University of Oxford

Professor Robin Dunbar (Head of ICEA)

Contact

Email
robin.dunbar@anthro.ox.ac.uk

Teaching and research interests

The evolution of sociality, with specific focus on humans, nonhuman primates and ungulates, including behavioural ecology and the cognitive bases of social behaviour.

Robin Dunbar graduated with a BSc in Psychology and Philosophy from the University of Oxford (1969) and a PhD in Psychology from the University of Bristol (1974). He has held research fellowships at Cambridge (1977-1982) and Liverpool Universities (1985-1987), and teaching posts at the University of Stockholm (Sweden: 1983), University College London (1987-1994), and the University of Liverpool (1994-2007).

He is currently Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology in the School of Anthropology, and a Fellow of Magdalen College. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1998. He is co-Director of the British Academy’s Centenary Research Project ‘Lucy to Language: The Archaeology of the Social Brain’ , a multi-disciplinary project involving, in addition to the University of Oxford, research groups at Liverpool University, Royal Holloway (University of London), Southampton University, and the University of Kent.

His principal research interest is the evolution of sociality, with specific focus on humans, nonhuman primates and ungulates. Currently, there are five main projects:

1. The behavioural ecology of social and reproductive decision-making (in particular, mate choice and parental investment decisions)
2. Modelling socio-ecological systems and their evolution
3. The structure and dynamics of social networks in humans and other mammals (EPSRC Project)
4. The nature of social bonding
5. The cognitive and neural underpinnings of social behaviour (including cognitive differences between species, the nature of specialised social cognitive abilities like theory of mind, and the evolution of the mammalian brain)

Current projects also include studies of Viking communities in Iceland (based on historical sources), the nature of story-telling and its cognitive constraints, and neuroimaging of social cognitive functions.