laura.fortunato@anthro.ox.ac.uk
I am an evolutionary anthropologist with training in biology and
anthropology, and with a strong commitment to interdisciplinary
research. I obtained a 5-year Laurea in biological sciences from the
University of Padova (2003)
and graduate degrees in anthropology from University College
London (MRes, 2004; PhD,
2009).
Between 2010 and 2013 I held an Omidyar Fellowship at the Santa Fe
Institute, an independent
research centre that brings together scientists from across the
natural, social, and historical sciences. In 2013 I joined the
University of
Oxford
as Associate Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Tutorial
Fellow at Magdalen
College.
I was a Research Fellow at the Santa Fe
Institute
until 2015, when I was appointed External Professor. Since 2018 I have
served on the Institute’s Science Steering Committee and Science
Board.
In 2016 I founded Reproducible Research
Oxford (RROx). In 2018 I
contributed to establishment of the UK Reproducibility
Network (UKRN), and I have
served on its Steering Group since. Also in 2018 I joined the Board of
Directors of the Software Freedom
Conservancy.
selected publications
For a full list of publications, see
-
The case for free and open source software in
research and scholarship
Fortunato, L.,
and Galassi, M.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A
2021
journal
preprint
abstract
bib
Free and open source software (FOSS) is any computer
program distributed under a licence that grants the
user rights to run the program for any purpose, to
study it, to modify it, and to redistribute it
either in its original form or modified. We explore
the close ties between FOSS and academia, and in
particular the intersection with computational
reproducibility. We begin by situating FOSS in
relation to other open initiatives in academic
settings — namely open science, open research, and
open scholarship. In this context, we argue that
anyone who actively contributes to the research
process today is a computational researcher, in that
they use computers to manage and store
information. We then provide a primer to FOSS
suitable for researchers in any field, and anyone in
the academic community concerned with the quality of
research and its sustainability. Next, we illustrate
how the notions introduced in the primer apply to
resources for scientific computing, using the GNU
Scientific Library as a case study. We conclude by
discussing why the common interpretation of “open
source” as “open code” is misplaced, and we use this
example to further articulate the case for free and
open source software in research and scholarship.
@article{Fortunato-Galassi_2021,
author = {Fortunato, Laura and Galassi, Mark},
title = {The case for free and open source software in
research and scholarship},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-03-29},
journal = {Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A},
volume = {379},
pages = {20200079},
doi = {10.1098/rsta.2020.0079},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2020.0079},
preprint = {10.31235/osf.io/ye7sx},
abbr = {open research}
}
-
Research culture and reproducibility
Munafò, M.,
Chambers, C.,
Collins, A.,
Fortunato, L.,
and Macleod, M.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
2020
journal
abstract
bib
There is ongoing debate regarding the robustness and
credibility of published scientific research. We
argue that these issues stem from two broad causal
mechanisms: the cognitive biases of researchers and
the incentive structures within which researchers
operate. The UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) is
working with researchers, institutions, funders,
publishers, and other stakeholders to address these
issues.
@article{Munafo-et-al_2020,
title = {Research culture and reproducibility},
author = {Munaf{\`o}, Marcus R and Chambers, Christopher D and Collins, Alexandra M and Fortunato, Laura and Macleod, Malcolm R},
journal = {Trends in Cognitive Sciences},
volume = {24},
number = {2},
pages = {91--93},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-02-01},
doi = {10.1016/j.tics.2019.12.002},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2019.12.002},
abbr = {open research},
publisher = {Elsevier}
}
-
Lineal kinship organization in cross-specific perspective
Fortunato, L.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:
Biological Sciences
2019
journal
abstract
bib
I draw on insights from anthropology to outline a
framework for the study of kinship systems that
applies across animal species with biparental sexual
reproduction. In particular, I define lineal kinship
organization as a social system that emphasizes
interactions among lineally related kin — that is,
individuals related through females only, if the
emphasis is towards matrilineal kin, and individuals
related through males only, if the emphasis is
towards patrilineal kin. In a given population, the
emphasis may be expressed in one or more social
domains, corresponding to pathways for the
transmission of different resources across
generations (e.g. the allocation of food, the
transfer of access to the natal territory or
household). A lineal bias in any domain can be
viewed as a bias in investment towards a particular
set of kin — specifically, towards the offspring
of daughters if the bias is matrilineal, and towards
the offspring of sons if the bias is
patrilineal. Effectively, investment is restricted
to the offspring of the females in the population in
one case, and to the offspring of the males in the
other. This is distinct from a bias in investment
towards daughters and towards sons,
respectively. Overall, I propose a shift in
focus—from viewing matrilineal and patrilineal
kinship as unitary phenomena, to consideration of
the different aspects of the social system featuring
a bias towards lineally related kin.
@article{Fortunato_2019,
author = {Fortunato, Laura},
title = {Lineal kinship organization in cross-specific perspective},
journal = {Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B:
Biological Sciences},
volume = {374},
number = {1780},
pages = {20190005},
year = {2019},
doi = {10.1098/rstb.2019.0005},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0005},
abbr = {kinship}
}