Laurel Fogarty
Research staff
Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
04103 Leipzig
phone: +49 (0) 341 3550 319
e-mail:
laurel_fogarty@[>>> Please remove the text! <<<]eva.mpg.de
Research interests
I use mathematical and computational models to understand the processes underlying cultural evolution. In particular, I focus on the effects of population structure and demography on the dynamics of cultural change. I use a variety of methods from analytical models to simulation frameworks to examine the effects of population size, age structure, and changing demography on patterns of cultural accumulation and cultural loss.
Curriculum Vitae
Education and Employment
| 2018 | Senior Scientist, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig |
| 2017 | Postdoctoral researcher, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA and University of St. Andrews, Scotland. |
| 2014 | EPSRC 2020 Science Postdoctoral Fellow, CoMPLEX, University College London, UK. |
| 2012 | Postdoctoral researcher, Stanford University, USA. |
| 2008 | Ph.D. ‘Mathematical and Computational Models of Cultural Evolution’ School of Biology, University of St. Andrews, Scotland. |
| 2008 | Research assistant, University of St. Andrews, Scotland. |
| 2004 | BSc. Double honours in Biology and Theoretical Physics, National University of Ireland, Maynooth. |
Teaching and Supervision
| 2014 | Designed undergraduate and graduate course: Theoretical Cultural Evolution with Marcus Feldman at Stanford University. |
| 2009 – 2010 | Graduate teaching assistant University of St. Andrews School of Biology course entitled ‘Animal behaviour, a quantitative approach’. Supervising students’ independent empirical research, analysis, poster design, and thesis writing. |
| 2008 | Graduate teaching assistant University of St. Andrews School of Biology first year undergraduate biology course. |
Selected Recent Conferences and Workshops
| 2019 | Evolution Evolving conference, Cambridge UK |
| 2018 | Cultural Evolution Seminar 2018 in the Centrum för evolutionär kulturforskningsamt, Stockholm University, Sweden. |
| 2018 | Ecologies of Creativity in Cultural Evolution workshop in Aarhus University, Denmark. |
| 2017 | British Applied Mathematics Colloquium, Surrey, UK. |
| 2015 | Symposium organiser for ‘Cancer as a Darwinian Process’ at the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution conference, Vienna, Austria. |
| 2015 | School of Biological Sciences seminar series, Reading University, U.K. |
| 2015 | Culture Conference, Birmingham University, U.K. |
| 2014 | Frontiers in Niche Construction: From Theory to Application in the Biological and Social Sciences workshop at the Santa Fe Institute, USA. |
Publications
Currie, T. E., Borgerhoff Mulder, M., Fogarty, L., Schlüter, M., Folke, C., Haider, L. J., Caniglia, G., Tavoni, A., Jansen, R. E. V., Jørgensen, P. S., & Waring, T. M. (2024). Integrating evolutionary theory and social–ecological systems research to address the sustainability challenges of the Anthropocene. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 379(1893). |
Open AccessAmmar, M., Fogarty, L., & Kandler, A. (2023). Social learning and memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(33): e2310033120. |
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Kandler, A., Fogarty, L., & Karsdorp, F. (2023). The interplay between age structure and cultural transmission. PLOS Computational Biology, 19: e1011297. |
Fogarty, L., & Wade, M. J. (2022). Niche construction in quantitative traits: Heritability and response to selection. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 289(1976). |
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Deffner, D., Kandler, A., & Fogarty, L. (2022). Effective population size for culturally evolving traits. PLoS Computational Biology, 18(4): e1009430. |
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Fogarty, L., Ammar, M., Holding, T. M., Powell, A., & Kandler, A. (2022). Ten simple rules for principled simulation modelling. PLoS Computational Biology, 18(3): e1009917. |
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Box-Steffensmeier, J. M., Burgess, J., Corbetta, M., Crawford, K., Duflo, E., Fogarty, L., Gopnik, A., Hanafi, S., Herrero, M., Hong, Y.-y., Kameyama, Y., Lee, T. M. C., Leung, G. M., Nagin, D. S., Nobre, A. C., Nordentoft, M., Okbay, A., Perfors, A., Rival, L. M., Sugimoto, C. R., Tungodden, B., & Wagner, C. (2022). The future of human behaviour research. Nature Human Behaviour, 6, 15-24. |
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Fogarty, L., & Creanza, N. (2022). Cultural dynamics add multiple layers of complexity to behavioural genetics. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 45: e161. |
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Fogarty, L., & Creanza, N. (2022). Ecological inheritance and evolutionary theory [Comment on Ingold, T.: Evolution without inheritance: Steps to an ecology of learning]. Current Anthropology, 63(Suppl 25), S44-S45. |
Wade, M. J., & Fogarty, L. (2021). Adaptive co-evolution of mitochondria and the Y-chromosome: A resolution to conflict between evolutionary opponents. Ecology and Evolution, 11(23), 17307-17313. |
Fogarty, L., & Kandler, A. (2020). The fundamentals of cultural adaptation: Implications for human adaptation. Scientific Reports, 10: 14318. |
Yeh, J., Fogarty, L., & Kandler, A. (2019). Cultural linkage: The influence of package transmission on cultural dynamics. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 286: 20191951. |
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Greenbaum, G., Fogarty, L., Colleran, H., Berger-Tal, O., Kolodny, O., & Creanza, N. (2019). Are both necessity and opportunity the mothers of innovations? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 42: e199. |
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Fogarty, L., Creanza, N., & Feldman, M. W. (2019). The life history of learning: Demographic structure changes cultural outcomes. PLoS Computational Biology, 15(4): e1006821. |
Fogarty, L. (2018). Cultural complexity and evolution in fluctuating environments. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences, 373(1743): 20170063. |
Fogarty, L. (2018). Cultural complexity and evolution in fluctuating environments. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 372, 373(1743)
Fogarty, L. & Creanza, N. (2017) The niche construction of cultural complexity: interactions between innovations, population size, and the environment, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 372: 20160428
Fogarty, L., Wakano, J.Y., Feldman, M.W. & Aoki, K. (2016a) The driving forces of cultural complexity: Neanderthals, modern humans, and the question of population size. Human Nature, doi:10.1007/s12110-016-9275-6
Creanza, N., Fogarty, L. & Feldman, M.W. (2016b) Cultural niche construction of repertoire size and learning strategies in songbirds. Evolutionary Ecology, vol. 30, pp. 285-305.
