Simon J. Greenhill

English doesn’t need protecting in New Zealand – but other languages do The proposed English Language Bill assumes a problem. In reality, English dominates public life while many heritage languages struggle to survive.

theconversation.com/english-does...

@pratikkatte.bsky.social and I just released Lorax 🌲, a tool for interactive exploration of biobank-scale ancestral recombination graphs (ARGs).

If you’ve ever wanted to scroll across the ancestries of thousands of genomes… this is for you.

Leipzig U and the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) have an open faculty position (W2) in evolutionary population genetics! This position is tenured and comes with generous core funding. We are eager to welcome a new colleague! Deadline March 11.
www.uni-leipzig.de/en/newsdetai...

"Air raids are not only wrong. They are loathsome and disgusting. If you had ever seen a child smashed by a bomb into something like a mixture of dirty rags and cat’s meat you would realize this fact as intensely as I do." - J.B.S. Haldane, 1938.

have you encountered the horizontal line that no force in the universe can delete yet? that's a fun one.

We're pleased to announce the call for the 2026 Richerson Award for Outstanding Doctoral Research, for a recent PhD dissertation that significantly contributes to the field of CE.

Recipients receive a $300 award, a 3-yr CES membership and CES conference registration.

forms.gle/p4MqcskCs2Yz...

The theory of epidemics with altruism | PNAS Social distancing can mitigate the spread of diseases in humans and animals. Social distancing allows susceptible individuals to protect themselves...

The theory of epidemics with altruism | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧪

GitHub - SimonGreenhill/rcldf: rcldf - The R library for reading CLDF files rcldf - The R library for reading CLDF files. Contribute to SimonGreenhill/rcldf development by creating an account on GitHub.

Lots of cool #linguistic datasets are being published in Cross Linguistic Data Format.

I've written an #Rstats package rcldf to analyse them (github.com/SimonGreenhi...). See the vignette:

cran.case.edu/web/packages...

Question: What functionality is missing, what is needed?

$300 Million in jet planes lost to a fuckup.

That’s 83 five year NIH R01 grants burned in minutes due to error, aka poor execution of this unnecessary war which serves only to make the world more dangerous.

Frequently asked questions about Explore 2025 Here you will find frequently asked questions and answers about the call Explore - Formas open call for research projects 2025 .

A Swedish state-funded research funding agency, Formas, has started to approve applications based partially on random draws. Applications are grouped into high quality (gets funding), low quality (doesn't get funding) and a middle group where a lottery takes place 🎰.
formas.se/en/start-pag...

Dear #NZ politicians,

Please note the key element: “persistent long-term investment in fundamental research”.

Thank you.

Government’s new science institute to lose 6% of staff less than a year after forming The Bioeconomy Science Institute is shedding 6% of its staff.

And people wonder why NZ’s R&D spend is way lower than the rest of the OECD & our productivity is in the toilet. www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360...

Wow

Interesting: Multilingual Large Language Models do not comprehend all natural languages to equal degrees.
- English is not best performing language but was "systematically outperformed by several Romance languages"

arxiv.org/abs/2602.20065

Infant mortality increased following the Nazi expulsion of Jewish doctors, according to Helge Liebert and Beatrice Mäder in a new REStat paper!

Interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans was strongly sex biased Sex biases in admixture and other demographic processes are recurrent features throughout human evolution. For admixture between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans (AMHs), sex bias has been p...

Many living people carry fragments of Neanderthal DNA, remnants of ancient interbreeding events, with uneven distribution across chromosomes. New work by @sarahtishkoff.bsky.social lab suggests patterns are most consistent with Neanderthal contribution to human populations being highly male biased.🧪

Can safely way this is the craziest and coolest study I have led. We chart the evolution of sheeppox virus, finding it in the Eurasian steppe ~3700 years ago, and also in a LOT of parchment from medieval Europe (made from a range of animals skins!) #aDNA

Screenshot of LinkedIn post from ARC saying that DP27 EOI outcomes will be released on RMS on the 26th Feb 2026.

The ARC have said (on LinkedIn) they will release outcomes for Discovery Projects Expressions of Interest (2027) tomorrow👇

a girl says look at the state of you while standing in a library ALT: a girl says look at the state of you while standing in a library

State of the Union? Yep. Look at the damn state of it.

AI companies think 'global coverage' means less than 3% of the world's languages.

congratulations Pat!

Just occurred to me: if chickens can distinguish spiky and round, then dinosaurs probably could as well.

#dinosaurlinguistics

Humans 40,000 y ago developed a system of conventional signs | PNAS As humans, we store and share information. This allows us to distribute knowledge necessary for survival and to coordinate large groups. Our homini...

Very interesting attempt to trace back the early evolution of a “system of conventional signs” (proto-writing system) 🧪✍️
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Front cover of my book, titled "Comparative musicology: Evolution, universals, and the science of the world's music" (published today by Oxford University Press)

1st of my 4-page essay published in Nature today titled "Music is not a universal language - but it can bring us together when words fail" Picture caption: "Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny (centre) performed in Spanish at the half-time show of the 2026 American Football Super Bowl LX."

My book is now published! 🌏🎶🧪

You can download it for free at academic.oup.com/book/62353 - I’d be grateful if you do!
I also published an accessible summary with audio/video today in @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Try reading that first, then give the whole book a read if you like it!

Kava consumption and the rise of sociopolitical complexity in Oceania | PNAS Humans have been using psychoactive substances for millennia, despite their potential negative health and social consequences. According to some sc...

Kava consumption and the rise of sociopolitical complexity in Oceania www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Let’s be honest, the lack of scientific leadership over the past year especially, has been disappointing. Senior scientists and leaders in the field have a responsibility to speak up. There is strength in numbers - don’t be afraid.

Switzerland decided not to fund humanities and social sciences in their new national research funding...

Academia.edu - Find Research Papers, Topics, Researchers Academia.edu is the platform to share, find, and explore 50 Million research papers. Join us to accelerate your research needs & academic interests.

FYI, Academia.edu has changed its terms of service to give an irrevocable worldwide license for anything uploaded to its site to be used for generative AI. I do not consent to this and have pulled all my papers.

New contribution to our Blog / Journal on Computer-Assisted Language Comparison in Practice, this time by our doctoral student David Snee and myself:

Computing Detailed Colexifications with Missing Data Information from the CLICS⁴ Collection

doi.org/10.15475/cal...

calc.hypotheses.org/9164