ABOUT
The Human Evolutionary Ecology Group, located in the Department of Anthropology at UCL and led by Ruth Mace, is one of the largest groups of researchers investigating human evolutionary ecology in the UK. We study human behaviour and life history as adaptations to local environments - which includes not only human behavioural ecology but also evolutionary demography and cultural evolution. Areas of interest include human reproductive scheduling and life history, patterns of parental investment, the origins of human marriage and kinship systems, cultural phylogenetics and the evolution of social institutions, and the evolutionary ecology of co-operation. We are running a range of projects including those based on field studies ranging from traditional rural African and Asian populations to post-industrial, urban populations in the UK and Europe, and some that are making use of existing historical or modern medical or demographic datasets.
Our funders include the Wellcome Trust, the Royal Society, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Medical Research Council, UNFPA, the Leverhulme Trust, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the FCT, the British Academy, the Royal Society and the European Research Council.
NEWS
04/2013
Ruth Mace was talking to Mariella Frostrup on Radio 4 about birth order effects, specifically related to her work with David Lawson and Emilly Emmott.
03/2013
Antonio Silva and David Lawson have recently been given best student talk and new investigator award respectively at the EHBEA conference in Amsterdam
03/2013
David Lawson has been awarded a 3 year MRC Population Health Fellowship at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine beginning in September 2013.
03/2013
Ruth Mace, Jia-Jia Wu and colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have published a paper on Proc. Royal Society B: Communal breeding promotes a matrilineal social system where husband and wife live apart