My research is driven by the broad question of what makes our minds human, how our minds ‘got that way’, and why.

I approach these questions through two complementary lines of research.  The first explores similarities and differences in the cognition of humans, and our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos.   Much of this work addresses how (and whether) these species understand each others psychology, going beneath the surface appearance of behavior to reason about the unobservable mental states that govern our actions.

The second addresses cognitive evolution more broadly, within a phylogenetic comparative framework.  The aim of these studies is to survey cognition across species in order to understand the evolutionary processes that have shaped animal minds.