James Curley

James Curley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, part of the College of Liberal Arts. He is Co-Director of the Behavioral and Social Data Science Major and Principal Investigator of the Social Dynamics Lab. His research focuses on the neurobiological basis of social behavior, social hierarchies, and long-term physiological changes linked to social status. He earned his B.A. from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, followed by postdoctoral work at Cambridge before joining Columbia University in 2012. At UT Austin since 2017, he has received awards including the Affordable Education Champion (2021), Dr. Wendy Domjan Excellence in Teaching Award (2021), and President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award (2022). His teaching includes courses on statistics, R programming, and social behavior analysis.

Curley’s lab investigates social dynamics through interdisciplinary approaches, combining behavioral studies with genomic, transcriptomic, and neuroendocrine analyses. He emphasizes open educational resources, co-authoring an open-access textbook for statistics and developing interactive learning tools. His work spans animal and human social systems, exploring how early life experiences shape behavior and how social hierarchy impacts neural and physiological processes. He has published extensively on topics like social dominance, gene expression, and the application of network models to understand social interactions.

Teaching highlights include PSY 317L (statistics for behavioral sciences), PSY 120R (R programming), and UGS 302 (Being Social). His commitment to affordable education and innovative pedagogy has been recognized nationally. Research collaborations include studies on primate microbiota, stress vulnerability in depression models, and transgenerational epigenetic effects. He maintains affiliations with platforms like GitHub and Google Scholar, reflecting his embrace of open science principles.