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Stephen Mann

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Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
04103 Leipzig

e-mail: stephen_mann@[>>> Please remove the text! <<<]eva.mpg.de

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About me
Curriculum Vitae
Publications

About me

hurles_et_al_2003_fig_1.png
"Map of Near and Remote Oceania, with ice-age sea levels, language families, Polynesian paternal and maternal lineages, and archaeological dates. (a) The distribution of Austronesian subfamilies and their phylogenetic relationships. The Malayo-Polynesian (MP) languages include Western (WMP), Central and Eastern (CEMP), Central (CMP) and Eastern (EMP) Malayo-Polynesian, as well as South Halmahera/Western New Guinea (SHWNG) and Oceanic. The Oceanic subfamily includes Nuclear Micronesian and Polynesian languages. Shading indicates the approximate coastline during the last glacial maximum. (b) Distribution of the predominant paternal (blue) and maternal (red) Polynesian lineages among modern populations. (c) Age of the earliest evidence for permanent settlement for Neolithic (black) and post-Neolithic (blue) archaeological sites throughout the region. Particularly on islands, exploration could be earlier." Figure and caption from Hurles, M. E., Matisoo-Smith, E., Gray, R. D., & Penny, D. (2003). Untangling Oceanic settlement: The edge of the knowable. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 18(10), 531–540. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0169-5347(03)00245-3

I'm a philosopher of science and computational modeller in the CoOL group at DLCE. I am working on agent-based models of cultural evolution to help understand patterns of linguistic diversity and disparity in the Pacific. The goal is to integrate results from simulations with historical data and theoretical perspectives on language change to develop and test hypotheses about the distribution of Oceanic languages.

Curriculum Vitae

since 2024Postdoctoral researcher at DLCE
2022-2024Postdoctoral researcher at the LOGOS Group, University of Barcelona, Spain
2021-2022Postdoctoral researcher at the Surrey Morphology Group, University of Surrey, UK
2021-2024Guest researcher at DLCE
2016-2020PhD in philosophy at the Australian National University, Canberra: "Communication and cooperation in evolutionary biology". Awarded December 2020
2013-2015PhD in philosophy at King's College, London: withdrawn December 2015 as part of transfer to ANU
2010-2013Software developer at Weaveability Ltd, Manchester, UK
2006-2010M.Sci in Mathematics and Philosophy, University of Bristol, UK. Equivalent to 3 year Bachelors + 1 year Masters


My full CV is available for download here.

Publications

2024

Pain, R., & Mann, S. F. (2024). Teleosemantics, structural resemblance and predictive processing (advance online). Erkenntnis.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Mann, S. F., & Gregory, D. (2024). Might text-davinci-003 have inner speech? Think, 23(67), 31-38.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

2023

Mann, S. F. (2023). The relevance of communication theory for theories of representation. Philosophy and the Mind Sciences, 4.
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Turner, C. R., Mann, S. F., Spike, M., Magrath, R. D., & Sterelny, K. (2023). Joint evolution of traits for social learning. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 77: 47.
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2022

Mann, S. F., & Pain, R. (2022). Teleosemantics and the hard problem of content. Philosophical Psychology, 35(1), 22-46.
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Mann, S. F., & Pain, R. A. (2022). Teleosemantics and the free energy principle. Biology and Philosophy, 37: 34.
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Mann, S. F., Pain, R., & Kirchhoff, M. D. (2022). Free energy: a user’s guide. Biology & Philosophy, 37(4): 33.
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2020

Mann, S. F. (2020). Communication and cooperation in evolutionary biology. PhD Thesis, The Australian National University, Canberra.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Mann, S. F. (2020). Consequences of a functional account of information. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 11(3), 669-687.
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Roberts, S. G., Killin, A., Deb, A., Sheard, C., Greenhill, S. J., Sinnemäki, K., Segovia-Martín, J., Nölle, J., Berdicevskis, A., Humphreys-Balkwill, A., Little, H., Opie, C., Jacques, G., Bromham, L., Tinits, P., Ross, R. M., Lee, S., Gasser, E., Calladine, J., Spike, M., Mann, S. F., Shcherbakova, O., Singer, R., Zhang, S., Benítez-Burraco, A., Kliesch, C., Thomas-Colquhoun, E., Skirgard, H., Tamariz, M., Passmore, S., Pellard, T., & Jordan, F. (2020). CHIELD: The causal hypotheses in evolutionary linguistics database. Journal of Language Evolution, 5(2), 101-120.
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2018

Mann, S. F., & Pfeifer, J. (2018). [Book review] Studying animal languages without translation: An insight from Ants / by Zhanna Reznikova. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 93(1), 38-38.
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Mann, S. F. (2018). Attribution of information in animal interaction. Biological Theory, 13(3), 164-179.
DOI    BibTeX   Endnote