Staff profile

My research focuses on how culture evolves as it gets transmitted from person to person and from generation to generation. I am interested in understanding what makes some things catch on, others die out, and how these processes shape patterns of cultural diversity within and across populations. I was trained in social anthropology at the London School of Economics and gained a Master's degree in Human Evolution and Behaviour at University College London. I remained at UCL to study for a PhD in Anthropology (2005), writing my thesis on the transmission of craft traditions in Iranian tribal groups. In 2006 I took up a postdoctoral research fellowship at the AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity (CECD) at University College London, before joining Durham in 2007 as a RCUK Fellow. I was appointed as a Lecturer in Anthropology at Durham in 2012 and made a Chair in 2020. In 2022 I took up the role of Head of the Department of Anthropology. My current work focuses mainly on the transmission of popular narratives, such as traditional folktales, urban legends and modern day conspiracy theories.

• Cultural evolution
• Phylogenetic analysis of culture
• Social learning
• Cognitive anthropology
• Oral traditions
• Fairy tales

Book review

• Tehrani, J., & Carrithers, M. (2015). Perspectives on the intersection of biology and society. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 21(2), 470-472. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12216

Chapter in book

• Tehrani, J. (2023). The Cultural Transmission and Evolution of Folk Narratives. In J. Tehrani, J. Kendal, & R. Kendal (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution (C39S1-C39P96). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198869252.013.39
• Tehrani, J. J. (2020). Descent with Imagination: Oral Traditions as Evolutionary Lineages. In J. Carroll, M. Clasen, & E. Jonsson (Eds.), Evolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture (273-289). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46190-4_14
• Tehrani, J., & d'Huy, J. (2017). Phylogenetics meets folklore: bioinformatics approaches to the study of international folktales. In R. Kenna, M. McCarron, & P. McCarron (Eds.), Maths meets myths : quantitative approaches to ancient narratives (91-114). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39445-9_6
• Tehrani, J., & Collard, M. (2013). Do Transmission Isolating Mechanisms (TRIMS) influence cultural evolution? Evidence from patterns of textile diversity within and between Iranian tribal groups. In R. Ellen, S. Lycett, & S. Johns (Eds.), Understanding cultural transmission in anthropology : a critical synthesis (148-164). Berghahn Books
• Tehrani, J. (2011). Missing links: species, artefacts and the cladistic reconstruction of prehistory. In E. Cochrane, & A. Gardner (Eds.), Evolutionary and interpretive archaeologies : a dialogue (245-263). Left Coast Press
• Tehrani, J., & Layton, R. (2009). Genes versus culture. In A. Amin, & M. O'Neill (Eds.), Thinking About Almost Everything (54 - 57). (New ed.). Profile Books
• Tehrani, J., & Collard, M. (2009). The evolution of material culture diversity among Iranian tribal populations. In S. Shennan (Ed.), Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution (99-111). University of California Press
• Collard, M., Shennan, S., & Tehrani, J. (2006). Branching versus blending in macroscale cultural evolution: a comparative study. In C. Lipo, M. O'Brien, M. Collard, & S. Shennan (Eds.), Mapping Our Ancestors (53-63). (1). Aldine Transaction
• Collard, M., & Tehrani, J. (2005). Phylogenesis versus ethnogenesis in Turkmen cultural evolution. In R. Mace, C. Holden, & S. Shennan (Eds.), The Evolution of Cultural Diversity: A Phylogenetic Approach (109-132). UCL Press

