Sam’s role at the HDRH is to understand the breadth of computational methods used within the HASS community at ANU, and the technological and infrastructural barriers researchers are facing. With a strong background in statistical inference and computational modelling (such as phylogenetics, machine learning, and auto-correlative models), in fields such as linguistics, anthropology, and population health, Sam is well versed in the technical challenges facing both Humanities and Social Science researchers, and their methodological approaches. Sam completed his PhD in Anthropology at the University of Bristol where he developed quantitative approaches to the evolution of kinship terminology. Previously, Sam trained in statistics and psychology at the University of Auckland, where he also went on to complete an MSc in Psychology.
His current research work spans several major research threads. In the domain of kinship, Sam helped develop Kinbank (www.kinbank.net), a global database of kinship terminology for over 1,200 languages and has used it to investigate why human kinship systems, despite their theoretical complexity, converge on a small number of recurring structures worldwide. In musical diversity, he has been a key contributor to The Global Jukebox (www.theglobaljukebox.org), a publicly accessible database of over 6,000 coded songs from more than a thousand cultures, using it to demonstrate that global musical diversity is largely independent of linguistic and genetic histories, a finding published in Nature Communications. He is also a contributor to Grambank, a large-scale typological database whose findings appeared in Science Advances. Most recently, his Pacific Creoles project is building large linguistic corpora for Tok Pisin, Solomon Island Pijin, and Bislama to support a new generation of language tools and research across the region.
Sam's research attracts considerable public interest. His work has been covered by New Scientist, Forbes, and The Times, featured on ABC NewsRadio and regional ABC radio, and discussed on the Because Language Podcast and in Cultured Scene Magazine. The Global Jukebox website received over 350,000 views and tens of thousands of social media interactions at launch, while Kinbank drew over 8,000 users in its first year. Sam is also affiliated with the Evolution of Cultural Diversity Initiative (ECDI) and the Pacific Creoles Project, as part of the College of Asia and the Pacific.