We investigate the biological, cognitive, and social dimensions of human behavioural evolution — from cross-cultural cognition and child development to evolutionary demography, the origins of cooperation, and the complex systems that govern how knowledge and culture spread.
Explore Our Research →The Human Evolution Research Group is an interdisciplinary team at the School of Collective Intelligence, Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique (UM6P), Rabat, Morocco. We work at the intersection of evolutionary anthropology, cognitive science, biodemography, experimental philosophy, and complex systems to understand the biological, cultural, and social foundations of human behaviour.
Our research spans fieldwork in Bolivia, Morocco, Ecuador, Vanuatu, India, and Argentina, combining observational data, field experiments, Bayesian statistics, and mathematical modelling. We are affiliated with major long-running projects including the Tsimane Health and Life History Project and co-direct the CoDeM2 longitudinal anthropological laboratory.
Based in Africa and committed to global scholarship, we are co-organising the HBES 2026 (Human Behavior and Evolution Society) and CES 2026 (Cultural Evolution Society) conferences, and welcome prospective graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and collaborators from across the world.
A longitudinal anthropological laboratory co-directed by Dr Alami and Dr Seabright, collecting original data on cooperation, social networks, health behaviours, kinship, and economic change across two field sites undergoing economic transition: Southeast Morocco and lowland Bolivia. The project is designed to generate comparative, theory-driven data on how modernisation reshapes social structures, gender relations, intergroup dynamics, and health outcomes in small-scale communities — bringing the tools of evolutionary anthropology directly to bear on development-relevant questions in the Global South.
One of the world's most comprehensive longitudinal studies of human life history, health, and social behaviour. Running continuously since 2002 under the joint directorship of Michael Gurven (UC Santa Barbara) and Hillard Kaplan (University of New Mexico), the project studies the Tsimane — an indigenous forager-horticultural population of approximately 15,000 people in the Beni Department of lowland Bolivia. The project combines biomedical surveillance, economic data, and social network analysis across over 90 villages to understand ageing, reproduction, cooperation, and modernisation. Dr Alami and Dr Seabright are both long-standing members of the project team, having contributed key studies on women's status and child health, cooperative labour networks, social support, and leadership.
A large-scale comparative project examining how schools function not merely as sites of academic instruction but as cultural reproduction devices — transmitting values, behavioural norms, and cognitive practices across generations. Led by Cristine H. Legare (UT Austin), the project spans diverse societies across Africa, South America, Asia, and Oceania, and investigates how school quality, structure, and cultural context shape children's cognitive development, executive function, and academic achievement. Dr Erut contributed centrally to the project, including as co-author of the Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution chapter on schools as cultural reproduction devices and the large-scale Developmental Science study quantifying school quality across societies.
An unprecedented interdisciplinary, cross-cultural investigation into whether fundamental philosophical concepts — knowledge, wisdom, and understanding — are universal across cultures or vary in meaning and importance. Led by Edouard Machery (Pittsburgh), Stephen Stich (Rutgers), and H. Clark Barrett (UCLA), the project fielded surveys, behavioural games, and qualitative interviews across ten countries and five continents, including Morocco, Ecuador, India, Japan, South Korea, Slovakia, South Africa, China, Peru, and the United States. Dr Erut contributed as a collaborator, leading fieldwork with Shuar-Achuar communities in Ecuador, where research on epistemic norms and concepts of lying revealed culturally unique views on predictions and commitments.
Dr Alami is an evolutionary anthropologist and biodemographer conducting fieldwork with economically transitioning populations in Southeast Morocco and lowland Bolivia. Her research spans kinship, intermarriage, and intergroup relations; women's leadership and cooperation; biodemography and health; and participatory approaches to development. She holds an MA and PhD in Anthropology from UC Santa Barbara and is affiliated with the Tsimane Health and Life History Project.
Dr Seabright is an evolutionary anthropologist conducting fieldwork in Bolivia and Morocco. His research focuses on cooperation, politics, leadership, religion, the evolution of human social complexity and hierarchy, health and lifestyle change, and mathematical modelling. He holds an MSc and PhD in Evolutionary Anthropology from the University of New Mexico (2022). He is affiliated with the Tsimane Health and Life History Project and co-directs the CoDeM2 laboratory with Dr Alami.
Dr Erut is an anthropologist working across psychology, experimental philosophy, and cognitive science. He specialises in cross-cultural research on conceptual development and child cognition, with extensive fieldwork in Ecuador, Vanuatu, India, and Argentina — primarily with the Shuar and Achuar communities of the Western Amazon. He holds a PhD in Biological Anthropology from UC Los Angeles and was a research fellow at the UT Austin Center for Applied Cognitive Science (2021–2025) before joining UM6P.
Dr Moser is a complex systems scientist and cultural evolutionist whose work examines the relationship between structure and adaptation in social, biological, economic, and neural systems. His research focuses on how knowledge ecosystems generate, transmit, and lose knowledge — using network theory, agent-based modelling, and large-scale corpus analysis. He holds a PhD in Cognitive and Information Sciences from UC Merced and was previously a visiting graduate fellow at The Music Lab at Harvard University.
Investigating how children across diverse societies develop conceptual categories, moral intuitions, and epistemic norms — combining methods from anthropology, psychology, and experimental philosophy. Fieldwork spans Ecuador, Vanuatu, India, Morocco, and Argentina.
Examining the evolution of cooperative behaviour, political leadership, and social hierarchy in small-scale societies. Research integrates field observation, network analysis, and mathematical modelling, with data from Tsimane communities in lowland Bolivia and rural Morocco.
Studying how women's social status shapes health outcomes for themselves and their children. Research uses longitudinal data from Bolivia and Morocco to examine the fitness consequences of female leadership, cooperation networks, and political influence in transitioning societies.
Investigating how intermarriage drives gene flow and cultural exchange, and the consequences of kinship structures for individuals and groups. Research draws on marriage histories, social network data, wealth measures, and attitudes towards ethnic diversity in Southeast Morocco.
Examining cross-cultural variation in folk concepts of lying, truth, and deception using experimental methods across dozens of populations. Research with Shuar-Achuar communities has revealed culturally unique epistemic norms regulating predictive speech acts.
A long-running anthropological project co-directed by Alami and Seabright collecting longitudinal data on cooperation, demography, and social change across two populations undergoing economic transitions — bridging evolutionary theory with applied development research.
We welcome enquiries from prospective graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and potential collaborators. The group is based at the School of Collective Intelligence, UM6P, and is co-organising both the HBES 2026 (Human Behavior and Evolution Society) and CES 2026 (Cultural Evolution Society) conferences. Please indicate your research interests in your message.