Biographical sketch

I am an interdisciplinary behavioral scientist and evolutionary anthropologist, currently Assistant Professor at the University Mohammed VI Polytechnic in the Africa Institute for Research in Economics and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Governance, Economics and Social Sciences. I also co-direct The Omo Valley Research Project and write Ecology of Minds, a blog on how culture, context, and evolution shape human behavior.

I was previously a Research Fellow at The Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse. I completed my Ph.D. in Evolutionary Anthropology at Washington State University and my B.A. in Anthropology and Psychology at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Research statement

My research program examines how behavioral strategies shape and are shaped by group dynamics during cultural transitions. I focus on behaviors such as leadership and followership, social learning, conflict resolution, and economic strategies, and how these interact with group-level pressures arising from social contexts, network dynamics, political structures, and social norms. I am particularly interested in how these relationships vary across populations and over time. I draw on adaptationist, behavioral-ecological, and cultural-evolutionary theoretical frameworks.

More broadly, I investigate how subsistence-based populations with limited market integration navigate growing pressures from state institutions while maintaining or adapting long-standing social, cultural, and economic practices. My ultimate goal is to build robust, generalizable theories of human behavior, social organization, and cultural change——supported by solid empirical foundations—-that can inform both scientific understanding and applications in organizational and policy domains.

Field research

I have conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Southwest Ethiopia since 2015. I have worked with the Chabu forager-horticulturalists in the Sheka forests, investigating traditional and contemporary systems of leadership among women and men in this relatively egalitarian society.

Currently, my field research centers on The Omo Valley Research Project (OVRP), which I co-direct with Dr. Luke Glowacki. Since 2019, the OVRP has conducted comparative and longitudinal, social, biological, and health research across multiple ethnolinguistic groups in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, one of the most culturally diverse regions in the world.

As an interdisciplinary non-profit scientific organization, OVRP focuses on 1) advancing research on cultural change and diversity in human social organization and behavior, and 2) facilitating education and philanthropic initiatives across Southwest Ethiopia.

Scientific philosophy

• I value quantitative multidisciplinary approaches in the human sciences, built upon sound theoretical foundation. I am a proponent of open science and coupling confirmatory and exploratory analyses.

• Insights from cross-cultural and evolutionary perspectives can teach us about leadership, cooperation, and organizational design in contemporary firms and industrial organizations, helping institutions adapt to diverse and rapidly changing environments.

• Evolutionary theory offers novel hypotheses on causal relationships in human behavior, generating useful knowledge for organizational practice and public policy applications.

• The opportunity to collect observational, empirical, and ethnographic data from culturally diverse, subsistence-based populations is rapidly diminishing and should be a priority of the social sciences.

• Anthropologists are uniquely situated to be meaningful allies as rural, minority ethnic populations navigate their changing worlds.

• Field methods can be informed by comparative results, and evolutionary scientists should draw on broad phylogenetic perspectives across cultures and species. The ethnographic record is an indispensable tool for testing predictions and generating theory on the diversity and universality of humanity.

• The evolutionary human sciences will be strengthened by increased integration, synthesizing adaptationist, behavioral-ecological, and cultural-evolutionary frameworks.