Carolyn Hodges-Simeon

Dr. Hodges-Simeon is an assistant professor at BU’s College of Arts & Sciences.

She is an interdisciplinary social scientist, utilizing method and theory in human evolutionary biology, behavioral ecology, and biomedical anthropology to understand the origins and consequences of human biological and developmental variation.

Her work has two complementary threads. First, she seeks to understand adaptive developmental plasticity in sex-typical traits by studying the emergence of these traits during puberty and adolescence. In other words, how does the unfolding of development in boys and girls respond adaptively to social, ecological, and cultural inputs from the environment?

The second thread of her work emphasizes the evolutionary origins of sex/gender differences. She uses laboratory-based methods to test theories about the role of intra- and intersexual selection on the origins of sexually dimorphic vocal characteristics in humans.