Department of Anthropology

Trained as a biological anthropologist, Dr. Hess received a BA from UCLA in 1997, an MA from UCSB in 1999, and a PhD from UCSB in 2006. She completed a predoctoral fellowship with the Max Planck Institute for Human Development's LIFE program in 2005, as well as a postdoctoral fellowship with the Institute for Theoretical Biology at Humboldt University in Berlin in 2007. Dr. Hess is currently a visiting assistant professor in the Anthropology Dept. at WSU Vancouver.

Dr. Hess studies coalitional competition in evolutionary perspective. She conducted her anthropological fieldwork in college Greek communities, and has conducted numerous experiments testing hypotheses derived from "Informational Warfare" theory, which proposes that coalitions may be useful in reputational competition (via, e.g., gossip) due to their improved abilities to collect, analyze, and disseminate relevant information. More broadly, she is interested in the evolution of cooperation in small groups.