Max Planck Research Group Leaders

Heidi Colleran

Dr Heidi Colleran · GSH

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology · Leipzig, Germany

Email
heidi_colleran [at] eva [dot] mpg [dot] de

Biography

I’m an interdisciplinary anthropologist with broad training in the humanities and social sciences. Following an undergraduate degree in Philosophy (major) and Russian (minor) at Trinity College Dublin (2004), I left Ireland to complete two master’s degrees at UCL, in Human Evolution and Behaviour (2005) and in Anthropology (2008), as well as a certificate in Psychology at London Metropolitan University (2007). I stayed at UCL to complete my PhD in Evolutionary Anthropology (2013). After a short postdoc at UCL I moved to the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST), where I was their first-ever anthropology hire. In 2016 I joined the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena. There I managed a flagship interdisciplinary field-project in Vanuatu, involving geneticists, archaeologists, linguists and psychologists, and spent over 17 months in the field in Vanuatu. Since 2019 I have been at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, where I lead the BirthRites Independent Research Group, hosted by the Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture.

Education and positions held

  • 2019 – present
    • Independent Research Group Leader, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig
  • 2016 – 2019
    • Senior Scientist, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena
  • 2014 – 2016
    • Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse
  • 2013 – 2014
    • Postdoctoral Associate, University College London
  • 2009 – 2013
    • PhD, University College London

Research Summary

Our work lies at the intersection of socio-cultural anthropology, demography, and cultural evolution. My main area of interest is the relationship between reproductive behaviour, culture, and population dynamics. The BirthRites research group explores the anthropology of reproduction, broadly construed, and its implications for human evolution and demography. Our interdisciplinary approach combines the strengths of both humanities and social sciences to bridge micro and macro levels of analysis. Three interrelated streams of research involve primary anthropological fieldwork, cross-cultural and macro-level analysis, and theoretical modeling.

Key publications

  • Colleran, H. (2020) Market integration reduces kin density in women’s ego-networks in rural Poland. Nat Commun 11, 266. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-14158-2
  • Colleran H. (2016) The cultural evolution of fertility decline, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 371(1692): 20150152 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0152
  • Colleran H. and Mace R. (2015) Social network and community level influences on contraceptive use: evidence from rural Poland, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 282(1807): 20150398 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.0398
  • Colleran H., Jasienska G., Nenko I., Galbarczyk A. and Mace R. (2015) Fertility decline and the changing dynamics of wealth, status and inequality, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 282(1806): 20150287 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.0287
  • Colleran H., Jasienska G., Nenko I., Galbarczyk A. and Mace R. (2014) Community-level education accelerates the cultural evolution of fertility decline, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281(1779): 20132732 https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2013.2732