Dr Adam Kenny

adam kenny

 

Departmental Lecturer in Cognitive Anthropology

I am an evolutionary anthropologist who uses tools from across the social sciences, in particular ethnographic fieldwork and behavioural economic games, to better understand human inter-group dynamics. Most of my research takes place in the Italian city of Siena, where I collaborate with local neighbourhoods known as the contrade. I also promote the adoption of various open research practices through teaching and practice.

I am currently Departmental Lecturer at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford, where I am also Course Director for the MSc in Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology. I was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Calleva Research Centre for Evolution and Human Sciences, Magdalen College, Oxford. I hold a DPhil in Anthropology from the University of Oxford (supervisor: Laura Fortunato), alongside an MSc in Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology (UCL) and an MA in Natural Sciences (University of Cambridge).

 

Contact details: adam.kenny@anthro.ox.ac.uk

Personal website link: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9306-3091; https://twitter.com/kennyanthropus
 

Research and teaching

My research interests fall under the keywords: "cooperation"; "field experiments"; "group relations".

I convene papers at both under- and post-graduate levels, as part of the BA in Human Sciences and the MSc in Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology. As a qualified The Carpentries Instructor, I have taught foundational coding and data science skills to researchers across Oxford.

Selected publications

Kenny, AR, & Fortunato, L (2022). Group dynamics in the contrada communities of Siena, Italy. SocArXiv.

Takács, K, Gross, J, Testori, M, Letina, S, Kenny, AR, Power, EA, & Wittek, RP (2021). Networks of reliable reputations and cooperation: a review. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 376(1838), 20200297.

Kenny, AR (2021). The importance of open research practices to empirical research in the evolutionary social sciences. Evolution and Human Behavior, 42(3), 268–270.