Rebecca Sear

This FOl enquiry for the Guardian has taken up a great deal of my life for the past 2 years. (1/3)

NO ONE IS COMING TO SAVE US

It's up to us to save science, protect health and defend this democracy!
Stand up! Speak out! Hit the streets on March 7th!

Join us on the streets at rallies nationwide on March 7th.zurl.co/Rcwcl
#ItsUpToUs #standupforscience #rally #March7

Orang-utans and chimpanzees cooperate strategically based on the partner’s incentives Chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, are often regarded as a model species for the evolution of human cooperation. However, whether chimpanzees' decision-mak…

Cool new paper from @christophvoelter.bsky.social et al.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A week since the workshop launching Ben's UNIMAX group, I will not forget the optimism & enthusiasm filled the room in Blantyre, Malawi. Stay tuned for

-New opportunities w/Malawian admin data,
-New panel data of university graduates (first in Africa),
-Bilateral collaboration Global South & North!

"Sustained population studies of fertility over the last two centuries question the extent to which trends in low fertility may be understood as universal. Improved knowledge of variations within countries & between communities reveals heterogeneity in reproductive behaviours at sub-national levels"

Low Fertilities in the Past and Present | Home Yuliya Hilevych is an Associate Professor of economic and social history at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

This new issue of Proceedings of the British Academy looks great, and very timely:

Low Fertilities in the Past and Present - Studies in Compositional Demography

liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10....

Definitely on my to-read list: “seeing the thoughtful process behind their opposing views brings home how difficult the discussions around these topics can be. If even two experts writing a book together don’t always see eye to eye, then the public discussion is even more of a minefield”

Love the app, even though it makes me regret my professional shift from zoology to anthropology!

Book Review: The Societal Impact of Genetic Research In “What We Inherit,” Sam Trejo and Daphne O. Martschenko examine the link between genetic myths and social genomics.

“Trejo and Martschenko suggest a set of guidelines for polygenic embryo selection, starting with “a complete moratorium” in the short term and only allowing some traits to be selected after quality reproductive care is accessible to everyone, to avoid further systemic inequalities”

‘That thrush just did something incredible’: tuning in to bird calls on a North York Moors walk A guided walk through North Yorkshire woodland throws up some thrilling surprises by honing in on sound over sight

“Merlin, a bird-sound identifier that now has more than 10 million users worldwide…is a brilliant tool for learning birdsong, but it’s also revealing lots of unexpected information”

www.theguardian.com/travel/2026/...

TOMORROW LAST DAY!

Don’t forget to submit your applications for Student or Early Career Researcher EHBEA Grants!

More information below 👇

The "women are ruining civilisation" argument seems to have gone fully mainstream, judging by the casual and uncritical reference Amoj Rajan just made to the "feminisation of society" on the Today programme. The Overton Window hasn't just shifted, it's completely shattered

“A snake with no teeth”: Urbanization shifts perceptions of men who support women’s empowerment in Northwestern Tanzania Achieving gender equality requires the support of all genders, but efforts to engage men in women’s empowerment initiatives have been fraught with res…

"Urbanization appears to introduce new incentives for men to support women’s empowerment, including social prestige, access to novel employment, and increased adaptability to urban life" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

High-precision tracking of human foragers reveals adaptive social information use in the wild Foraging complexity and competitive social challenges are considered key drivers of human cognition. Yet, the decision-making mechanisms that underlie social foraging in the real world remain unknown....

"Analyzing video footage and location data from headcams and GPS devices, respectively, the authors found that social information, specifically where other participants were fishing, influenced foraging behaviors, especially for women" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

poster for a webinar on role and influence of grandmothers and other family actors on MNCH in non-western cultures

The Grandmother Project: Change through Culture is holding a webinar on Weds 11 March on "The role and influence of grandmothers and other family actors on maternal, newborn and child health in non-western cultures"

unc.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Excited to see the Human Fertility Database here on Bluesky! 🎉

The #HFD provides high-quality and internationally comparable data on cohort and period #fertility 📊

Make sure to follow them 👇

F1000Research Article: Funen Cat Project: Integrated GPS and Prey-Return Dataset for Domestic Cats from Funen (Fyn), Denmark. Read the latest article version by Owen Jones, Emilie Marie Hansen, Thomas Bjørneboe Berg, at F1000Research.

Data note for Funen Cat Project: Integrated GPS and Prey-Return Dataset for Domestic Cats from Funen (Fyn), Denmark

"The dataset supports robust analyses of individual variation, habitat-associated patterns, and movement ecology"

Call for papers for special issue of Frontiers on feminist quantitative research methods, inviting papers that examine the connections between feminist research, quantitative methods, intersectionality, and epistemology frontierswsjournal.org/call-for-pap...

We're pleased to announce the call for the 2026 Richerson Award for Outstanding Doctoral Research, for a recent PhD dissertation that significantly contributes to the field of CE.

Recipients receive a $300 award, a 3-yr CES membership and CES conference registration.

forms.gle/p4MqcskCs2Yz...

Thank you, Anna!

My Beautiful Bullshitty Baby:

Episode 2 of our blog series on methods renovations. Diving into my Science and Critical Thinking module - layout, rationale, & the first few weeks.

willgervais.com/blog/2026/2/...

Read! Share! Tell us what you think!
#psychscisky 🧪 #philsci #methodology #teaching

Applications for the 2026 New Investigator Award are open!

This award recognises outstanding ECR scholars who have contributed to the field of cultural evolution. The recipient is given the opportunity to give a plenary at a CES conference.

Apply here until March 25: forms.gle/GycUhdFj7q6U...

UK to invoke ‘emergency brake’ to ban student visa applications from four countries Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan will be affected by the move

If you know your British including British colonial history, you might be a bit appalled.

"Temporary shock or lasting scar?"
By 2024 nearly all high-income countries remained below their pre-pandemic life expectancy trends. We identify four distinct mortality shock patterns since 2020. Full analysis in our preprint: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

Declining fertility in Europe: Why Turkey is leading the drop Turkey’s total fertility rate fell from 2.11 to 1.51 between 2013 and 2023. Beyond long-term structural and cultural changes, experts point to economic instability and institutional constraints as key...

I contributed to a @euronews.com article by @servetyanatma.bsky.social exploring the fertility decline Turkey has been experiencing and why the story behind it is more complex than it seems.

www.euronews.com/health/2026/...

Happening today! The link to attend has just been emailed out to all who had signed up - if you've not received it please check your spam/ junk filter

New estimates of education-specific fertility show significant variation across 36 Sub-Saharan countries, with divergent fertility trends. The new flexible model demonstrates differences between UN and Demographic and Health Surveys data. www.demographic-research.org/articles/vol...

Can we all just agree that if your evolutionary theory of humans posits we all evolved to have the social values of 1950s American it’s probably wrong? Thanks.

Paperback cover of Father Time: How Nurturing Is Natural for Men by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

Now in #paperback, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's Father Time is a sweeping account of male nurturing, explaining how and why men are biologically transformed when they care for babies.

Learn more: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

#Evolution #Biology #Anthropology

Erasing critical scholarship: How attacks on academic freedom undermine democracy - Susanne Täuber, 2026 Building on a number of case studies, this essay examines the role of university management for ensuring academic freedom in the European context. The emerging ...

"academic freedom is granted to those who do not need its protection. At the same time, academics who challenge, criticize and debate power differentials and inequality practices are increasingly being silenced, deprived of their livelihoods and intellectually erased from public discourse"