Maxime Derex
maximederex.bsky.social
Maxime Derex
@maximederex.bsky.social
CNRS Researcher at IAST and Toulouse School of Economics
Working on cumulative culture, social learning, innovation
Pinned
New paper in #ProcB with @alexmesoudi.com, @jfbonnefon.bsky.social, @rmcelreath.bsky.social and Rob Boyd.

We investigate how social learning shapes the way we explore and show that it can even preserve useless theories! 🧵👇
Reposted by Maxime Derex
Just 1 week to apply! 4 year @erc.europa.eu funded PhD position working in an interdisciplinary team to study #culturalEvolution as a process of reuse, recombination, and creative re-engineering of past solutions. Details 👉 hmc-lab.com/ERCPhDCultur... 🙏Please share!
November 5, 2025 at 10:24 AM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
I’ll be considering graduate school applications for Fall 2026 – positions are fully funded, typically for 5 years. Deadline to apply to the Cognition program is December 1. Come do science with me in beautiful Amherst, Massachusetts! www.umass.edu/natural-scie...
PhD in Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience : College of Natural Sciences : UMass Amherst
Engage in research centered on fundamental theoretical questions about cognitive function using multiple experimental methods and data analysis.
www.umass.edu
October 27, 2025 at 2:36 PM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
📢 Apply to our (2-year) research fellowships at @iast.fr

Join a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and indisciplinary group of scholars in Toulouse, walkable/cyclable pink city of chocolatines in the South of France.

Deadline: November 15, 2025.

www.iast.fr/research-fel...
Research Fellowships
Each year, IAST invites applications for post-doctoral Research Fellowships, which offer candidates an opportunity to devote themselves full-time to their research at the start of their careers. Fello...
www.iast.fr
September 22, 2025 at 7:44 AM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
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! 🙏
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
Reposted by Maxime Derex
How do humans keep inventing tools and technologies that no single person could create alone?

Our new preprint, led by
@anilyaman.bsky.social & @ts-brain.bsky.social
shows that semantic knowledge guides innovation and drives cultural evolution. 🧠📘 arxiv.org/abs/2510.12837
October 16, 2025 at 1:49 PM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
It's hiring season at @iast.fr!

- 2y research postdoc contract
- Full autonomy, you are your own PI
- Awesome multidisciplinary environment
- All social and behavioral sciences welcome
- Seed funding for projects and workshops
- Gorgeous city in the south of France

www.iast.fr/research-fel...
September 20, 2025 at 9:15 AM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
How to quantify the impact of AI on long-run cultural evolution? Published today, I give it a go!

400+ years of strategic dynamics in the game of Go (Baduk/Weiqi), from feudalism to AlphaGo!
September 16, 2025 at 2:04 PM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
💙New paper!💙

How is knowledge transmitted across generations in a foraging society?

With @danielredhead.bsky.social
we found: In BaYaka foragers, long-term skills pass in smaller, sparser networks, while short-term food info circulates broadly & reciprocally

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
Transmission networks of long-term and short-term knowledge in a foraging society
Abstract. Cultural transmission across generations is key to cumulative cultural evolution. While several mechanisms—such as vertical, horizontal, and obli
academic.oup.com
September 14, 2025 at 7:52 AM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
@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/...
Fees and Funding - Durham University
www.durham.ac.uk
September 11, 2025 at 9:12 AM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
Thrilled that our paper on the mechanisms underlying social learning strategies is out! First big paper from my @erc.europa.eu & @kawresearch.bsky.social funded group. More to come! I'm currently looking to recruit two post docs, get in touch if you find this line of research interesting.
July 23, 2025 at 11:41 AM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
🚨 New preprint 🚨

