Sheina Lew-Levy

I am happy to announce that our project on risk and social learning is now in press at Psychological Review. Several new additions and revisions thanks to detailed feedback from colleagues and anonymous reviewers. osf.io/preprints/so...
@psmaldino.bsky.social @babeheim.bsky.social

Miyagawa Shuntei's 1898 painting, "Playing Go (Japanese Chess)"

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!

Cover of my book We Have Come To Be Destroyed: Growing Up In Cold War Britain. The cover is an eerie blue-green and the words melt into an image of a group of children confronting the camera at a festival in Coventry in 1980.

Cover reveal for my forthcoming book, WE HAVE COME TO BE DESTROYED: GROWING UP IN COLD WAR BRITAIN which tells the history of Cold War Britain (c.1956-89) through the eyes of children & young people! Out with @yalebooks.bsky.social 28 April 2026 #booksky #skystorians yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300...

It’s really funny that you can amass hundreds of billions of dollars, and still
Be desperately uncool and dull. I know that’s gotta hurt.

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

💙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

“individuals tend to report more accurately about the partners with whom they shared knowledge than about those from whom they received knowledge….findings provide important empirical evidence on how community-wide cultural transmission is structured by demography and perception”

Can't recommend these two enough. Fantastic women, amazing projects 👏👏👏

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 🥹

@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/...

Super proud of this work and very grateful for all the amazing people who provided valuable feedback along the way @remivantrijp.bsky.social @sheinalew.bsky.social @cedricboeckx.bsky.social @inbalarnon.bsky.social ❤️❤️❤️🙏

We escaped war and torture but now we feel unsafe in Britain Special report: Amid protests and rising aggression towards asylum seekers across the country, we spoke to those being targeted

I’ve been frustrated to see so much of the ongoing story about asylum seekers and the protests against them covered without hearing from those seeking asylum and now being met with hostility and hatred

I set out to speak to those directly affected to find out about the impact this is having 👇

Mourning ritual participation, subjective well-being and prosocial behaviour among the Luhya people of Kenya #ProcB #OpenAccess #Evolution @sheinalew.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Finally, a special shout out to @asatsa.bsky.social for his incredible work bridging cultural evolution with Indigenous Psychology, and for his impeccable mentorship of the next generation of scholars from Africa and beyond

Co-author I could find on bluesky are @err-ring.bsky.social

Thanks to @cultevolfunding.bsky.social for funding this work, and to the participants for taking part in research at an especially vulnerable time in their lives.

Mourning ritual participation, subjective well-being and prosocial behaviour among the Luhya people of Kenya | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences This study explores the relationship between participation in mourning rituals, well-being and prosociality within the Luhya community of western Kenya. Cooperation, essential for human success, is of...

🚨 New paper led by ‪@asatsa.bsky.social‬! We show that participation in Luhya mourning rituals overall increases well-being and cooperation among the bereaved, yet qualitative findings show they can also be perceived negatively by some community members

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Just causally dropping this here

A lot of evo anth people are trying extremely hard to fight the researgence of eugenic thinking using their own disciplinary toolkit.

The transphobe argument against trans women in sports is also inherently misogynistic as it assumes all women are inherently inferior to men.

Cinq mois dans une jungle au Ghana pour étudier des singes menacés Deux étudiants de maîtrise en anthropologie passent cinq mois isolés dans une forêt du Ghana pour percer les secrets reproductifs d’une espèce de primate menacée d’extinction.

Bel article qui met en valeur notre site d’étude au Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary, Ghana, ainsi que les recherches de ma doctorante (Marine Larrivaz) et de mes étudiants à la maîtrise (Médrick Heppell, Francis Latour) sur les colobes femelles et leurs petits.🧪 nouvelles.umontreal.ca/article/2025...

Microsoft Virtual Events Powered by Teams Microsoft Virtual Events Powered by Teams

My excellent colleague, Dr Sophie Hodgetts is running a public webinar about teaching about sex and gender in psychology.

'Sharing reflections and practical strategies for delivering education that is accurate, evidence-based, and just.'

It's free to join and you can register below:

"in England & Japan, identity development seems an important part of being a teenager. However, teenagers in Japan may think about themselves differently than in England. Results highlight the importance of understanding & considering culture when thinking about developmental processes and pathways"

‘Worrying’ levels of screen time means young people losing confidence to socialise in person, minister warns – UK politics live Culture secretary Lisa Nandy says ‘majority of young people spend all, or almost all, of their free time alone in their bedrooms, online’

This is not caused primarily by "screen time".

It's been caused by the mass eradication of third places for young people in basically every city over the past three decades - and a society that's hostile to the concept of teens socialising in public spaces.

www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Kids with funny faces drawn on their hands Image by Lora Moore-Kakaletris via Unsplash

Varieties of childhood 🏺🧪
disi.org/varieties-of...

Dr. Dorsa Amir & Dr. @sheinalew.bsky.social discuss different ways childhood differs, in terms of parents’ attitudes toward risk, in terms of social structures and activities in which kids are embedded, and in terms of freedom children are granted.

The image shows the Logo of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in the left upper corner. Beneath it there is a green box with the quote “The Lynen Fellowship supports individuals with ambitions ideas and potential, rather than rigid project plans.” Additionally there is a picture of a woman with glasses next to the quote with the title “Friederike Hillemann, Feodor Lynen fellow at Durham University”.

Science and society thrive through collaboration!

Meet our Feodor Lynen Research fellow @fhillemann.bsky.social ‬ and her host @sheinalew.bsky.social, as they reflect on the importance of shared learning in both indigenous communities and academia.

www.humboldt-foundation.de/en/explore/n...

Children are often cast as passive vessels into which we pour culture. But children create cultures of their own—vibrant ones with special properties.

Just one of the topics discussed in our recent episode with @dorsaamir.bsky.social & @sheinalew.bsky.social!

Listen: disi.org/varieties-of...

Sometimes I short circuit and I have to lie down in my office with my feet up to reboot

Thank you to all 🗳️ Durham University voters 🗳️ who gave my poster the 1st place in the DCAD Poster competition! 🥇

This means a lot! All your comments and feedback were highly useful 🌸

'Hunter Gatherer Research' written in orange and white serif font on a background of mineral rock. The HGR journal cover is placed to the left in brown, with the LUP and ISHGR logos in white on the bottom right.

📑 Most read in Hunter Gatherer Research this month:
'A behavioural ecological approach to a proposed middle Holocene occupational gap' by Raven Garvey
Read the article online: bit.ly/HGR-Garvey
@dstibbardhawkes.bsky.social @rcgd-isr.bsky.social @sheinalew.bsky.social

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...

5/ Plus, personal reflections and vivid photographs transport you to classrooms, villages and labs around the globe 📸✨

if you care about truly inclusive, culturally responsive child-development research, this is for you 🫵