Aislinn Keogh
Linguist, musician, and aspiring adrenaline junkie 🧗 Postdoc at Durham University, researching children's role in cultural evolution
@durhampsych.bsky.social
@durhamdcerc.bsky.social
(she/her) 🌈
aislinnkeogh.github.io
- Day 1 of maternity leave: no work means plenty of time to do Advent of Code properly! "properly"...😐 #AdventOfCode
- Last day of work before going on maternity leave! 😳 And high on my wishlist for when I return in 2027 is that OSF do another upgrade to fix the previous "upgrade" which has resulted in me being completely unable to access a single page on their website 🙃 sure would be nice to read some preprints...
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghToday, we published a paper on the strength of language universals (if language has X, it also has Y) given spatial & phylogenetic autocorrelation in @nathumbehav.nature.com ! It is a cool research project, led by the brilliant Annemarie Verkerk at @uni-saarland.de www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghInteracting agents can create shared communication systems without ever knowing if signals are successfully received. The conventionalisation process involves a curious interaction between joint attention and individual behavioural differences. doi.org/10.1371/jour.... Work with Casimir Fisch.
- Reposted by Aislinn Keogh
- ⚠️ New paper! Why do words sound so similar? In an agent-based model + communication game, we show that production/comprehension pressures trade off to shape lexicon structure. In @cognitionjournal.bsky.social w/ @simonkirby.bsky.social & Jenny Culbertson. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- We investigate the influence of two communicative pressures: production favours reuse of more easily articulated sounds, comprehension favours distinctiveness of word forms. Competition between these individual-level mechanisms can give rise to emergent structural properties of language.
- Thoughts and prayers please: I have reached the stage of pregnancy where I'm having to pirate e-books of books I already physically own because my belly is in the way of holding up a hardback 😭
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghFully-funded 4-year #PhD in Cultural Evolution! Join my @erc.europa.eu project exploring how compression & compositionality drive cultural innovation: hmc-lab.com/ERCPhDCultur... Apply by Nov 12! Maybe of interest to folks from #COSMOS2025 or @eslr.bsky.social? Please feel free to share! 🙏
- Walking down a narrow pavement at peak times with an umbrella is antisocial behaviour, change my mind
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghNew paper in @openmindjournal.bsky.social with @simonkirby.bsky.social, @kennysmithed.bsky.social and Fiona Jordan! Kinship terms overwhelmingly exhibit predictive structure - terms in one part of the system help us predict other terms - a pattern which emerges because it helps us generalise better.
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghThe count down starts for #CESRabat! Follow @ces2026.bsky.social and join us May 11-13 next year for an exciting meeting in Rabat, Morocco. Massive thanks to the #CESRabat organising committee: Sarah Alami (co-chair) Mathieu Charbonneau (co-chair) Zachary Garfield Edmond Seabright
- Durham's Dunagree Lab continues to be the most wonderful workplace. Thank you to @sheinalew.bsky.social, @chimpanzeve.bsky.social, @fhillemann.bsky.social, @amandinevisine.bsky.social and others not on Bluesky for the surprise baby shower today 🥹
- Reposted by Aislinn Keogh@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised! 3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution 2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions. Please share and apply! www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghAislinn Keogh @mandolinguist.bsky.social gave my new book to her mother to help her understand some of Aislinn's research area. Her mother is in a book-crochet group; she loved the book so much that she made a blanket (aka granny) square inspired by the book cover! This is so fantastic and touching!
- Oh good, my preprint from nearly a year ago that had still not been post-moderated has now disappeared 🙃
- Due to a recent influx of problematic submissions, PsyArXiv has switched to pre-moderating its content. If your submitted preprint had not yet been approved, it will be temporarily inaccessible to the public (you can still view your preprint when logged into your OSF account). #PsychSciSky
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghHow does speaking a free word order language influence sentence planning and production? Evidence from Pitjantjatjara (Pama‐Nyungan, Australia). New paper by Evan Kidd & al. with Gabriela Garrido Rodríguez doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70087
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghThis was such a fun conversation about childhood, play, and agency across cultures. Thanks for having @sheinalew.bsky.social & I on the show!
- New episode!! 🎙️📣 A chat w/ @sheinalew.bsky.social & @dorsaamir.bsky.social about childhood across cultures. Humans everywhere go through childhood—a time of learning, growth, and play. But this universal stage of life can look very different in different places. Listen: disi.org/varieties-of...
