Dr Lia Betti

Very, very happy that our paper is finally out! We look at how tight a fit primates experience at birth, and found really cool results. It has been a long journey from collecting the first data seven years ago! A brief thread (1/8) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In 2002, success rate at the ERC starting grant was 14%. This already felt too low to both panel and applicants, but was constrained by government funding. Well, 5 years later, it is now projected to be 5%. This is not sustainable.

2-year postdoc opportunity for a researcher with strong background in morphology, biological modelling, ecology, and phylogeny to pioneer research into how deep-time spatial dynamics shaped the early human family tree. Contact Gabriele Macho at Vrije Universiteit Brussel if interested!

She wrote all that code by hand and it landed on the moon. Such an iconic photo. Here’s to Margaret Hamilton (1936–2026). What an incredible and pioneering woman for science. An inspiration to us all. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Come and join our team at UCL Anthropology! Part-time (80%) fixed-term teaching post in Environmental Anthropology, December 2026-March 2028. Deadline 7 October!

Sign the thank-you letter to RNLI for rescuing people at sea. act.38degrees.org.uk/act/rnli-tha...

'The need to outsource services following redundancy programmes may be increasing universities’ costs rather than lowering them, as well as impacting staff productivity, a report warns.'

The order to stop teaching about human-caused climate change came at a Sept 2025 meeting of the geography program. Faculty were told to “remove all mention of human causes of climate change from their courses.” & warned if they went to press or politicians, the entire dept would likely be dissolved.

'Allegations that Cofnas was not qualified for his research role and would cause a “negative impact” by promoting racial pseudoscience were made to university leaders months before Arday died, the Guardian understands.' 1/2

Cuts to NERC isotope funding to disproportionately affect archaeological science. Rather than spread the load across all subject, archaeological science will no longer be supported. This is terrible for our research community and is short-sighted. www.isotopesuk.org/announcement...

Yet ANOTHER great opportunity at our cluster HUMAN ORIGINS: ❗️ We‘re looking for a Independent Junior Research Group Leader in the field of hominin postcranial evolution ❗️ Apply here till October 15th: uni-tuebingen.de/en/universit... #Paleosky

New opportunity: fully funded PhD position within the Cluster of Excellence HUMAN ORIGINS Investigate experimentally the evolutionary significance of transformative Stone Age techniques in this project on cognitive demands, and explore the probability of their success. Deadline: 15 September 2026.

‼️ Fantastic new opportunity within our Cluster HUMAN ORIGINS ‼️ Full Professorship Early Prehistory at the Department of Geosciences of the University of Tübingen! Deadline for applications: 2nd October 2026. More info: uni-tuebingen.de/en/universit...

"We cannot expect future workers to critically assess AI-generated content without first acquiring knowledge and skills of their own" "the teaching of context-specific and very likely short-lived AI-related skills would shift the cost of corporate training on to students and public institutions."

Surely the bigger question is how an academic with such race questioning views had a position of trust/airtime. How did it feel for colleagues, students from minority backgrounds, or was it fear of OFS Freedom of Speech protocols that gave him licence? And this bsky.app/profile/byli...

These days I like to think of my models as “cartoons”. Realistic enough to capture the core patterns we’re interested in, but simple enough to be meaningfully understood.

Looking for an Associate Prof position? Interested in behavioural ecology & cultural evolution? Come join us at the Dpt of Ecology and Evolution in Lausanne🇨🇭 @dee-unil.bsky.social @unil.bsky.social! Great department & great place to live. Pls RP. Apply here: wwwfbm.unil.ch/releve/appli...

@paleonicole.bsky.social and I have written a short piece on why a tight fit at birth is not unique to humans. Some other primates have it much worse, but seem to have adapted to their obstetrical dilemma in different ways.

Just two weeks left to apply for this exciting position in the @ucl-c4ia.bsky.social

🚨🐵 Paid primate work: We are seeking a new camp and research coordinator for the Born To Be Wild Project; Tazekka National Park, Morocco: Details here (sadly due to funding constraints only available for EU, and potentially UK applicants at a push): groups.google.com/a/g-groups.w...

🚨 PhD opportunity 🚨 Join @palevoprim.bsky.social as part of the #ReVol project (@cnrs.fr & Wits Joint PhD Programme)! Spend 3 years investigating the southern African fossil cercopithecoids to reconstruct past ecology and behavior through skeletal morphology and dental microwear.

1/12 🚨🚨 I am so excited to share chapter 1 of my dissertation, now preprinted here: biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We ask if are their fundamental, shared mechanisms that stop us from inferring the relationship of species and their timescale of divergence #biology #science

In the queue for #BayeuxTapestry tix? How about some light reading? theconversation.com/the-bayeux-t...

For today's plenary at #EFP2026, we're really pleased to welcome Christine Webb from New York University! She'll present her work on how the myth of human exceptionalism shapes animal science.

We're hiring. We’re excited to be recruiting for a Lecturer / Associate Professor in Primate or Human Evolutionary Anatomy to join the Centre for Integrative Anatomy at UCL. 📅Closing date: 20 July 2026 Apply here: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRZ412/l...

Follow the podcast and join our Chief Executive @andrewcopson.bsky.social and humanist historian @madeleineog.bsky.social – along with expert guests – as they uncover the hidden stories behind the people, movements, and ideas that influenced humanism, secularism, and British society.

In accordance with ancient tradition, our next Prime Minister is announced to the nation while standing between a furry and a man with a bin on his head.

I am recruiting a PhD student (fully funded, 4yrs) to analyze modern 🧬 and ancient 🦴 genomic data from humans and domestic animals 🐑 Please share, I am happy to chat at #ICP2026 or #SMBE2026 this summer www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...

Great postdoc opportunity for folk into morphology, biomechanics and human/primate evolution: pliodis.github.io/opportunitie...

🧵A Covid thread - but a good news one! I’m barely writing about Covid anymore because there is barely any Covid to write about. I thought it was worth celebrating this in this thread. 1/7

"My book came out, and they were talking about this false naive style of drawing. There was nothing false about the naivety of my style. I couldn't draw better. This is it." What a star Marjane was...

(Call for applications) Lecturer in Global History of Science histoiresante.blogspot.com/2026/05/post... #histSTM

This is basically harassment of scholars willing to question the Trump administration’s targeting of Chinese colleagues. Innes already had the FBI investigate his lab and was given the all clear. Now USDA is shutting down the Lab, which focuses on making fungus-resistant plants.

Except the dataset was made up with identical responses for the two countries. Scary stuff!