Rate My Professor Christine Caldwell

Professor Christine Caldwell is an Emeritus Professor in Psychology at the University of Stirling, having joined the institution in 2004 as a Lecturer, advancing to Senior Lecturer in 2010, Professor in 2015, and now holding emeritus status. Prior to this, she served as a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Exeter from 2002 to 2004. Her academic background includes a first-class BSc (Hons) in Psychology from the University of Edinburgh (1996), an MSc in Cognitive Science from the University of Manchester (1997), and a PhD in Psychology from the University of St Andrews (2003), where her doctoral research examined social learning in nonhuman primates.

Caldwell's research focuses on human and animal learning and cognition, with particular emphasis on social learning, cultural evolution, and the distinctiveness of human culture and cognition. She employs experimental psychology methods alongside theoretical frameworks from cultural evolution to study these phenomena in human adults, children, and nonhuman primates, exploring topics such as cumulative cultural evolution, imitative abilities across the lifespan, and effects of population size on cultural traits. She has secured major funding as Principal Investigator, including an ERC Consolidator Grant for the RATCHETCOG project ("The cog in the ratchet: Illuminating the cognitive mechanisms generating human cumulative culture," 2015-2021, €1,780,454), ESRC Research Grant ("An experimental approach to studying cultural variation and convergence," 2009-2011, £315,446), and ESRC First Grants Award ("Testing hypotheses about cumulative cultural evolution," 2006-2008, £143,161). Key publications include "Social learning mechanisms and cumulative cultural evolution: is imitation necessary?" (Psychological Science, 2009), "Experimental models for testing hypotheses about cumulative cultural evolution" (Evolution and Human Behavior, 2008), "Studying cumulative cultural evolution in the laboratory" (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2008), and "What Is Cumulative Cultural Evolution?" (Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution, 2023). Her scholarly impact is evidenced by over 3,362 citations and an h-index of 31 on Google Scholar.