Fogarty, L., Wakano, J.Y., Feldman, M.W. & Aoki, K. (2015a) Factors limiting the number of independent cultural traits that can be maintained in a population. Learning Strategies and Cultural Evolution during the Palaeolithic. pp 9-21.
Fogarty, L., Creanza, N. & Feldman, M.W. (2015b) Cultural evolutionary perspectives on early human innovation. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, vol. 30, no. 12, pp. 736-754.
Fogarty, L. The study of teaching needs an inclusive functional definition. Invited commentary on Kline, M.A. (2015c) How to learn about teaching: An evolutionary framework for the study of teaching behavior in humans and other animals. Behavioral and Brain Science, vol. 38, 1-71.
Creanza N, Fogarty L., Feldman MW. (2014) Cultural niche construction from the Paleolithic to modern hunter-gatherers. Dynamics of Learning in Neanderthals and Modern Humans, Vol. 1: Cultural Perspectives. (Joint first authorship).
Fogarty, L., Creanza, N., & Feldman, M. W. (2013). The role of cultural transmission in human demographic change: An age-structured model. Theoretical Population Biology, 88, 68-77.
Mesoudi, A., Blanchet, S., Charmantier, A., Danchin, E., Fogarty, L., Jablonka, E., Laland, K.N., Morgan, T.J.H., Müller, G.B., Odling-Smee, J.F. & Pujol, B. (2013) Is Non-genetic Inheritance Just a Proximate Mechanism? A Corroboration of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. Biological Theory, DOI: 10.1007/s13752-013-0091-5.
Creanza, N., Fogarty, L. & Feldman, M.W. (2012) Models of Cultural Niche Construction with Selection and Assortative Mating. PLoS ONE, vol. 7, no. 8, e42744 (Joint first authorship).
Fogarty, L., Rendell, L.E. & Laland, K.N. (2012) The importance of space in models of social learning, cultural evolution and niche construction, Advances in Complex Systems vol. 15, no. 1&2.
Fogarty, L., Rendell, L. & Laland, K.N. (2012) Mental time travel, memory and the social learning strategies tournament, Learning and Motivation, vol. 43, no. 4, pp. 241-246.
Fogarty, L. and Feldman, M.W. (2011) The cultural and demographic evolution of son preference and marriage type in contemporary China. Biological Theory, vol. 3 no. 6, pp. 272-282.
Fogarty, L., Strimling, P. & Laland, K.N. (2011) The evolution of teaching, Evolution, vol. 65, no. 10, pp. 2760-2770.
Rendell, L.E., Boyd, R, Enquist, M., Feldman, M.W., Fogarty, L. & Laland, K.N. (2011) How copying affects the amount, evenness and persistence of cultural knowledge: insights from the social learning strategies tournament, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 366, pp. 1118-1128.
Rendell, L.E., Fogarty, L., Hoppitt, W.J.E., Morgan, T.J.H., Webster, M.M. & Laland, K.N. (2011) Cognitive culture: Theoretical and empirical insights into social learning strategies, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 15, pp. 68-76.
Rendell, L.E., Fogarty, L. & Laland, KN (2011) Runaway cultural niche construction, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 366, no. 1566, pp. 823-835.
Rendell, L.E., Boyd, R., Cownden, D., Enquist, M., Eriksson, K., Feldman, M.W., Fogarty, L., Ghirlanda, S., Lillicrap, T. & Laland, K.N. (2010) Why Copy Others? Insights from the Social Learning Strategies Tournament, Science, vol. 328, no. 5975, pp. 208-213.
Rendell, L.E., Fogarty, L. & Laland, K.N. (2010) Rogers' paradox recast and resolved: population structure and the evolution of social learning strategies, Evolution, vol. 64, no. 2, pp. 534-548.
Other Articles
- Invited entry to the International Encyclopaedia of Social and Behavioural Science, second edition on ‘models of cultural evolution’, published 2014.
- Invited entry to the Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior on ‘teaching’