Contributions by role
Contributions by subject area
Katja Liebal
Summary
I am a behavioral biologist and comparative psychologist, interested in primate social cognition and communication and the evolution of human language. I use a comparative approach to investigate if and which building blocks of human language might be already present in our closest relatives, the nonhuman apes. I study the variability of individual repertoires, the intentional and flexible usage of signals across social contexts to achieve different goals, and how young apes acquire their communicative repertoires. In this context, I also investigate the facial communication in interactions between mothers and their infants, over the infants’ first year of life. I work at Leipzig University, where I am currently heading the LeipzigLab, an interdisciplinary initiative to encourage collaborations between scholars from the humanities and natural sciences. Here, I also lead a project on the development and cultural variability of children-animal-relationships