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghI am advertising 2 positions in language evolution with my group at @dondersinst.bsky.social: 📢 Fully-funded PhD position (Robotics/AI 🤖) www.ru.nl/en/working-a... 📢 Postdoc position (Virtual Reality 🎮) www.ru.nl/en/working-a... Deadline for applications is August 14th. Please RT! :)
- Introducing Dr Keogh! 🎓 Very emotional to have finally closed the chapter on my time at the @uoe-cle.bsky.social 😭 but glad to have passed this milestone in the company of my wonderful supervisors @simonkirby.bsky.social and Jenny Culbertson, and my PhD twin Elizabeth Pankratz. We made it! #PhDone
- Me and @maisyhallam.bsky.social had fun at the museum yesterday! 😄🐒
- Join us at the National Museum of Scotland July 19th to learn about animal communication and what makes human communication different from the rest of our primate family! 🐵 www.nms.ac.uk/events/monke...
- Reposted by Aislinn Keoghbeen a long time coming, there's now a preprint along with Will Hoppitt describing our new R package for creating, fitting and interpreting bayesian NBDA models (STBayes). www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... Documentation is here michaelchimento.github.io/STbayes/inde...
- The Edinburgh-Durham commute certainly has its advantages 😍
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghDelighted to announce the publication of a collaborative effort, co-led by @limorraviv.bsky.social @mpi-nl.bsky.social, showcasing the ways in which researchers have made language evolution an empirical issue: A handbook of experimental approaches to the fascinating problem of language evolution 🧪
- Very cool to have been involved with this, such a great opportunity to learn about contributing to open source software! ⌨️
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghInterested in the evolution of human language and in understanding the pressures that shape languages today? Come do a PhD with me! Fully funded PhD position available in my group @mpi-nl.bsky.social, application deadline June 2nd: www.mpi.nl/career-educa...
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghSemantic extension in an artificial language experiment: participants conventionalise novel labels, then extend them to convey new meanings (metonymically and metaphorically) based on salient shared associations. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghTwo Fully-Funded PhD positions at Auckland Uni! Come help us understand the past and future of global cultural and linguistic diversity. #linguistics #evolution #academia #phd www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
- Probably the best way I could think of to make this announcement: super excited to be joining Durham Uni in June as a postdoc/modeller on @sheinalew.bsky.social's new ERC grant, Children as Agents of Cultural Evolution. Looks like I'm going to fit right in 😍 #DungareeLab @durhamdcerc.bsky.social
- If you were to think up the perfect lab for me to be in, this is the one! #TeamDungarees No memo necessary, all the in-person lab yday arrived in overalls for our newest member's visit @sheinalew.bsky.social @mandolinguist.bsky.social
- Reposted by Aislinn Keogh🐳 UPCOMING BOOK ALERT 🐬 The Evolution of Cetacean Societies Edited by @darrencroft.bsky.social @andrewfoote.bsky.social @stephanielking.bsky.social and myself Preorder available now press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo... #whale #dolphin #animalbehaviour
- Reposted by Aislinn Keogh🚨🚨🚨 I'm hiring a Postdoc for a 3-year position to come work with me at the University of Oslo using iterative learning experiments to understand the evolution of sound symbolism. Please share widely. 🔴 Deadline is May 31st '25 ⏲️ Desired starting date is Fall '25 shorturl.at/vSTZx
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghHello, Bluesky! Pleased to share that my first public-press article, on the shifting debate over what makes human culture unique, was published today in @us.theconversation.com. I review recent literature suggesting that cultural open-endedness, not cumulative culture, is our true defining trait.
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghVery proud of this new paper w/ Cliodhna Hughes & Jenny Culbertson. We show people generalise silent gesture orders from the verb phrase to the prepositional phrase harmonically. This was Cliodhna’s undergraduate disseration (!) An extraordinary achievement. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Anybody would think I liked dogs and had just passed my viva... And they'd be right, both those things are true 🥳🐕🧑🎓 #PhDone
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghMy new book, MORE THAN WORDS (Avery/PenguinRandomHouse) arrives 6/3! It tells the story of how we produce language & how talking shapes our lives in surprising ways. It's psyling for gen'l audiences! Info & preorders www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/724046/more-than-words-by-maryellen-macdonald-phd/
- Reposted by Aislinn Keogh📣📣📣 Applications for the 2025 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) are now open!! Are you interested in intelligence, mind, and cognition in all its forms? Early-career scholars from any discipline—and storytellers in any medium—are encouraged to apply! More info: disi.org
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghCelebrate innovation in digital research methods! Nominate an outstanding project for Best Novel Use of a Digital Method in the #CDCSPrizes. If it's breaking new ground in your discipline, we want to hear about it. Deadline for nominations: March 3rd edin.ac/3j3e1fr
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghNew cultural evolution modelling paper with @bdecourson.bsky.social on @pnas.org! "Weak individual preferences stabilize culture" A quick 🧵 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
- So much casual sexism every time we go snowboarding. Today's episode... Sam: Two boards and one pair of boots please Staff guy (looking at me): What size boots? Sam: 9 please Staff guy (in his best child-directed speech): And you've got your own have you? No guy, I thought I'd just go barefoot 🙄
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghEver worried about nonindependence and empty cells in linguistic typological databases? Our solution is out in Sci Data at doi.org/10.1038/s415...
