Cat is a Professor at the University of St Andrews. She studies the evolution of communication and social behaviour in wild apes and other species. Her work on gesture focuses on wild apes across Africa, and she is often based in her field-sites in Budongo or Bugoma, Uganda, and in the Moyen-Bafing, Guinea. You can find Cat’s publications and CV here, and the lab GitHub here.

Leveda is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow researching social dominance in bonobos. She conducted her PhD with the Max Plank Institute and Harvard on bonobo inter-group behaviour and social strategies in Kokolopori, using both behavioural observation and endocrinological sampling methods.

Luke is a Schmidt Science postdoctoral Fellow at the University of St Andrews and an assistant professor at Ohio State University. His research investigates the functional morphology of wild chimpanzees and other primates, focusing on the limb kinematics involved in vertical climbing, nesting behaviour, and gestural communication.

Matthew is a comparative psychologist specializing in the evolution of communication, gesture, and language. His PhD explored the shared use and understanding of ape-typical gestures in human children. Recently, Matt joined the ZooGestures project as a Postdoctoral Researcher, working on exploring the wider influence that nonhuman species has had on the evolution of human technicity, and developing tools to aid coding nonhuman communicative signals.

Harmonie Klein is a PhD student at the University of St Andrews studying wild chimpanzee behaviour. Since 2017, her research has focused on hunting, food sharing, and social dynamics in chimpanzee communities in Gabon and Uganda. She co-founded Parlons Terrain, an initiative promoting early-career researcher preparation and well-being for fieldwork. She is currently vice-President of the French-speaking Society of Primatology (FSDP).

Alexandra is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow researching the presence of human language laws linked with communicative efficiency in non-vocal communication. Specifically, her research focuses on ape gestural communication, communicative gestures produced by pre-verbal children, and spontaneous language-like gestures employed by deaf children with hearing parents.

Tapinder is conducting her PhD on elephant emotion and wellbeing at the University of Portsmouth in collaboration with the Wild Minds lab to develop machine learning models for the automated detection of elephant postures and behaviour.

Charlotte conducted her PhD at the University of St Andrews. Her research focuses on exploring machine learning approaches to automate feature tracking and behaviour coding in ape gesture and tool using.

Gal is a graduate research fellow at the University of St Andrews. Her research explores gesture and co-ordination in the social behaviour of chimpanzees and other species.

Gabriela holds a Fyssen Fellowship. She is a social anthropologist trained in primatology. She completed her PhD at École Normale Supérieure in 2018, studying human-chimpanzee social relations in Japan. Her work focuses on cross-cultural differences in social learning and interaction between humans and chimpanzees.

Vesta completed her MSc exploring the form and function of buttress-drumming in five communities of wild chimpanzees across populations in East and West Africa. She is now extending her work on gesture to include elephant communication in a collaboration with our lab and the University of Vienna.

Elodie is studying for her PhD at the University of Oxford with Susana Carvalho and Mike Huffman(Kyoto University), and is collaborating with our lab on a study of self medicative behaviour and its acquisition in the Budongo chimpanzees. Read about Elodie’s pathway to science here.

Kirsty completed her PhD at the University of St Andrews in 2016. She studied the gestures of wild bonobos at Wamba, DRCongo and during her postdoctoral research she focused on incorporating philosophical and linguistic approaches to ape communication. You can find Kirsty’s publications here.

Charlotte is a research fellow at the University of St Andrews. Her current research investigates the natural gestural repertoire of wild mountain gorillas in Bwindi, Uganda and assesses the gestures’ communicative function across individuals, age-sex groups, and behavioural contexts.

Viola studied for her MSc at the University of St Andrews and is working on a systematic study of perishable tools. She has worked as a research assistant with the chimpanzees at our site in Moyen Bafing.

While at the Wild Minds Lab, Alex was a post-doctoral Leverhulme Fellow exploring syntactic structures in ape communication. His previous work includes studies of mangabey social behaviour and chimpanzee facial expressions and play. He is currently a a Lecturer in Psychology at Queen Mary University of London. More about Alex here.

Daniela is a research fellow whose collaboration with our lab explored the development of communication and accommodation in human and chimpanzee gestures.

Adrian conducted his PhD at Budongo, Uganda. His ongoing research includes chimpanzee vocalisations, multi-signal and multi-modal communication, and the social aspect of communication. More here.

Dick is an emeritus professor at the University of St Andrews. He studies communication and cognition across numerous taxa. You can find Dick’s publications here.

Erica is a Professor at UCLA. She studies the role of gesture in language evolution and acquisition. Her lab conducts research on both human children and non-human great apes (orang-utans and chimpanzees) More here.

Nate is a Professor at Dartmouth College. An anthropologist and evolutionary biologist, he studies the behaviour, ecology, and functional morphology of human and nonhuman primates. Our collaborations include work on fire festivals and crowd behaviour, nest-building and syntax, and social rhythm.

Brittany completed her PhD at St Andrews in 2016, studying gesture in chimpanzee sexual displays. Her research includes facial expression use in American Sign Language and parallels with chimpanzee facial expression.

Emilie is currently studying joint action coordination in chimpanzees, bonobos, and human children, focusing on communicative signals (gestures, vocalisations, and other visual signals). Emilie’s research & photography.

Eve is a research associate at the University of Durham. Her research explores socialisation and development in people and nonhuman primates. She is currently working on a multi-cultural project using naturalistic video footage to explore social learning biases in children and adolescents.

Kat is an Associate Professor at the University of Zurich. She is the co-leader (with Cat Hobaiter) of The Creative Ape project. Kat is interested in the evolutionary origins of ape behaviour, including our own. Her research focusses on tool use and culture and involves field work with wild apes across the African continent. She is the director of the Nimba Chimpanzee Project in Guinea and co-directs bonobo research at Wamba in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Hella is a PhD student at the University of Kent. Her projects include work on leaf-tools in wild chimpanzees, especially leaf- and moss-sponge use and construction, and on female social relationships.

Liran is leader of the Max Planck Research Group Cooperative Cultures. She studies the intersection between intergroup dynamics, cooperation, and social bonds in chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest living relatives, as windows into our past. She is especially interested in questions like what shapes collective action and the emergence of group-level cooperative actions? She is a co-director of the Tai Chimpanzee Project and the Moyen Bafing Chimpanzee Project.

Joanne completed her PhD at St Andrews in 1998, studying the untaught gestural communication of gorillas at San Francisco Zoo. Joanne continues to research and write as an independent researcher. More about Joanne here.

Erin completed her dissertation on environmental constraints in savanna chimpanzees living at the Western edge of their biogeographical range in Senegal. Her main research interests orbit around questions related to ecology, behavior, biogeography, and evolution. She studies these processes focusing on Pan species and is particularly interested in how Pan evolutionary patterns can inform us on similar processes during human evolution. She is one of the co-directors of the Moyen Bafing Chimpanzee Project. More on Erin here.