I am a behavioural biologist specialising in social cognition. Currently I work as an Associate 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
New paper in Nature Communications!
30 April 2026
Really happy with our most recent paper:
"Despotism promotes dyadic cooperation through enhanced interdependencies in non-human primate societies"
In a series of experiments on more than 100 macaques from 13 different groups and six different species, we show that the more despotic species outperform their egalitarian counterparts in a cooperation task. Whereas they cooperate with fewer partners they are more successful with these few partners. Behavioural observations and agent based models confirm that while animals in more despotic societies tend to have less friends, these friendships are tighter, and most importantly more stable. We argue that it is these interdependencies that may have played an important role in the evolution of cooperation.
New Year New Papers
April 2026
The Year has started with the publication of two new studies. One on how motherhood predicts emotional reactivity when confronted with a predator, and one on The Many facets of self-directed behaviour, both on macaques.
Promoted to Associate Professor
April 1st
2026
I'm delighted to share that as of April 1st I will start as an Associate Professor at the Animal Behaviour and Cognition group of Utrecht University.
