We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2025 ACE Course Design Award! All submissions were carefully evaluated by a panel composed of members of the CES Executive Committee. We wish to thank them for their service and all applicants for their contributions.
ACE Course Design Award Winners
Cultural Evolution
Modeling Social Behavior
Paul Smaldino
University of California, Merced
Evolution of Kinship and Social Organization
Ecology, Nature, and Society
Cristina Moya (with Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Peter Richerson, Brian Vila)
University of California, Davis
The Question of Culture in Animals
Luke Rendell (with M. Webster, E. Garland, C. Hobaiter)
University of St Andrews
Evolution of Human Societies
Alex Mesoudi and Tom Currie
University of Exeter
Cultural Evolution of Music
Sally Street
Durham University
Elements of Anthropology and Evolutionary Archaeology
Marcelo Cardillo and Hernán Muscio
Universidad de Buenos Aires
Adaptation
James Holland Jones
Stanford University
Special Collections
The Science of Race and Racism
Kevin Lala (with Jasmeen Kanwal, Kalyani Twyman)
University of St Andrews
Runners-Up
Methods in Cultural Evolution
Olivier Morin
Université Paris Sciences et Lettres
Shared Minds: Culture, collaboration, and creativity in humans and other animals
Elizabeth Price
Newcastle University
Honorable Mentions
Peter Maňo: Cognitive and evolutionary explanations of rituals
Alex Mesoudi & Tom Currie: Complexity of Human Societies
Rohan Kapitany: Culture and Psychology
Pat Savage: Evolution of Music
Alberto Acerbi: Cultural analytics
Nicole Creanza: Computational analysis of animal behavior
Matthew Turner: Computational Social Science for Sustainability
Paul Smaldino: Cultural Evolution (grad)
Nicole Creanza: Evolution
Christian Cordes: A Naturalistic Approach to Economics
Peter Maňo: Anthropology of uncertainty
We extend a special thanks to both James Holland Jones (Stanford) and Cristina Moya (UC Davis). These two award winners donated their $4000 award funds back to the program so that more awards could be made. We also offer a special thanks to Kevin Lala and coauthors (St. Andrews), who donated their course on The Science of Race and Racism to the CES global teaching community before our award program was ready.