Seabright
Durham's Dunagree Lab continues to be the most wonderful workplace. Thank you to @sheinalew.bsky.social, @chimpanzeve.bsky.social, @fhillemann.bsky.social, @amandinevisine.bsky.social and others not on Bluesky for the surprise baby shower today 🥹
September 12, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Durham's Dunagree Lab continues to be the most wonderful workplace. Thank you to @sheinalew.bsky.social, @chimpanzeve.bsky.social, @fhillemann.bsky.social, @amandinevisine.bsky.social and others not on Bluesky for the surprise baby shower today 🥹
Reposted by Aislinn Keogh
@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised!
3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution
2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions.
Please share and apply!
www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...
3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution
2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions.
Please share and apply!
www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...
Fees and Funding - Durham University
www.durham.ac.uk
September 11, 2025 at 9:12 AM
@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised!
3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution
2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions.
Please share and apply!
www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...
3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution
2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions.
Please share and apply!
www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...
Reposted by Aislinn Keogh
Aislinn Keogh @mandolinguist.bsky.social gave my new book to her mother to help her understand some of Aislinn's research area. Her mother is in a book-crochet group; she loved the book so much that she made a blanket (aka granny) square inspired by the book cover! This is so fantastic and touching!
September 2, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Aislinn Keogh @mandolinguist.bsky.social gave my new book to her mother to help her understand some of Aislinn's research area. Her mother is in a book-crochet group; she loved the book so much that she made a blanket (aka granny) square inspired by the book cover! This is so fantastic and touching!
Oh good, my preprint from nearly a year ago that had still not been post-moderated has now disappeared 🙃
Due to a recent influx of problematic submissions, PsyArXiv has switched to pre-moderating its content. If your submitted preprint had not yet been approved, it will be temporarily inaccessible to the public (you can still view your preprint when logged into your OSF account). #PsychSciSky
August 20, 2025 at 7:31 AM
Oh good, my preprint from nearly a year ago that had still not been post-moderated has now disappeared 🙃
Reposted by Aislinn Keogh
How does speaking a free word order language influence sentence planning and production? Evidence from Pitjantjatjara (Pama‐Nyungan, Australia). New paper by Evan Kidd & al. with Gabriela Garrido Rodríguez
doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70087
doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70087
How Does Speaking A Free Word Order Language Influence Sentence Planning and Production? Evidence From Pitjantjatjara (Pama‐Nyungan, Australia)
Sentence production is a stage-like process of mapping a conceptual representation to the linear speech signal via grammatical rules. While the typological diversity of languages is vast and thus mus...
doi.org
July 21, 2025 at 6:32 AM
How does speaking a free word order language influence sentence planning and production? Evidence from Pitjantjatjara (Pama‐Nyungan, Australia). New paper by Evan Kidd & al. with Gabriela Garrido Rodríguez
doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70087
doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70087
Reposted by Aislinn Keogh
This was such a fun conversation about childhood, play, and agency across cultures. Thanks for having @sheinalew.bsky.social & I on the show!
New episode!! 🎙️📣
A chat w/ @sheinalew.bsky.social & @dorsaamir.bsky.social about childhood across cultures.
Humans everywhere go through childhood—a time of learning, growth, and play. But this universal stage of life can look very different in different places.
Listen: disi.org/varieties-of...
A chat w/ @sheinalew.bsky.social & @dorsaamir.bsky.social about childhood across cultures.
Humans everywhere go through childhood—a time of learning, growth, and play. But this universal stage of life can look very different in different places.
Listen: disi.org/varieties-of...
July 19, 2025 at 1:50 PM
This was such a fun conversation about childhood, play, and agency across cultures. Thanks for having @sheinalew.bsky.social & I on the show!
Reposted by Aislinn Keogh
I am advertising 2 positions in language evolution with my group at @dondersinst.bsky.social:
📢 Fully-funded PhD position (Robotics/AI 🤖) www.ru.nl/en/working-a...
