Simon Greenhill
University of Auckland, New Zealand
I am an evolutionary scientist who focuses on understanding how languages and cultures evolve. My main research focus is computational methods to study the evolution and diversification of languages. I’ve been particularly involved in developing language phylogenies, where I apply principles from evolutionary biology to trace the relationships and origins of language families, and understand the evolution of language in general. I have also played a key role in developing large-scale databases of linguistic and cultural information, including the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database, POLLEX-Online, D-PLACE, Pulotu, TransNewGuinea.org, Lexibank, and Grambank. My interdisciplinary approach, integrating linguistic data with archaeological and genetic evidence, has helped clarify the complex relationships among the world’s languages, to provide a more comprehensive view of how human populations and their languages have evolved,