Maxime Derex

I am a CNRS Research Scientist in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Toulouse School of Economics and the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST).

Previously, I worked as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow in the Human Behaviour, Culture and Cognition group at the University of Exeter. From 2014-2017, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Human Evolution & Social Change and the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University.

My research investigates the mechanisms underlying cumulative cultural evolution. Through experiments and other methods, I explore questions such as: What cognitive abilities enable humans to produce increasingly complex technologies? What kinds of social interaction patterns promote collective intelligence? And to what extent do pre-existing solutions constrain exploration and creativity?