Sam Passmore

Sam Passmore is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Culture, History & Language, Australian National University (ANU). His research focuses on cultural evolution, kinship terminology, linguistic diversity, and musical diversity. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Bristol (2021) and an MA in Psychology from the University of Auckland (2014). His work emphasizes statistical approaches to cross-cultural data, with contributions to databases like Grambank and Kinbank.

• Education:
  • PhD in Anthropology, University of Bristol (2016–2020)
  • MA in Psychology, University of Auckland (2014)
• Research Interests: Kinship systems, language evolution, cultural transmission, statistical modeling of cultural data.

His recent projects include investigating the independence of musical diversity from linguistic and genetic histories, and exploring the impact of language endangerment on cultural heritage. He also leads a project on linguistic and genetic connections across New Guinea (2024–2025). Passmore’s publications span journals like Nature Communications, Science Advances, and PLoS ONE, with a focus on interdisciplinary methods.

Key Achievements:

• Co-developed Grambank, a database revealing genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity.
• Contributed to CHIELD, a database testing evolutionary hypotheses in linguistics.

His work highlights the importance of rigorous sampling in linguistic research and advocates for preserving endangered languages amid global cultural shifts.