Rate My Professor Thomas Hills

Professor Thomas Hills is a Professor of Psychology and Behavioural Science in the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick, where he serves as Director of the MSc in Behavioural and Data Science. A Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, Hills researches search behaviour and the trade-off between exploration and exploitation across domains such as space, mind, and society. His work explores how humans navigate complex information environments related to memory, decision-making, and creativity. Hills utilizes methods including behavioural experiments, big data analysis, network science, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, and mathematical models to advance behavioural and cognitive science.

Hills has authored and co-authored numerous influential publications in top journals. Key recent contributions include 'The private solution trap in collective action problems across 34 nations' with Malthouse et al. in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2026), 'Should I stay or should I go with them? Social forces underpin human foraging' with Todd in Science (2026), 'Cognitive network enrichment, not degradation, explains the aging mental lexicon and links fluid and crystallized intelligence' in Psychological Review (2025), and 'An entropy modulation theory of creative exploration' with Kenett in Psychological Review (2024). He published the book Behavioral Network Science: Language, Mind, and Society (Cambridge University Press, 2025) and co-edited Cognitive Search: Evolution, Algorithms, and the Brain (MIT Press, 2012). With an h-index of 48, his research impacts cognitive modeling, language evolution, and collective action dynamics. Hills supervises PhD students and leads interdisciplinary projects at Warwick.