Sean Downey is an Associate Professor at The Ohio State University in the Department of Anthropology. His research employs theories and methods from complex adaptive systems to explain how customary Indigenous culture and practices can lead to the emergence of socioecological sustainability. Guided by anthropology’s traditional focus on human cultural and biological diversity, his work aims to address pressing environmental sustainability challenges in contemporary society.

Sean is the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER award, which supports his investigation into the coupled dynamics of Q’eqchi’ Maya social norms, culture, and tropical forest ecosystem dynamics in the Toledo District, Belize. He is an alumnus of the Santa Fe Institute Complex Systems Summer School (2003). His recent publications include a study that uses public goods games to demonstrate how customary agricultural labor exchange norms can contribute to sustainable outcomes in tropical forests (Downey et al. 2020), and one that uses high-resolution drone-based remote sensing data to detect ecosystem enhancement signatures in community forests (Downey et al. 2023). His previous research in complex systems identified early warning signals (EWS) of societal collapse in European Neolithic societies (Downey et al. 2016). He has coauthored several papers with CSH External Faculty member J. Stephen Lansing about Balinese wet rice agriculture and Indonesian language and genetics, including one that was coauthored with CSH President Stefan Thurner (Lansing et al., 2017).

Sean’s current research focuses on developing and validating agent-based models of customary agriculture in swidden (“slash-and-burn”) societies worldwide. He is affiliated with the Sustainability Institute and the Translational Data Analytics Institute at Ohio State University, and he is currently developing a new Bachelor of Science in Computational Social Science in the OSU College of Arts and Sciences.

Downey, Sean S., et al. “An intermediate level of disturbance with customary agricultural practices increases species diversity in Maya community forests in Belize.” Communications Earth & Environment 4.1 (2023): 428.  https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-01089-6

Downey, Sean S., Gerkey, D., & Scaggs, S. A. (2020). The Milpa game: a field experiment investigating the social and ecological dynamics of Q’eqchi’ Maya swidden agriculture. Human Ecology, 48, 423-438. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10745-020-00169-x

Downey, Sean S., Haas Jr, W. R., & Shennan, S. J. (2016). European Neolithic societies showed early warning signals of population collapse. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(35), 9751-9756. https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1602504113

Lansing, J. S., …, Thurner, S., Downey, S. S., … & Cox, M. P. (2017). Kinship structures create persistent channels for language transmission. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(49), 12910-12915. https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1706416114