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.
About me
News
Ethology, Volume 126, Issue 2, Special Issue:
Studying the Evolution of Cooperation and Prosociality in Birds
New Year New Papers
March 6th 2025
The Year has started with the publication of some new studies. One on self-awareness in both chimpanzees and gorilla's, and one on 3rd-party interventions in ravens. On top of several other papers published during the last year: On eye colour of parrots and macaques; on personality, and same-sex and general relations of macaques; and on prosociality in corvids and children
New Paper in iScience
Jan 12th
2024
Using a set of non-invasive measures, together with Debottam Bhattacharjee, Lena Pflüger, Natasha de Groot and several others we showed: Behavioral, physiological, and genetic drivers of coping in a non-human primate
New Project
Jan 2024
I'm very pleased to announce that we are starting a new project on the social lives and cooperative abilities of Rüppell's vultures, with Eva van Dijk as PhD candidate / PI on this project
