Slide with a photo of a driver heading towards a bright dawn sun

Closing slide with a quote from Douglas Adams "...I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be....

Awesome plenary from @nakedprimate.bsky.social at #ehbea2026, about gestures and storytelling, which started with a dawn drive in Chad and ended with a Douglas Adams quote perfectly encapsulating the process of science

Great job by my PhD student Hannah Goodman presenting her work on the role of sexual selection in cross-cultural variation in extrasomatic ornamentation at #ehbea2026

The School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, 51 - 53 Banbury Road Oxford. A Victorian semi detached building framed by trees. With the text School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography ranked number 1 for Anthropology in QS World Rankings 2026

🥇We're delighted to be ranked number one for #Anthropology in the QS World University Rankings 2026!

👏Thank you to everyone @oxford-anthro.bsky.social as this year's ranking reflects the continued excellence of our researchers and achievements of our students.

anthro.web.ox.ac.uk/article/scho...

Many thanks, @alexvgeorgiev.bsky.social, for hosting me in the School of Environmental and Natural Sciences at Bangor University. I greatly enjoyed the visit and our stimulating discussions.

This week I presented my work at Wadham College (symposium on FORCE) and @oxford-anthro.bsky.social (PalEvo seminar). Thanks for the invitation and stimulating discussions. Oxford is a great place for transdisciplinary exchange.

New paper out!
Single-nucleus RNA-seq shows that golden snub-nosed monkeys have distinct prefrontal cortex gene expression linked to oxytocin & dopamine signaling. The molecular signature scales with social complexity across primates.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

New paper out: Endangered Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys do more than eat lichen. By feeding on Usnea longissima, they help prevent lichen overgrowth that damages trees and may even promote lichen regeneration. Losing these monkeys risks destabilizing forest health.
📖 doi.org/10.1002/ece3...

New paper: Intelligence drives switching to better solutions; openness drives exploration, even when it’s suboptimal. Familiarity keeps us conservative. What this means for social learning and cumulative culture.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Had a great time discussing my research at today’s FINE (Frontiers in Social Evolution) seminar. Big thanks to Carsten Schradin for the invitation and for hosting me!

Last night, I was officially sworn in as a Fellow at my Oxford College. Signing Wadham College’s Fellows’ Book today, the very same book that has been in use for over 400 years, was a true honour.

New paper from us: the endangered Yunnan snub-nosed monkey helps forests stay healthy and diverse. By breaking branches and opening the canopy, these rare primates promote plant growth and long-term ecosystem resilience
www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/15...

Attending a session at the IUCN World Conservation Congress
where our Centre, the International Center for Biodiversity and Primate Conservation (ICBPC), was formally welcomed as a member of the #GlobalGibbonNetwork

🐒 Male Coalition Strategies in Toque Macaques
Lakshani Weerasekara examines cooperation and conflict in macaques, focusing on how males form coalitions and what factors influence coalition success 🐵👬🥊 8/11
@mandyridley.bsky.social @cyrilgrueter.bsky.social

Excited to share that I’ve joined the University of Oxford @ox.ac.uk as Associate Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and @wadhamcollege.bsky.social as a Tutorial Fellow in Human Sciences. Grateful for everyone who’s supported me on the journey so far. Looking forward to this new chapter!

13+ years at the University of Western Australia shaped me in so many ways. I grew as a researcher, teacher, and mentor, launched new projects, and saw my students thrive. Grateful for the people, opportunities, and lessons.

Revisiting the species that defined my PhD years. So good to see the black-and-white #snubnosedmonkeys again in the mountains of Yunnan!

International Centre for Biodiversity and Primate Conservation (ICBPC) leadership met this week in Dali/China to discuss progress on human–wildlife conflict research, student exchanges, outreach, and new partnerships in Rwanda and Kenya. Big steps ahead!

Close encounters of the friendly kind: pacific between‐group interactions in primates While intergroup conflict features prominently in the behavioural ecology literature, its antonym, intergroup peace, has been a rather neglected phenomenon until recently. Neighbourly relations and a....

Just out in Biological Reviews!
My new paper highlights intergroup peace in primates: tolerance, affiliation, group mergers etc. We propose a new framework for understanding these interactions, with insights into the roots of human cooperation.

📖 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

How does forest structure shape primate behavior? 🐒🌲 We studied black-and-white snub-nosed monkeys in Yunnan’s high-elevation forests using 10 years of observations, camera traps, and LiDAR (laser scanning of forest structure).

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Dietary Variability Among Mountain Gorilla Groups Across Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda Dietary variability among mountain gorilla groups in Volcanoes National Park (VNP) was analyzed to understand how habitat differences influence diet and whether diet quality accounts for variations i...

New paper out!
Here we show that mountain gorilla groups in different parts of Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park eat strikingly different diets but the nutritional quality of their key foods is surprisingly similar.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...