📢 Postdoc position (Virtual Reality 🎮)
www.ru.nl/en/working-a...
Deadline for applications is August 14th. Please RT! :)
📢 Fully-funded PhD position (Robotics/AI 🤖) www.ru.nl/en/working-a...
📢 Postdoc position (Virtual Reality 🎮)
www.ru.nl/en/working-a...
Deadline for applications is August 14th. Please RT! :)
July 14, 2025 at 3:23 PM
I am advertising 2 positions in language evolution with my group at @dondersinst.bsky.social:
📢 Fully-funded PhD position (Robotics/AI 🤖) www.ru.nl/en/working-a...
📢 Postdoc position (Virtual Reality 🎮)
www.ru.nl/en/working-a...
Deadline for applications is August 14th. Please RT! :)
📢 Fully-funded PhD position (Robotics/AI 🤖) www.ru.nl/en/working-a...
📢 Postdoc position (Virtual Reality 🎮)
www.ru.nl/en/working-a...
Deadline for applications is August 14th. Please RT! :)
Introducing Dr Keogh! 🎓 Very emotional to have finally closed the chapter on my time at the @uoe-cle.bsky.social 😭 but glad to have passed this milestone in the company of my wonderful supervisors @simonkirby.bsky.social and Jenny Culbertson, and my PhD twin Elizabeth Pankratz. We made it!
#PhDone
#PhDone
July 7, 2025 at 1:18 PM
Introducing Dr Keogh! 🎓 Very emotional to have finally closed the chapter on my time at the @uoe-cle.bsky.social 😭 but glad to have passed this milestone in the company of my wonderful supervisors @simonkirby.bsky.social and Jenny Culbertson, and my PhD twin Elizabeth Pankratz. We made it!
#PhDone
#PhDone
Me and @maisyhallam.bsky.social had fun at the museum yesterday! 😄🐒
Join us at the National Museum of Scotland July 19th to learn about animal communication and what makes human communication different from the rest of our primate family! 🐵 www.nms.ac.uk/events/monke...
June 30, 2025 at 12:41 PM
Me and @maisyhallam.bsky.social had fun at the museum yesterday! 😄🐒
Reposted by Aislinn Keogh
been a long time coming, there's now a preprint along with Will Hoppitt describing our new R package for creating, fitting and interpreting bayesian NBDA models (STBayes). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... Documentation is here michaelchimento.github.io/STbayes/inde...
June 12, 2025 at 8:23 AM
been a long time coming, there's now a preprint along with Will Hoppitt describing our new R package for creating, fitting and interpreting bayesian NBDA models (STBayes). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... Documentation is here michaelchimento.github.io/STbayes/inde...
The Edinburgh-Durham commute certainly has its advantages 😍
June 12, 2025 at 6:05 AM
The Edinburgh-Durham commute certainly has its advantages 😍
Reposted by Aislinn Keogh
Delighted to announce the publication of a collaborative effort, co-led by @limorraviv.bsky.social @mpi-nl.bsky.social, showcasing the ways in which researchers have made language evolution an empirical issue: A handbook of experimental approaches to the fascinating problem of language evolution 🧪
May 27, 2025 at 5:56 AM
Delighted to announce the publication of a collaborative effort, co-led by @limorraviv.bsky.social @mpi-nl.bsky.social, showcasing the ways in which researchers have made language evolution an empirical issue: A handbook of experimental approaches to the fascinating problem of language evolution 🧪
Very cool to have been involved with this, such a great opportunity to learn about contributing to open source software! ⌨️
That's a wrap on our first ever hackathon! Thanks to all of the wonderful people who attended. Lots of amazing projects and collaborations got started. 🥳
May 18, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Very cool to have been involved with this, such a great opportunity to learn about contributing to open source software! ⌨️
Reposted by Aislinn Keogh
Interested in the evolution of human language and in understanding the pressures that shape languages today? Come do a PhD with me! Fully funded PhD position available in my group @mpi-nl.bsky.social, application deadline June 2nd:
www.mpi.nl/career-educa...
www.mpi.nl/career-educa...