Journal Article

• Learmouth, D., Layton, R. H., & Tehrani, J. J. (2024). The evolution of cultural diversity in Pama-Nyungan Australia. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11(1), Article 945. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03386-7
• Learmouth, D., Layton, R., & Tehrani, J. (2024). Scars for survival: high cost male initiation rites are strongly associated with desert habitat in Pama-Nyungan Australia. Evolution and Human Behavior, 45(2), 193-202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2024.02.003
• Sakamoto Martini, G., Kendal, J., & Tehrani, J. J. (2023). Cinderella’s Family Tree. A Phylomemetic Case Study of ATU 510/511. Fabula: Journal of Folktale Studies, 64(1-2), 7-30. https://doi.org/10.1515/fabula-2023-0002
• Granito, C., Tehrani, J., Kendal, J., & Scott-Phillips, T. (2022). Does Group Contact Shape Styles of Pictorial Representation? A Case Study of Australian Rock Art. Human Nature, 33(3), 237-260. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-022-09430-2
• Matthews, L., Nowak, S., Gidengil, C., Chen, C., Stubbersfield, J., Tehrani, J., & Parker, A. (2022). Belief correlations with parental vaccine hesitancy: results from a national survey. American Anthropologist, 124(2), 291-306. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13714
• Stubbersfield, J. M., Widger, T., Russell, A. J., & Tehrani, J. J. (2021). The HCT Index: a typology and index of health conspiracy theories with examples of use. Wellcome Open Research, 6, https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.16790.1
• Sykes, N., Beirne, P., Horowitz, A., Jones, I., Kalof, L., Karlsson, E., King, T., Litwak, H., McDonald, R. A., Murphy, L. J., Pemberton, N., Promislow, D., Rowan, A., Stahl, P. W., Tehrani, J., Tourigny, E., Wynne, C. D., Strauss, E., & Larson, G. (2020). Humanity’s Best Friend: A Dog-Centric Approach to Addressing Global Challenges. Animals, 10(3), Article 502. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10030502
• Jiménez, Á. V., Mesoudi, A., & Tehrani, J. J. (2020). No Evidence that Omission and Confirmation Biases Affect the Perception and Recall of Vaccine-related Information. PLoS ONE, 15(3), Article e0228898. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228898
• Scanlon, L., Lobb, A., Tehrani, J. J., & Kendal, J. R. (2019). Unknotting the interactive effects of learning processes on cultural evolutionary dynamics. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 1, Article e17. https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2019.17
• Granito, C., Tehrani, J., Kendal, J., & Scott-Phillips, T. (2019). Style of pictorial representation is shaped by intergroup contact. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 1, Article e8. https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2019.8
• Jiménez, Á. V., Stubbersfield, J. M., & Tehrani, J. J. (2018). An experimental investigation into the transmission of antivax attitudes using a fictional health controversy. Social Science & Medicine, 215, 23-27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.08.032
• Acerbi, A., & Tehrani, J. (2018). Did Einstein Really Say that? Testing Content Versus Context in the Cultural Selection of Quotations. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 18(3-4), 293-311. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12340032
• Stubbersfield, J., Tehrani, J., & Flynn, E. (2018). Faking the News: Intentional Guided Variation Reflects Cognitive Biases in Transmission Chains Without Recall. Cultural Science Journal, 10(1), 54-65. https://doi.org/10.5334/csci.109
• Bortolini, E., Pagani, L., Crema, E. R., Sarno, S., Barbieri, C., Boattini, A., Sazzini, M., da Silva, S. G., Martini, G., Metspalu, M., Pettener, D., Luiselli, D., & Tehrani, J. J. (2017). Inferring patterns of folktale diffusion using genomic data. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(34), 9140-9145. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1614395114
• Stubbersfield, J., Flynn, E., & Tehrani, J. (2017). Cognitive Evolution and the Transmission of Popular Narratives: A Literature Review and Application to Urban Legends. Evolutionary studies in imaginative culture, 1(1), 121-136. https://doi.org/10.26613/esic.1.1.20
• Acerbi, A., Kendal, J., & Tehrani, J. (2017). Cultural complexity and demography: The case of folktales. Evolution and Human Behavior, 38(4), 474-480. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2017.03.005
• Stubbersfield, J., Tehrani, J., & Flynn, E. (2017). Chicken tumours and fishy revenge: Evidence for emotional content bias in the cumulative recall of urban legends. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 17(1-2), 12-26. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12342189
