Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution

This handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the interdisciplinary field of Cultural Evolution, which has in recent years matured into an increasingly diverse and wide-reaching but intellectually coherent research programme.

Jamshid Tehrani is an anthropologist specialising in the transmission and transformation of culture across generations. He trained in social anthropology at the London School of Economics and subsequently earned a Master's degree in Human Evolution and Behaviour from University College London. He completed his Ph.D. in Anthropology in 2005 at UCL, focusing on the transmission of craft traditions among Iranian tribal groups. Tehrani joined Durham University in 2007, becoming a Chair in Anthropology in 2020 and serving as Head of Department from 2022 - 2025. His current research primarily investigates the dissemination of popular narratives, including folktales, urban legends, and conspiracy theories.
Rachel Kendal is an evolutionary anthropologist specialising in cultural evolution. She trained in Zoology and Psychology at Nottingham University and completed a PhD in Zoology (2003) at Cambridge University, focusing on innovation and social learning in monkeys and fish. She joined Durham University in 2007, becoming Chair in 2020. Recently, she served as President of the Cultural Evolution Society and led the CES Transformation Fund grant scheme. Her current research concerns learning strategies across species, their potential contribution to the evolution of human, and non-human culture and their potential application to societal issues such as conservation and public health.
Jeremy Kendal is an anthropologist specialising in cultural evolution. He trained in biology at the Nottingham University and subsequently earned a Master's degree in Biological Computation from the University of York. He completed his Ph.D. in Zoology in 2003 at Cambridge University, focusing on the adaptive value of social learning, combining mathematical modelling with experiments using guppy fish. Kendal joined Durham University in 2007. His current research concerns epistemology, memory, cultural transmission and disease emergence