Dr Paula Sheppard
Departmental Lecturer in Evolutionary Anthropology
Research and Training Lead for the Grand Union DTP
Unit Affiliation: Institute of Social & Cultural Anthropology
Contact
paula.sheppard@anthro.ox.ac.uk | BSKY: @paulajasheppard.bsky.social | Connect on LinkedIn | Personal Website & Media
Supervision
I am not currently available for supervision.
Bio
I completed an MSc in Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford and another MSc in Social Research Methods from the London School of Economics in 2011. In 2014, I was awarded my PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in and was then employed there as a post-doctoral researcher. I returned to Oxford in 2016 to take up a post-doctoral position with the Oxford Sociology department, investigating the impact of family size on socioeconomic inequality, and the impact of grandparents on social mobility. I have been faculty at the School of Anthropology since 2019, providing teaching for the Medical and Evolutionary anthropology MSc degrees, and for the Human Sciences undergraduates.
Interests
My research centres around reproductive decision-making, the evolution of childhood, and the ecology of families. I use life-history theory as an overarching framework to think about family size, child and maternal health.
I am an Evolutionary Anthropologist and Human Behavioural Scientist, and I apply mixed methodologies to investigate prevailing social phenomena such as what people see as barriers to having children in high-income countries. I have pioneered a new methodology to address this question in the UK and I've found that social support is the most important thing men and women are looking for. Gender equality in childcare and the support of hands-on dads are especially important for highly-educated women when making the decision to start a family.
I am also looking at the impact of family size on child health outcomes in a large cross-cultural study, part of the Templeton-funded project on the evolutionary dynamics of religion, family size, and child success.
I am a fellow of the Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group at Oxford and Outreach Officer for the European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association. I am an associate editor for the Journal of Biosocial Science, and I serve on the ESRC Peer Review College.
Teaching
I teach Quantitative Methods and Evolutionary Medicine and Public Health to Masters and Undergraduate students. This programme has an accompanying seminar series on my YouTube channel where you can see previous talks.
Research Spotlight
The Behavioral Ecology of the Family
A special issue of Social Sciences edited by Dr Paula Sheppard and Dr Kristin Snopkowski. July 2021.
Family is a cornerstone of social science research and a building block of human sociality, and here we argue that by utilizing the theoretical framework of HBE, we can develop new and empirically-testable predictions for human family research.
Recent Research
