Monique Borgerhoff Mulder

Education

• Ph.D., Anthropology, Northwestern University, 1987
• B.A., M.A Hons, Social Anthropology, Edinburgh University 1975

About

Monique Borgerhoff Mulder trained as a social anthropologist at the University of Edinburgh, and then worked in journalism, teaching and museum archaeology before starting a Ph.D. at Northwestern University, where she wrote a dissertation based on the application of a behavioral ecological and economic model to polygyny in rural Africa . After a post doc at the Evolution and Human Behavior Program at University of Michigan, she joined the UC Davis Anthropology (Evolutionary Wing) faculty in 1991, from where she retired as Distinguished Professor status in 2018-2019. She is now affiliated at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and holds a Senior Research Fellowship at the University of Bristol. In 2021 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and was appointed External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute.

Research Focus

Professor Borgerhoff Mulder is a human behavioral ecologist (HBE) working on projects relating to life history, inequality, natural resource management, and patterned cultural variation. With HBE she explores big "Why" questions about our species: Why do people marry? What is the basis of gender roles in economic and social behavior? Why has fertility dropped so radically in most parts of the world? How can people cooperate over natural resource management? Why is economic growth in the developing world not reducing inequality. Her students work on these and related issues. She has active conservation and development projects, both research and applied, at national and local levels in Tanzania , in Mpimbwe, with Savannas Forever Tanzania, and most recently in Pemba. 

 

Publications

Selected from last two years (for full CV see below)

Andrews. J. and M. Borgerhoff Mulder (2024). The value of failure: The effect of an expired REDD+ conservation program on residents’ willingness for future participation. Ecological Economics

Clark, M., Hamad, H., Andrews, J., Hillis, V., Borgerhoff Mulder, M. (2024). Perceptions of Forest Change and Inter-Group Competition Shape Community-Based Conservation Behaviors. Conservation Biology.  

Andrews, J., Clark, M., Hillis, V and M. Borgerhoff Mulder (2024). The Cultural Evolution of Collective Property Rights in Sustainable Resource Governance. Nature Sustainability

Pretelli, I., et al. (2023). "Foraging and the importance of knowledge in Pemba, Tanzania: Implications for childhood evolution." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 

Pisor, A. C., Borgerhoff Mulder, M and K. M. Smith (2023). "Long-distance social relationships can both undercut and promote local natural resource management." Phil. Trans. R. Soc Lond. B.

Redhead, D. Maliti, E., Andrews, J.B and M. Borgerhoff Mulder (2023). "The interdependence of relational and material wealth inequality in Pemba, Zanzibar." Phil. Trans. R. Soc Lond. B 

Ross, C. T., et al…. M.Borgerhoff Mulder (2023). "Reproductive inequality in humans and other mammals." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Awards

In last 5 years

• Elected to National Academy of Sciences (member 2021)
• Selected for Santa Fe Institute (External Faculty, 2021)
• NSF HNDS-R (36 months 12/01/2022-11/30/2025) Economic Networks and the Dynamics of Wealth Inequality. $400,000. With S. Bowles, M. Jackson, E.Power, D. Murphy and D. Redhead.  
• NSF IBSS-L (60 months 01-01-2017 to 12-01-2021). The effect of social networks on inequality: a longitudinal cross-cultural investigation. With J. Koster, S. Bowles, M. Jackson, and E. Power ($860,000).