I am generally interested in cognition, society and how they interact. Specifically, how do processes of social maintenance that are important for social norms (e.g. punishment/positive reinforcement) shape cognitive/affective mechanisms i.e. how do social norms reprogram our emotions? Further, I’m interested in how these cognitive/affective mechanisms themselves impact societal norms, perhaps being able to nudge agents stuck in an undesirable state into more desirable configurations of behaviour. I address these questions using a mix of agent-based modelling and evolutionary computing.

My background is in behavioural biology (University of Sussex BSc) with a year abroad at Purdue University with electives in philosophy and classics. I then went on to do a masters in intelligent and adaptive systems (University of Sussex MSc) and then a PhD in adaptive social systems at the University of Hertfordshire. Currently, I am Mitacs Globalink scholar working with Peter R. Lewis on using game theory to understand the emergence of institutions.

In my spare time, I write and perform spoken word satirising, among other things, the tech world, the obsession with measurement and the perverse incentives it generates. For example, “optimising happiness” and the murky ethical waters it gets us into.