General Interests:
Developmental and ontogenetic origins of behaviour
The effect of life history traits, rearing, experience, development and learning on both human and non-human primates
Human and non-human primate innovation and culture
Early hominin material culture and behaviour
Research focus:
My PhD work focused on the individual and social learning of both human and non-human primate material culture with the aim to relate it to the origins of human culture and innovation. I experimentally tested captive and wild chimpanzees, macaques, and capuchins to examine the cognitive mechanisms behind the acquisition of various behaviours in the physical domain. I also carried out studies with human children on their ability to copy behaviours from human and non-conspecific demonstrators. During my PhD working with Claudio Tennie, we developed a new methodology to examine the role of both individual and social learning in the acquisition of behavioural forms, alongside a mathematical approach to calculate the sample sizes required to draw conclusions from experimental studies of this type (see Bandini & Tennie, 2018). My work is inherently interdisciplinary, spanning the fields of: archaeology, primatology, anthropology, primate archaeogology, biolog and developmental psychology.
My current research expands on previous work by investigating the effect of different factors on the ontogeny of specific behaviours in both human and non-human primates (most often, but not always, in the realm of material culture). I am the PI of the ARI project, funded by the University of Zürich and The Einstein Foundation. The aim of the Ape Research Index (ARI) project is to to assess the effect of participation in research experiments on captive ape cognition and behaviour. To do so, we first created a database which includes all published work on captive chimpanzee comparative research, in order to generate a research history for each individual captive chimpanzee housed worldwide (see more on our website: https://sites.google.com/view/ape-research-index/home?authuser=0). Findings from the first analyses of the database can be found in Bandini et al., (2025). The next step will involve targeted testing on the potential effect of research experience on captive chimpanzee cognition and behaviour in research experiments.
Shortly I will be moving to The University of Algarve as part of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Archaeology and the Evolution of Human Behaviour where I will start work on the ERC-funded PRIMERS project.