The research group Cultural Evolution of the Arts explores the historical dynamics of artistic forms (literature, film, music, and video games) using longitudinal datasets and computational methods.

Why do the arts change? Modern movies, with their spectacular visual effects, are very different from the black-and-white silent films of a century ago. Contemporary video games, often strikingly realistic, have come a long way from Pong and Pac-Man. The same goes for literature, music, and other forms of art. The goal of this Max Planck Independent Research Group is to understand the forces driving such changes. We are especially interested in how demography, cognition, and geography can explain long-term patterns in the arts. The research of the group relies on large-scale datasets, machine learning, Bayesian statistics, and mathematical modeling.

Our group is growing, and we are hiring PhD students and postdocs. If you share the fascination with cultural evolution, the arts, and computational methods, feel free to reach out.

The group is also hosting an ERC Starting Grant Macroevolution of European Literature.