Fully funded 4-year PhD position in Language Evolution | Max Planck InstituteMax Planck Institute for psycholinguistics
www.mpi.nl
April 30, 2025 at 8:29 AM
Interested in the evolution of human language and in understanding the pressures that shape languages today? Come do a PhD with me! Fully funded PhD position available in my group @mpi-nl.bsky.social, application deadline June 2nd:
www.mpi.nl/career-educa...
www.mpi.nl/career-educa...
Reposted by Aislinn Keogh
Semantic extension in an artificial language experiment: participants conventionalise novel labels, then extend them to convey new meanings (metonymically and metaphorically) based on salient shared associations.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Semantic extension in a novel communication system is facilitated by salient shared associations
Creative processes of semantic extension play a key role in language change, grammaticalisation, and (by hypothesis) the early origins and evolution o…
www.sciencedirect.com
April 18, 2025 at 12:22 PM
Semantic extension in an artificial language experiment: participants conventionalise novel labels, then extend them to convey new meanings (metonymically and metaphorically) based on salient shared associations.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reposted by Aislinn Keogh
Two Fully-Funded PhD positions at Auckland Uni!
Come help us understand the past and future of global cultural and linguistic diversity.
#linguistics #evolution #academia #phd
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Come help us understand the past and future of global cultural and linguistic diversity.
#linguistics #evolution #academia #phd
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
March 24, 2025 at 2:14 AM
Two Fully-Funded PhD positions at Auckland Uni!
Come help us understand the past and future of global cultural and linguistic diversity.
#linguistics #evolution #academia #phd
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Come help us understand the past and future of global cultural and linguistic diversity.
#linguistics #evolution #academia #phd
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Probably the best way I could think of to make this announcement: super excited to be joining Durham Uni in June as a postdoc/modeller on @sheinalew.bsky.social's new ERC grant, Children as Agents of Cultural Evolution. Looks like I'm going to fit right in 😍 #DungareeLab
@durhamdcerc.bsky.social
@durhamdcerc.bsky.social
If you were to think up the perfect lab for me to be in, this is the one! #TeamDungarees
No memo necessary, all the in-person lab yday arrived in overalls for our newest member's visit
@sheinalew.bsky.social @mandolinguist.bsky.social
No memo necessary, all the in-person lab yday arrived in overalls for our newest member's visit
@sheinalew.bsky.social @mandolinguist.bsky.social
April 8, 2025 at 12:54 PM
Probably the best way I could think of to make this announcement: super excited to be joining Durham Uni in June as a postdoc/modeller on @sheinalew.bsky.social's new ERC grant, Children as Agents of Cultural Evolution. Looks like I'm going to fit right in 😍 #DungareeLab
@durhamdcerc.bsky.social
@durhamdcerc.bsky.social
Reposted by Aislinn Keogh
🐳 UPCOMING BOOK ALERT 🐬
The Evolution of Cetacean Societies
Edited by @darrencroft.bsky.social @andrewfoote.bsky.social @stephanielking.bsky.social and myself
Preorder available now
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
#whale #dolphin #animalbehaviour
The Evolution of Cetacean Societies
Edited by @darrencroft.bsky.social @andrewfoote.bsky.social @stephanielking.bsky.social and myself
Preorder available now
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
#whale #dolphin #animalbehaviour
March 26, 2025 at 1:09 PM
🐳 UPCOMING BOOK ALERT 🐬
The Evolution of Cetacean Societies
Edited by @darrencroft.bsky.social @andrewfoote.bsky.social @stephanielking.bsky.social and myself
Preorder available now
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
#whale #dolphin #animalbehaviour
The Evolution of Cetacean Societies
Edited by @darrencroft.bsky.social @andrewfoote.bsky.social @stephanielking.bsky.social and myself
Preorder available now
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
#whale #dolphin #animalbehaviour