Medical Doctor with a PhD on the Evolution of Language. Previously worked as a neuroscientist investigating the neural bases underlying the representation of hierarchies.
Currently, I focus on the links between human psychology and social change. Like in language, the cultural variation of norms masks underlying similarities. These similarities, akin to a ‘grammar of society’, might result from biological and psychological constraints which limit moral, social and political variation.
In the current project, we text-mine fiction works, from different historical periods and countries, to map signatures of psychological states. We hypothesize that dominant psychological states in fiction might predict historical movements.