I am interested in the evolutionary, cultural, and psychological processes through which complex human organizational patterns emerge. My approach consists largely of developing and analyzing mathematical and computational models of dynamic populations, which are informed by research across many disciplines. Some areas of study closely related to my work include social and cultural evolution, social identity and group formation, mate choice, institutional mechanisms for cooperation, social and cultural constraints on decision making, cognition, biological pattern formation, agent-based modeling, and the philosophy of modeling.
Evolutionary Dynamics, Public Good Games, Emergence of Cooperation.
Evolution of social behavior and complex systems
Professor of Shibaura Institute of Technology
Computational social science
especially, evolutionary simulation of a society
My interests center around long-term human ecology and landscape dynamics with ongoing projects in the Mediterranean (late Pleistocene through mid-Holocene) and recent work in the American Southwest (Holocene-Archaic). I’ve done fieldwork in Spain, Bosnia, and various locales in North America and have expertise in hunter/gatherer and early farming societies, geoarchaeology, lithic technology, and evolutionary theory, with an emphasis on human/environmental interaction, landscape dynamics, and techno-economic change.
Quantitative methods are critical to archaeological research, and socioecological sciences in general. They are an important focus of my research, especially emphasizing dynamic modeling, spatial technologies (including GIS and remote sensing), statistical analysis, and visualization. I am a member of the open source GRASS GIS international development team that is making cutting edge spatial technologies available to researchers and students around the world.
After being the economic development officer for the Little/Salmon Carmacks First Nation, Tim used all his spare time trying to determine a practical understanding of the events he witnessed. This led him to complexity, specifically human emergent behaviour and the evolutionary prerequisites present in human society. These prerequisites predicted many of the apparently immutable ‘modern problems’ in society. First, he tried disseminating the knowledge in popular book form, but that failed – three times. He decided to obtain PhD to make his ‘voice’ louder. He chose sociology, poorly as it turns out as he was told his research had ‘no academic value whatsoever’. After being forced out of University, he taught himself agent-based modelling to demonstrate his ideas and published his first peer-reviewed paper without affiliation while working as a warehouse labourer. Subsequently, he managed to interest Steve Keen in his ideas and his second attempt at a PhD succeeded. His most recent work involves understanding the basic forces generated by trade in a complex system. He is most interested in how the empirically present evolutionary prerequisites impact market patterns.
Economics, society, complexity, systems, ecosystem, thermodynamics, agent-based modelling, emergent behaviour, evolution.
I am interested in the interface between biology and computation. I am especially focused on modelling and simulation of evolutionary processes.
Prehistoric archaeology of hunter-gatherer societies in Mesoamerica and American Southeast; comparative analysis of urban form and service provision; social inequality; complex adaptive systems; cultural evolution.