Dr. Elisa Bandini

Although my current research is in the field of Primate Archaeology, my background (BA & MSc) is in more traditional Archaeology. I worked on several excavations (mostly in Italy), before pivoting to more primate-related questions during my PhD at The University of Tübingen, Germany. During this period, I worked with both captive and wild primates across Europe, Africa and South America. After my PhD I stayed in Tübingen as a postdoc working with Claudio Tennie, and continued to test primates around the world. In 2023 I received funding from the University of Zürich and The Einstein Foundation to start a small research group at The University of Zürich, looking into the effect of cognitive experiments on captive chimpanzee behaviour and performance in these types of experiments (The Ape Research Index project). I am now working on my ERC-funded PRIMERS and the ARI project in sunny Portugal!