Madeleine Beekman

Madeleine Beekman is the author of The Origin of Language. She is the professor emerita of evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology at the University of Sydney, Australia. In the academic year of 2020–21, Beekman was a resident fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin), which is where the idea for The Origin of Language was born. She currently lives with her husband in Australia’s northern tropical rainforest, where she can observe the endangered cassowary from her office. She has two adult daughters and a tiny granddaughter.