Join the
Animal Behaviour and Cognition group at Utrecht University for a full-time four-year PhD position in comparative psychology / behavioural biology!
Your job The aim of this PhD project is to test whether chimpanzees have the capability and motivation to develop cumulative cultures – the process in which cultural innovations incrementally shape cultural expressions such that they become better suited for their envisioned purpose. You will study chimpanzees’ potential to create and maintain cumulatively established cultures by means of targeted experimental assays. Moreover, you will investigate whether chimpanzees’ social network properties are predictive of their potential to develop cumulative cultures with behavioural observations and network analyses. The position involves 90% research time and 10% teaching activities within the group.
You will be hosted in the Primate Culture Origins Group, led by
Dr Edwin van Leeuwen. The group focuses on cultural evolution in non-human primates. You will be embedded in this team in Utrecht, and co-supervised by Daniel Haun, director of the Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI EVA) and Josep Call, Professor in Evolutionary Origins of Mind, University of St. Andrews.
You will conduct a series of studies investigating the cognitive foundations of cumulative cultural evolution in humans’ closest living relatives. The project will be a combination of behavioural studies with chimpanzees in group settings at the
Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust (CWOT) in Zambia. Furthermore, there are possibilities to conduct research at the Wolfgang Köhler Primate Research Centre in Germany and the Budongo Research Unit in Edinburgh Zoo. Lastly, there is room to extend research efforts to bonobos. The aim of the project is to assess great apes abilities for cumulative cultural evolution. The project will involve periodic fieldwork (approx. 3-4 months/year) at the CWOT in Zambia.
The CWOT houses chimpanzees in multigenerational groups under semi-natural conditions in a large forested private area in northern Zambia. The chimpanzees forage and sleep outside, and only come inside once per day for supplemental feeding. The setup is very suited for behavioural group-level experiments with relatively high ecological validity.
The project will be a collaborative project involving coordinated contributions from 3 PhD candidates working on the same topic The MPI EVA is recruiting for one of the other PhD positions in this project:
PhD for chimpanzees project at MPI EVA.
Come join our team in this exciting PhD position and:
- combine observational and experimental methods involving behavioural and cognitive measures;
- work independently at a remote field-site in Zambia;
- develop theoretical models of cumulative cultural evolution;
- conduct advanced statistical and analytic analyses on behavioural data;
- supervise Bachelor's and Master's students (10% of your time).