Graduate Students

Daniel Schofield

I am a DPhil student under the supervision of Dr Susana Carvalho (Anthropology) and Dr Dora Biro (Zoology Dept), funded by a Clarendon Scholarship. For my PhD I have been pioneering a new computational framework for analysing long-term image datasets for wild primates. The focus of my project is curating a longitudinal archival video data and analysing tool use and social networks of wild chimpanzees using computational methods from the field of computer vision, in collaboration with Oxford’s Visual Geometry Group (VGG) and Kyoto University’s Primate Research Institute, Japan.

Contact details: daniel.schofield@anthro.ox.ac.uk

Elodie Freymann

I am a first year DPhil student under the supervision of Dr Susana Carvalho and Dr Michael Huffman (Kyoto University). My research focuses on the transmission of self-medicative behaviours in chimpanzees, specifically between mothers and infants. I hope to further investigate whether specific gestures or gestural frequencies are used to transmit self-medicative information to determine whether cumulative medicinal knowledge systems exist in primate culture.

Jacinto Mathe

I am a first year DPhil student under the supervision of Dr René Bobe and Dr Susana Carvalho. My background is in Veterinary Medicine (BA, Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo, Mozambique) and then in Forensic Anthropology (MSc, University of Coimbra, Portugal). I am interested in Human Evolution, Osteology, Taphonomy and Conservation Paleobiology. My DPhil research, funded by the Boise Trust Scholarship (Oxford), is focused on the last frontiers of the African Rift Valley and the environments of human origins. I aim to survey and collect osteological samples across different landscapes in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique, and to carry out ecological analyses of the bones. This approach will provide valuable information for conservation efforts and will establish links between modern landscapes and the African fossil record.

Jana Muschinski

Jana is a third year DPhil student under the supervision of Dr Susana Carvalho and Dr Dora Biro. Her background is primarily in lithics and zooarchaeology, with additional training in primate cognition. Her primary research interests are in social transmission, tool-use, and culture in primates, and in domestication and human-animal relationships. Jana’s DPhil research is on behavioural diversity in baboons, involving a cross-site comparison of baboon behaviour from video data and fieldwork in the Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique in 2019.

Contact details: jana.muschinski@anthro.ox.ac.uk

João d'Oliveira Coelho

MSc João d’Oliveira Coelho is a self-taught programmer with an academic background in biological anthropology. João did his masters in human evolution and biology at the University of Coimbra, while simultaneously creating osteomics.com where he worked extensively with 3D printing and photogrammetry, and also developed web applications for estimation of biological parameters (sex, ancestry, age-at-death, stature) from skeletal features. Recently, he also co-founded the first portuguese junior enterprise focused in data science - jest.pt - where he worked with machine learning and bioinformatics projects, and led workshops of statistics, R and Python programming. His research interests are in geospatial paleoanthropology, geometric morphometrics and osteology, from both forensic and evolutionary perspectives. João is currently on the fourth year of his DPhil on automated geospatial search for fossil sites in Africa: a computer vision and machine learning approach, and is supervised by Dr Susana Carvalho and Dr Robert L Anemone.

Katarina Almeida-Warren

I am a final year DPhil student with a background in archaeology, primatology and anthropology, under the supervision of Dr Susana Carvalho. I am interested in the tool-use, archaeology and culture of non-human primates and how this can provide new perspectives to human origins research. My current doctoral project is investigating the ecological and foraging contexts of chimpanzee stone technology as a comparative framework for reconstructing patterns of landscape-use and resource exploitation in our earliest tool-using ancestors.

Through ongoing collaborations, I am also involved in archaeological research of chimpanzee termite-fishing in Tanzania, which is contributing towards our knowledge of plant-based (perishable) tool use and its relevance to human evolution and our technological origins. I am a National Geographic Explorer, and a graduate affiliate at the Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behaviour (ICArEHB) in Portugal.

E-mail: katarina.almeida-warren@anthro.ox.ac.uk

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-7634-9466

Twitter: @KatarinaWarren

Lucy Baehren

I am a fourth year DPhil student under the supervision of Dr Susana Carvalho and Dr Harvey Whitehouse. I am interested in social anthropology and comparative primatology. I'm studying the evolution of leave-taking across humans and non-human primates. My current work focuses on the function of “goodbyes” and whether the phenomenon is unique to Homo sapiens or shows continuity across species.

Lynn Lewis-Bevan

I am currently doing a fourth year DPhil in Zoology, jointly supervised by Dr Dora Biro (Zoology) and Dr Susana Carvalho (Anthropology). I am studying the drivers of decision making and movement in baboons in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique. I will examine factors such as the heterogeneous landscape, the large number of baboon groups and the varying levels of predation throughout the park to understand what affects the ranging behaviours in these troops, and elucidate how early hominins in a similar environment would have navigated their landscapes.

Contact details: lynn.lewis-bevan@zoo.ox.ac.uk

Megan Beardmore-Herd

I am a DPhil student under the supervision of Dr Susana Carvalho and Dr Julia Fischer. My background is in biological anthropology, with an emphasis on human evolution and primatology. For my DPhil research I am studying vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) experiencing a shift in ecology as a result of carnivore reintroductions in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique. After conducting several months of fieldwork in Gorongosa habituating and IDing troops of vervet monkeys whilst collecting data on their behaviour and vocal communication in response to predators and agonistic encounters which was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, I am now using remote detection methods to continue my research and investigate the effects of seasonality, major climatic events, and changes in the landscape of fear on the abundance, distribution, and ranging patterns of these primates.

Contact details: megan.beardmore-herd@anthro.ox.ac.uk

Philippa Hammond

I am a fourth year DPhil student under the supervision of Dr Susana Carvalho and Dr Dora Biro (Zoology Dept.). My research investigates the effects of predation pressure on primate adaptations; my fieldwork is based in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique, where I am monitoring the effects of reduced predation pressure on the ranging, sleeping, and social behaviours of baboons (Papio ursinus). Insights from these field studies will further our understanding of predator-prey dynamics that might have significantly impacted the behavioural evolution of Pleistocene hominins.

Sophie Berdugo

I am a second year DPhil student under the supervision of Dr Emma Cohen and Dr Susana Carvalho. Broadly, I am interested in the factors mediating the frequency and efficiency of tool-use in chimpanzees. I will be undertaking a longitudinal analysis and taking an evolutionary-developmental approach to investigate the role of environmental and social stressors on maternal investment, and to explore the potential subsequent transgenerational effects of maternal style on infant nut-cracking behaviour. Moreover, I will assess whether social support acts as a buffer against these stressors and whether receiving more social support in infancy predicts increased nut-cracking frequency and efficiency in adulthood.