Welcome to my website. Please have a look around and feel free to contact me!
I was first trained as a biologist (BSc) and gradually moved to the study of behaviour (MSc and PhD), so I now usually introduce myself as an experimental psychologist or cognitive scientist. Broadly speaking, I’m interested in understanding how the mind works and in the similarities and differences that exist between humans and other animals in terms of fundamental sociocognitive processes (yes, very broadly speaking!). My research has been interdisciplinary and includes conceptual work (like examining the notions of ‘information’ and ‘culture’) and empirical (like doing behavioural, psychophysical, and eye-tracking experiments).
social learning; biology-culture; symbolic cognition; visual perception; Paleolithic art; children drawing; meaning; developmental systems theory; embodied cognition; ecological psychology; enaction
At some point in my education, I became intrigued by the animal cultures debate and the controversies that it raises in relation to our place in nature. On the one hand, the concept of culture gradually emerged as a way to demarcate humans from other animals and to demarcate anthropology from neighbouring disciplines like biology and psychology. One essential ingredient of human culture is how our cognitive development depends on our relation with others, which itself is constrained by our collective history in a common environment. So, traditionally, only humans were said to have culture, and you may have read somewhere that culture allowed humans to escape biology (or some similar idea).
On the other hand, researchers in animal behaviour started arguing and providing evidence that many nonhuman animals also have culture, including primates, cetaceans, birds, fish, and insects. This is largely because, similar humans, many animals also acquire knowledge and skills by engaging in learning that is facilitated by the presence and behaviour of other individuals. This kind of learning is called social learning. For example, in some populations of chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys, young individuals learn to crack nuts with stones partly by observing skilled individuals; and young killer whales learn hunting techniques by foraging with skilled adults.
Are human culture and animal culture equivalent concepts? I find this debate fascinating! I also think that the biology-culture opposition itself is highly problematic, along with others such as nature-nurture, biology-culture, organism-environment, and body-mind. Can we find a more coherent way of thinking about these phenomena that does not depend on these binary oppositions?
Motivated by these concerns, I have been working on topics related to social learning and other cognitive capacities considered to be uniquely humans, such as the use of symbols and visual representation. Specifically, I’m gradually developing a way of thinking about social learning consistent with developmental systems theory in biology (to avoid the nature-nurture oppositon), the ecological and enactive approaches to cognition (to avoid the organism-environment opposition), and relational approaches in anthropology. This conceptual work also motivates some of the empirical and applied work in which I have been involved. You can read more in the Projects and Publications tabs.
In addition to research in basic sociocognitive processes, I have extensive experience as an educator. Before my PhD, I worked as a primary school teacher (3 years) and as a writer/editor of school textbooks (2 years) in Brazil. In one of my postdocs, I helped define and implement a professional development programme for educators in France (see ‘Profs-Chercheurs’ in the Projects tab). In parallel to my current research, I also teach at undergraduate level (check my Teaching tab).