Susana A. M. Varela

I am an Assistant Professor at the Faculdade de Ciências da Saúde e Enfermagem (FCSE) of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP) and an External Researcher at the Integrative Behavioural Biology Group (IBBG) of the Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine (GIMM).

I study Social Behaviour with two main approaches: 1) Behavioural Ecology: the study of the ecological conditions under which social behaviour is adaptive and how the use of social information impacts its development and evolution; and 2) Behavioural Neurobiology: the study of the underlying cognitive mechanisms by which animals acquire, learn and use social information.

I am also interested in three additional objectives: 3) Sociocultural Evolution: the study of how the transmission of social information leads to the evolution of culture, communication, and language; 4) Conservation Behaviour and Conservation Psychology: the study of social information use in contexts that could be relevant to conservation problems and the study of the mechanisms that inhibit or trigger nature conservation behaviours in humans; and 5) Research Ethics. 

And I am passionate about Teaching, Science Education, Communication and Outreach.