Eva Brandl

Eva Brandl is a Researcher in the Lise Meitner Group 'BirthRites' at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Her work focuses on kinship, marriage, child development, and cultural evolution in Melanesian and South Pacific societies, particularly Vanuatu. She employs biocultural and mixed-methods approaches to study topics like childrearing practices, residence arrangements, and the impact of bride price systems on women’s status.

• Education: PhD Biological Anthropology (University College London, 2021), MPhil Social Anthropology (University of Oxford, 2016), BA Comparative Religion (Ludwig Maximilians University, 2014).

Her research interests include the cultural evolution of cognition, teaching practices in children, and the interplay between tradition and modernization. Recent work examines how bride price systems evolve and affect gender dynamics. She contributes to interdisciplinary projects like SESHAT Databank analyses of historical social complexity.

Publications highlight her expertise in cultural evolution theory, ethnographic fieldwork, and quantitative historical methods. Notable collaborations include work on moralizing religions and the integration of behavioral ecology into cultural evolution studies.