Emma Kopp

Hi! I'm a 3rd year PhD student in Statistics at the CEREMADE lab at Paris-Dauphine University, supervised by Robin Ryder. My research focuses on Bayesian statistical modelling for complex models with small amounts of data, with applications to social and economic data.

My academic journey started in Paris doing a mathematic bachelor followed by a statistics and a computer science master. During my PhD I had the chance to work in London at Imperial with PhD director Robin and at the University of Edinburgh with Grégoire Clarte. This year, I visited Francesca Panero at Sapienza University of Rome to work on food security estimation with Sahoko Ishida, and Rebecca Leygonie.

News

Feb 01, 2026	Back in Paris! After spending 25 years in Paris, traveling is real chance for me. It allows me to discover new cultures and professional environments, while identifying, by contrast, the elements essential to my personal balance. Next step, writing the thesis
Sep 01, 2025	Eating gelato 🍦 in Roma 🇮🇹

Publications

OSF
Contrasting modes of cultural evolution: Kra-Dai languages and weaving technologies

Christopher D Buckley , Emma Kopp , Thomas Pellard , and 2 more authors

Aug 2024

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The paper investigates the evolution of languages and weaving technologies among Kra-Dai peoples in southwest China and southeast Asia, using Bayesian Markov-Chain Monte Carlo methods to analyze phylogenies. Languages and looms evolved in related but different ways. Hlai speakers of Hainan are outgroups in both linguistic and loom phylogenies. Looms used by speakers of closely related languages tend to be similar.
@article{buckley2024contrasting, title = {Contrasting modes of cultural evolution: Kra-Dai languages and weaving technologies}, author = {Buckley, Christopher D and Kopp, Emma and Pellard, Thomas and Ryder, Robin J and Jacques, Guillaume}, year = {2024}, month = aug, publisher = {OSF}, }

Selected Talks

Predicting food security using secondary data, and a reflection on the links of food and migration

Emma Kopp and Francesca Panero

Oct 2025

Presentation for the Migration and Displacement Action Plan for Sub-Saharan Africa, UNESCO chair

Abs

A presentation on applying Bayesian computational statistics to study cultural evolution in languages and technologies.
Bayesian Methods for Cultural Evolution Analysis

Emma Kopp

Jan 2025

University of Édimbourg Seminar 2025

Abs

A presentation on applying Bayesian computational statistics to study cultural evolution in languages and technologies.
How far can we trust phylogeny

Emma Kopp

Jun 2024

🏆 Venice ISBA, I won the j-ISBA 2024 talk award for this talk

Abs

A talk discussing the reliability of phylogenetic methods in historical linguistic evolution studies.