PROFILE

Joe Stubbersfield, Ph.D., is a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Winchester, U.K. His research draws on cultural evolution, social learning, and cognitive anthropology, and focuses on how cognitive biases influence both the content and propagation of information, in particular misinformation, conspiracy theories, urban legends, and other contemporary folklore.

He holds a B.Sc. in psychology from the University of Manchester, an M.Sc. in evolutionary psychology from the University of Liverpool, and a joint Psychology and Anthropology Ph.D. from the University of Durham. He has held previous posts at the University of St Andrews, the University of Durham, and Heriot-Watt University, before joining the University of Winchester in 2021.

He is the current editor of the cultural evolution collection for Humanities & Social Sciences Communications and a lead designer of a free, online learning module on the Cultural Evolution of Narratives for the Cultural Evolution Society.