Rebecca Sear

Rebecca Sear, FBA is a British anthropologist and academic, who specialises in evolutionary anthropology, demography and human behavioural ecology.^[1][2] Since 2024, she has been director of the Centre for Culture and Evolution at Brunel University London.^[3] She previously taught at the London School of Economics, Durham University and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.^[4]

Sear undertook a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in anthropology at University College London which she completed in 2001.^[4] Her doctoral thesis was titled "Evolutionary demography of a rural Gambian population".^[5]

In July 2024, she was elected Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.^[6]

Selected works

• Sear, Rebecca; Mace, Ruth; McGregor, Ian A. (22 August 2000). "Maternal grandmothers improve nutritional status and survival of children in rural Gambia". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences. 267 (1453): 1641–1647. doi:10.1098/rspb.2000.1190. PMC 1690719.
• Sear, Rebecca; Steele, Fiona; McGregor, Ian A.; Mace, Ruth (2002). "The Effects of Kin on Child Mortality in Rural Gambia". Demography. 39 (1): 43–63. doi:10.2307/3088363. ISSN 0070-3370.
• Sear, Rebecca; Mace, Ruth (January 2008). "Who keeps children alive? A review of the effects of kin on child survival". Evolution and Human Behavior. 29 (1): 1–18. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2007.10.001.
• Sear, Rebecca; Coall, David (2011). "How Much Does Family Matter? Cooperative Breeding and the Demographic Transition". Population and Development Review. 37: 81–112. ISSN 0098-7921.
• Burger, Oskar; Lee, Ronald; Sear, Rebecca, eds. (2024). Human Evolutionary Demography. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. ISBN 978-1-80064-170-9.