• Tehrani, J., Nguyen, Q., & Roos, T. (2016). Oral Fairy Tale or Literary Fake? Investigating the Origins of Little Red Riding Hood Using Phylogenetic Network Analysis. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 31(3), 611-636. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqv016
• Graça da Silva, S., & Tehrani, J. (2016). Comparative phylogenetic analyses uncover the ancient roots of Indo-European folktales. Royal Society Open Science, 3(1), Article 150645. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150645
• Stubbersfield, J., Tehrani, J., & Flynn, E. (2015). Serial killers, spiders and cybersex : social and survival information bias in the transmission of urban legends. British Journal of Psychology, 106(2), 288-307. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12073
• Tehrani, J. (2013). The Phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood. PLoS ONE, 8(11), Article e78871. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0078871
• Larson, G., Stephens, P., Tehrani, J., & Layton, R. (2013). Exapting exaptation. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 28(9), 497-498. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2013.05.018
• Stubbersfield, J., & Tehrani, J. (2013). Expect the Unexpected? Testing for Minimally Counterintuitive (MCI) Bias in the Transmission of Contemporary Legends: A Computational Phylogenetic Approach. Social Science Computer Review, 31(1), 90-102. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439312453567
• Layton, R., Tehrani, J., Tian, Y., Du, X., & Yi, G. (2012). The transmission of culture in weaving and woodblock printing, Shandong Province
• Tehrani, J. (2011). Patterns of evolution in Iranian tribal textiles. Evolution: Education and Outreach, 4(3), 390-396. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12052-011-0345-2
• Matthews, L., Tehrani, J., Jordan, F., Collard, M., & Nunn, C. (2011). Testing for divergent transmission histories among cultural characters: a study using Bayesian phylogenetic methods and Iranian tribal textile data. PLoS ONE, 6(4), Article e14810. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0014810
• Kendal, J., Tehrani, J., & Odling-Smee, J. (2011). Human Niche Construction in Interdisciplinary Focus. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 366(1566), 785-792. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0306
• Tehrani, J., Collard, M., & Shennan, S. (2010). The cophylogeny of populations and cultures: reconstructing the evolution of Iranian tribal craft traditions using trees and jungles. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 365(1559), 3865-3874. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0020
• Tehrani, J. (2010). The past and future of the evolutionary taxonomy of cultures. Journal of cultural and evolutionary psychology, 8(2), 169-182. https://doi.org/10.1556/jep.8.2010.2.6
• Tehrani, J., & Collard, M. (2009). On the relationship between interindividual cultural transmission and population-level cultural diversity: a case study of weaving in Iranian tribal populations. Evolution and Human Behavior, 30(4), 286-300. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2009.03.002
• Bentley, R., Layton, R., & Tehrani, J. (2009). Kinship, marriage, and the genetics of past human dispersals. Human Biology: The Official Publication of the American Association of Anthropological Genetics, 81(2-3), 159-179. https://doi.org/10.3378/027.081.0304
• Tehrani, J., & Riede, F. (2008). Towards an archaeology of pedagogy: learning, teaching and the generation of material culture traditions. World Archaeology, 40(3), 316-331. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438240802261267
• Tehrani, J., Bentley, R., & O'Brien, M. (2008). Language is nothing special: Response to "Across the curious parallel of language and species evolution" by J. Whitfield. PLoS Biology, 6, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060186
• Collard, M., Shennan, S., & Tehrani, J. (2006). Branching, blending, and the evolution of cultural similarities and differences among human populations. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27(3), 169-184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2005.07.003
• Tehrani, J. (2006). The role of ethnography in the science of cultural evolution (Comment on Mesoudi, Whiten and Laland). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29, 363-364
• Tehrani, J., & Collard, M. (2002). Investigating cultural evolution through biological phylogenetic analyses of Turkmen textiles. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 21(4), 443-463. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0278-4165%2802%2900002-8

Newspaper/Magazine Article

• Tehrani, J. (2013). As they spread, folktales evolve like biological species...

Other (Print)

• Tehrani, J. (2013). Viewpoint: Did our brains evolve to foolishly follow celebrities?