About Tom Dickins

Currently I am professor of behavioural science at Middlesex University, London. I am also a research associate at the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science at the London School of Economics.

(Research) Empirically I work on humans and birds with a number of collaborators and research students.

Human work has focused upon behavioural and physiological responses to inequality. This has included projects on early fertility in Western populations, hygiene norms and quality of life. Underlying all this work is an assumption that inequality captures important ecological factors to which humans will respond at various levels of biological organization.  I have also worked on applied projects to do with pro-environmental behaviour. For example, I have helped to design and deliver a behaviour change project in London to reduce fly-tipping, and I am currently developing a project with an international team about people's responses to climate change and mitigation technologies. Negative environmental impacts are closely aligned to issues of inequality, and so there is a common thread.

I work on Kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla) on Lundy, an island off the coast of North Devon, and in various urban settings. These birds are red listed on the UK list of conservation concern and vulnerable on the IUCN red list of threatened species. My principal interest is in the behaviour at the nest, and how this might vary under different conditions. How many eggs do they lay? How does parental effort vary? How do chicks interact? I am also interested in the physical properties of nest sites and the choices made there. To this end, the move from natural coastal cliff sites to urban nesting sites provides a fascinating research project. I do other urban seabird work and monitor avian biodiversity for the Corporation of the City of London.

My theoretical work is focused upon the nature of evolutionary theory and its application, especially in behavioural science.  Recent projects include a monograph about the Modern Synthesis, and an edited volume on contemporary and historical perspectives on evolutionary biology. As a part of this work I have developed a view on the role of information in evolutionary theory and I am currently working on how this impacts various causal assumptions in our models. I have also run projects on other aspects of theory in the behavioural sciences.

(Experience) I have taught across the broad range of the British Psychological Society curriculum in various U.K. universities. Presently I teach on contemporary issues in psychology (second year undergraduate), coordinate and teach all of evolutionary approaches to behaviour (final year undergraduate option) and run a field trip to Lundy. I also supervise undergraduate and taught postgraduate thesis work, teach across the taught masters curriculum, and I have a number of postgraduate research students.  For the Department of Natural Sciences I give lectures on evolutionary models, natural and sexual selection, and foraging theory. Finally I run a five session short course on Science in Context for all postgraduate research students in the university. 

At Middlesex I have been the Director of Research for Psychology, Deputy Head and Acting Head of the Department of Psychology. I am on the Departmental Leadership Team and Departmental Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee and do university wide committee work. I am an active mentor.

From 2006 I was involved in the foundation and organization of the European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association. I have much experience of editing, reviewing, conference organization and public engagement.

(Academic family members) I am not the only academic in the Dickins family, and I collaborate with the others.  More information can be discovered here.