Helen Elizabeth Davis

Helen Elizabeth Davis is an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University's School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and a Research Scientist at the Institute of Human Origins. She also holds an Associate position at Harvard University's Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. As President and co-founder of the One Pencil Project (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit), she champions engaged scholarship and community partnerships. Her work focuses on how cultural institutions like schooling shape cognitive development, with cross-cultural longitudinal studies in Bolivia and Namibia. Davis earned her PhD in 2015 and completed postdoctoral training at Harvard.

Her research interests include cognitive development, spatial cognition, and the lifecourse impacts of socioecological factors. She has conducted extensive fieldwork with the Tsimane in the Bolivian Amazon and the Himba/Twa in Namibia, examining how environmental and cultural contexts influence learning, mobility, and aging. Key collaborations include the Tsimane Health and Life History Project and partnerships with indigenous rights organizations like HIZETJITWA.

Awardees include the 2020 Leigh Mintrun Early Career Award and 2018 International Society for Intelligence Research Best Paper Award. Her grants include funding from the John Templeton Foundation for studies on cultural influences on child cognition. Davis actively mentors students in anthropological and cognitive science methodologies, emphasizing ethical community engagement in all research endeavors.

Labs/Teams: Institute of Human Origins (ASU), One Pencil Project, SCAN Project (spatial cognition), Developing Belief Network (cognitive diversity), and the Tsimane Health Project.