Thibaud Gruber

Professeur assistant / Directeur du laboratoire

​I am a comparative psychologist with broad interests ranging from cognitive anthropology and developmental science to behavioural ecology. I use different approaches in the field and the lab (observational, experimental) to tackle the question of the evolution of culture and language in non-human and human great apes. ​In my research, I investigate the cognitive, social and ecological factors influencing tool use in wild and captive apes, with a focus on Ugandan chimpanzees. In parallel, I research cognitive aspects of the evolution of language by studying primate vocalizations. Finally, in more recent years, I have investigated the same topics in human adults and children to compare modern humans with modern chimpanzees. My ultimate goal is to understand how our early ancestors launched their cultures from a chimpanzee-like state on a path to what they are now. ​

I am also the co-director of the Bugoma Primate Conservation Project.

Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=UsLZQRUAAAAJ&hl=fr
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6766-3947

SHORT RESUME

After a Bachelor in Biology at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon and a Master in Cognitive Sciences at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, I pursued a PhD in Psychology at the University of St Andrews, UK, studying the origins of tool use and culture by implementing field experiments with wild chimpanzees in Ugandan rain forests. During this time, I also developed an interest in primate vocalizations, which has remained to this day. ​Following my PhD, I joined the Centre Norbert Elias, a CNRS unit, and the Anthropological Institute and Museum at the University of Zürich for my first postdoctoral experience supported by the Fyssen Foundation, to study the cognitive bases of cultural behavior in chimpanzees and orangutans.

I continued this work at the Department of Comparative Psychology at the University of Neuchâtel as a Intra-European Marie Curie Fellow before joining the University of Geneva as a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Postdoc to study emotions in vocalizations in human and nonhuman primates. The SNSF also funded me through an Advanced Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Oxford, UK, and Kyoto University where I studied the cognitive understanding of tool use in the world famous chimpanzees of the Primate Research Institute. In November 2019, the SNSF granted me an Eccellenza Professorial Fellowship to start to my own research group as an Assistant Professor at the University of Geneva in August 2020.

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