Robin Dunbar

Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar (born June 28, 1947, Liverpool)^[1][2] is a British anthropologist and evolutionary biologist, specialising in primate behaviour. He is best known for formulating Dunbar's number, roughly 150, a measurement of the "cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships".^[3]

Dunbar, son of an engineer, received his early education at Northamptonshire, then Magdalen College, Oxford, where his teachers included Nico Tinbergen. He spent two years as a freelance science writer.^[2]

Dunbar's academic and research career includes the University of Bristol,^[4] University of Cambridge from 1977 until 1982, and University College London from 1987 until 1994. In 1994, Dunbar became Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at University of Liverpool, but he left Liverpool in 2007 to take up the post of Director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford.^[1][5]

Professor Dunbar is a director of the British Academy Centenary Research Project (BACRP) "From Lucy to Language: The Archaeology of the Social Brain" and is involved in the planned BACRP "Identifying the Universal Religious Repertoire".

Digital versions of selected published articles authored or co-authored by him are available from the University of Liverpool Evolutionary Psychology and Behavioural Ecology Research Group.

Honors

• 1998, Fellow of the British Academy (FBA)^[2]
• 1994, ad hominem Chair, Psychology, University of Liverpool^[6]

References

Selected publications

• Dunbar. 1984. Reproductive Decisions: An Economic Analysis of Gelada Baboon Social Strategies. Princeton University Press ISBN 0691083606
• Dunbar. 1988. Primate Social Systems. Chapman Hall and Yale University Press ISBN 0801420873
• Dunbar. 1996. The Trouble with Science. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674910192
• Dunbar (ed.). 1995. Human Reproductive Decisions. Macmillan ISBN 0333620518
• Dunbar. 1997. Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language'. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674363345
• Runciman, Maynard Smith, & Dunbar (eds.). 1997. Evolution of Culture and Language in Primates and Humans. Oxford University Press.
• Dunbar, Knight, & Power (eds.). 1999. The Evolution of Culture. Edinburgh University Press ISBN 0813527309
• Dunbar & Barrett. 2000. Cousins. BBC Worldwide: London ISBN 0789471558
• Cowlishaw & Dunbar. 2000. Primate Conservation Biology. University of Chicago Press ISBN 0226116360
• Barrett, Dunbar & Lycett. 2002. Human Evolutionary Psychology. London: Palgrave ISBN 069109621X
• Dunbar, Barrett & Lycett. 2005. Evolutionary Psychology, a Beginner's Guide. Oxford: One World Books ISBN 1851683569
• Dunbar. 2004. The Human Story. London: Faber and Faber ISBN 0571191339

External links

• Research profile at the Evolutionary Psychology and Behavioural Ecology Research Group, University of Liverpool.
• Publications list for the Evolutionary Psychology and Behavioural Ecology Research Group.
• "The Social Brain Hypothesis" by Dunbar (1998).
• The Human Behaviour and Evolution Society
• What Makes us HumanPulse Project Podcast: What Makes us Human? (22 October 2008, Oxford)