I am Professor of Language Evolution at the University of Edinburgh and elected Fellow of the British Academy, Royal Society of Edinburgh, Cognitive Science Society, and a member of the Academy of Europe. I work in parallel on scientific and artistic investigations of cultural evolution and the origins of human uniqueness, particularly the evolution of language. I founded the Centre for Language Evolution, which has pioneered techniques for growing languages in the experiment lab and exploring language evolution using computer simulations. My artistic work includes Cybraphon, which won a BAFTA in 2009 and is now part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Scotland.