Jonathan R. Goodman

Biography

Jonathan R. Goodman is a writer and an interdisciplinary researcher at Darwin College, Cambridge and at Cambridge Public Health where he specialises in human social evolution, the relationship between disease and behaviour and cultural change. His work explores how mechanisms of exploitation in cellular communication can be explored more broadly to explain how complex social groups evolve, blending evolutionary biology, anthropology, cognitive science, philosophy, and health.

Prior to his PhD at Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, he was a Fellow at the Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London and a Templeton Foundation–grant-funded researcher at City University in New York’s Department of Biology. He has also worked as an editor of an oncology-focused magazine published by Haymarket Media and as a research assistant at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, widely considered the world’s leading oncology centre.

He has a BA in Philosophy from Emory University and an MA and research MPhil from the University of London, where he focused on ethics and the philosophy of biology. He writes extensively on science, from the evolution of language to public health. His popular bylines include the Guardian, New Scientist, Scientific American, The Conversation, Aeon magazine and the Times Higher Education, and his academic research has appeared in journals across a variety of disciplines. He’s an avid reader of fiction, in particular Russian literature and the works of Jane Austen. Originally from Detroit, Michigan, he now lives in London with his partner Daniella and newborn baby Misha Lev.