Experimental Evidence for the Propagation and Preservation of Machine Discoveries in Human Populations

arxiv.org/abs/2506.17741

with team members @levinbrinkmann.bsky.social @thomasfmueller.bsky.social Ann-Marie Nussberger, @maximederex.bsky.social, Sara Bonati, Valerii Chirkov
June 27, 2025 at 10:33 AM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
Join us on the @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social executive committee! Shape the field of cultural evolution alongside amazing colleagues @maximederex.bsky.social, @nicolewen.bsky.social, @hyperadapthyrax.bsky.social, @lucymaplin.bsky.social, @ferylbadiani.bsky.social & incoming President Fiona Jordan
It's CES election time! We have FOUR positions that have come up for renewal, so please consider nominating yourself or your colleagues. Nominations close June 20th, with voting from June 30th -July 4th.
June 5, 2025 at 7:23 PM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
It's CES election time! We have FOUR positions that have come up for renewal, so please consider nominating yourself or your colleagues. Nominations close June 20th, with voting from June 30th -July 4th.
June 4, 2025 at 11:15 AM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
If you haven't been looking recently at the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (oecs.mit.edu), here's your reminder that we are a free, open access resource for learning about the science of mind.

Today we are launching our new Thematic Collections to organize our growing set of articles!
May 30, 2025 at 12:18 AM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
3 days left until the deadline for these @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social grants
May 27, 2025 at 9:54 AM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
Do you teach a course on cultural evolution?

The @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social is offering Cultural Evolution Course Design Awards

Apply here: vuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

$4000 award. Apply for up to 3 courses. Less than 30min per course submission.
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May 14, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
10 days left to apply for our CES awards for Outreach, ECR grants or for building capacity
May 20, 2025 at 5:09 AM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
📢 CES launches Advancing Cultural Evolution (ACE) Course Design Awards! 🎉 $4000 award + global impact for your cultural evolution course materials. Course must be college/grad level with 10+ hrs content.

Application link: vuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_... #CulturalEvolution #Education #Grants
Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management
The most powerful, simple and trusted way to gather experience data. Start your journey to experience management and try a free account today.
vuw.qualtrics.com
May 14, 2025 at 10:39 AM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
Don't forget to put in your application for our 2025 awards!
May 5, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
We are recruiting two postdoctoral scholars for a research project in human collective intelligence and creativity at UC Davis and Cornell. Joint project with @enfascination.com, @norijacoby.bsky.social, @oferon.bsky.social & Dalton Conley. Please forward this thread to relevant people. 1/n
April 29, 2025 at 2:46 AM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
🚨 New preprint! 🚨

I looked at 400+ years of cumulative cultural evolution in the Game of Go from feudalism to superhuman AI. Did AlphaGo etc. completely disrupt human play? No! More like human-machine convergence, rather than revolution.

Check out these decision trees!

osf.io/preprints/ps...
April 9, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
The 2025 Cultural Evolution Society awards are now open for applications!
-Outreach Award (2 awards, up to $2,500 each) forms.gle/Eq6BhtnptQLQ...
-ECR Grant (2 awards, up to $3,000 each) forms.gle/69DpptguwRqN...
-Building Research Capacity Award (1 award, up to $6,000) forms.gle/ZLGEW612GbZ4...
ACE Outreach Awards
CES will give out two awards of up to $2500 each to support activities that translate cultural evolution research for a non-academic audience or for students outside of the field of cultural evolution...
forms.gle
April 11, 2025 at 9:19 AM
Reposted by Maxime Derex
Fully-funded PhD position on the cultural evolution of environmental management!

Link evolution, ecology and behavioral science in the ACE Lab timwaring.info Details: forms.gle/gZWK9BpwYfoG...
@culturalevolsoc.bsky.social @alexmesoudi.com @hyperadapthyrax.bsky.social @michael.muthukrishna.com
ACE Lab: Applied Cultural Evolution Laboratory
culture, evolution, cooperation, and sustainability
timwaring.info
March 10, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Have you ever heard of a travois—one of the simplest prehistoric vehicles, made of two long poles attached in a V-shape? Turns out it’s way older than we thought! www.newscientist.com/article/2469...
22,000-year-old tracks are earliest evidence of transport vehicles
Tracks and footprints found in New Mexico are by far the earliest evidence of people using primitive vehicles to transport things
www.newscientist.com
February 24, 2025 at 2:57 PM