I am a comparative psychologist specializing in social cognition. Currently I work as an Assistant Professor at the Animal Behaviour and Cognition Group of Utrecht University (NL). My research mainly focuses on the proximate mechanisms underlying animal social relations, with special interest in emotions and (their role in) cooperative and prosocial behaviours. For that I use both observational and experimental approaches. Moreover, to put my studies in an evolutionary perspective, I employ a broad comparative approach, focusing on a variety of primate and bird species.
Currently, I also function as the acting President of the European Federation of Primatology (EFP)
About me
News
New Paper in iScience
April 20th 2023
Using a group-service paradigm, my post doc Debottam Bhattacharjee, showed that the highly despotic Japanese macaque can be prosocial too!!
New Paper in American Journal of Primatology
Jan 3rd
2023
Several New Papers
Sep 2022
So far, 2022 has been very productive, with several papers out on (the lack of) mirror self-recognition in corvids, neophobia in birds, raven dominance hierarchies, animal emotions, contagious yawning, personality and cognition, and personality and time-budgets
Ethology, Volume 126, Issue 2, Special Issue:
Studying the Evolution of Cooperation and Prosociality in Birds
