I am a Full Professor of Psychology at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I hold the Santamarian Research Chair in Science, and Affiliate Faculty at the Kinsey Institute.
I am an evolutionary psychologist best known for my work on women’s intrasexual competition: how and why women compete with one another, and what that rivalry reveals about human relationships. My research spans women’s mating strategies, female aggression, co-wife relationships across cultures, and the evolutionary psychology of romance fiction, and much of it brings feminist scholarship and evolutionary science into conversation.
Highlights
- Author of more than 200 peer-reviewed publications
- Editor-in-Chief of the forthcoming APA Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (2 vols., American Psychological Association, 2027)
- Co-author of Evolutionary Psychology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2026), and editor of The Oxford Handbook of Women and Competition (2017) and Evolution’s Empress (2013)
- Recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal (2023), the Association of Atlantic Universities Distinguished Teacher Award (2016) and Saint Mary’s University’s Father Stewart Medal for Excellence in Teaching (2014)
- Guest lecturer in Cunard’s Insight Speaker Series
- Media commentator for outlets including the BBC, CNN, CBC and the Discovery Channel, and author of the Love’s Evolver blog for Psychology Today
For more, see my publications, books and media work.
