My research centers around the use of theory-driven mathematical and computational modeling to understand human social behavior and cultural evolution. I am interested in how behaviors—and the cognitive mechanisms that give rise to them—emerge and evolve in response to social, cultural, and ecological pressures, as well as how those pressures can themselves evolve.
My goal is a research pipeline built around feedback between models and data: the use of mathematical and computational models to drive hypotheses for empirical research, and the use of empirical results to inspire and refine formal models.
Some of my current projects involve the emergence and dynamics of identity signals, the evolution of social learning strategies in diverse populations, the joint dynamics of behavioral and disease contagions, the role of diversity in collective problem-solving, the use of analogy in cultural transmission, and the population dynamics of scientific methods.
