I am a developmental and comparative cognitive scientist with interdisciplinary background interests at the intersection of psychology and philosophy. My research aims at gaining a better understanding of the ontogeny and evolution of higher cognitive capacities such as social cognition and Theory of Mind, understanding normativity, or modal reasoning. To this end, I empirically study human children in the first years of life, and (in collaboration with colleagues) non-human primates. One overarching set of questions that fascinate me are in which respects cognitive development in humans runs parallel to that of our closest living relatives (other great apes); where uniquely human capacities begin in ontogeny; and what role language and culture may play in constituting and shaping such uniquely human cognition.

Currently, I am very much interested in the developmental and comparative psychology of modal thinking: how does thinking about possibility, necessity and the like emerge and develop, and how may it have evolved? These are the questions I will focus on during my time at the Human Abilities Centre.