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghApplications for the ninth summer school on statistical methods for linguistics and psychology close on April 1, 2025. Every year people contact me saying they missed the call, so here it is again :) vasishth.github.io/smlp2025/
- Two days on, and it's starting to sink in that I've actually submitted my thesis. One step closer to Dr Keogh! 🎓
- Extremely cool new work by my extremely cool supervisor!
- A thread explaining our new discovery about humpback whale song published today in Science... We found key statistical properties that characterise all human languages in another species for the first time. We have more in common with whales than we previously thought! doi.org/10.1126/scie...
- Another music post! It was probably around 2016 when I first heard Sleeper, and it rapidly became one of my favourite albums of all time. Unfortunately, Kan had already disbanded by that time. So it was EXTREMELY FUCKING COOL to see them last night. Celtic Connections making magic happen!
- HOWEVER, it seemed like about half the audience just came to have a (loud) chat rather than to listen to the music. First chance to see a band in over a decade and you're more interested in your mate's DIY woes?? There was genuinely one quiet track where I could barely hear the band over the crowd.
- I refer anyone who thinks they're entitled to loudly talk through an entire gig to Gaz Brookfield, who said it best: youtu.be/G9EaZNw2GCw?...
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghCan culture evolve like biology does? For 50 years, researchers have explored how human behaviors, from music to language, adapt and pass between generations. Learn more in the blog post on the Special Feature, "Half a Century of Cultural Evolution," Here: www.pnas.org/post/update/....
- Wow, this is Dope™️ (technical term)
- Does the culture you grow up in shape the way you see the world? In a new Psych Review paper, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I tackle this centuries-old question using the Müller-Lyer illusion as a case study. Come think through one of history's mysteries with us🧵(1/13):
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghJOB ALERT! Come work with me! 34-Month Postdoc Position here at the Center for Language Evolution Studies, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń in my project "Paths to Polysemy" Job offer here: www.umk.pl/en/jobs/?tas... Please repost & share widely!
- New preprint with my supervisors @simonkirby.bsky.social & Jenny Culbertson. Why are words so similar to each other? We provide computational + experimental evidence that lexicon structure is shaped by a trade-off between competing communicative pressures. Read all about it! 📜 osf.io/preprints/ps...
- I used to post about music a lot on the other site, am I allowed to do that here? Because I saw the Grit Orchestra last night and I'm here to tell you that if you like really any genre of music you should probably go and see them. Martyn Bennett was truly a genius and it's a stunning tribute to him.
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghExcited to share that our BBS target article — "Children as agents of cultural adaptation" — is online & open for commentary! In it, @sheinalew.bsky.social & I argue that children's peer cultures might play an important & understudied role in cultural adaptation. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
- O Christmas drums O Christmas drums, how lovely are your drumsticks!
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghPhase Transition xkcd.com/3025
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghThis comic is attacking me personally. via @phdcomics.bsky.social and with Alt-text.
- Reposted by Aislinn Keogh
- I gave the last WIP talk of my PhD yesterday and just wanted to share the xkcd comic I made: a cautionary tale of getting excited about a "new" idea. Feat. @simonkirby.bsky.social's excellent advice + work that's definitely already been done by @sblldtrch.bsky.social, @kmahowald.bsky.social et al.
- Reposted by Aislinn Keoghoh my god overleaf I DO NOT WANT AI WRITING INTEGRATION
- Reposted by Aislinn Keogh⏳ ONE WEEK LEFT! ⏳ The extended deadline to submit your abstracts for #EHBEA2025 is FAST approaching: 🗓️ Mon 16 Dec, midnight (GMT)! Don’t miss this opportunity to present your work at Newcastle, April 14-17! 🌟 Submit now: ehbea2025.com @ehbea.bsky.social #BioAnth #CultEvo #EvPsych #Evosky
- Reposted by Aislinn KeoghVery nice result. My takeaway: Zipf's law derives from individuals being efficient *for their immediate communicative goals*, rather than being efficient *for the language as a whole*. This distinction is critical to the cultural evolution of languages
