Professor Susana Carvalho
Research Affiliate
Primate Adaptations, Landscapes & Evolutionary Origins
Research interests
Chimpanzee behaviour (especially tool use, material culture), primate archaeology; origins and evolution of technology, archaeology of East African Pliocene, novel methods for primatological/archaeological data collection and analyses.
Background
I am a primatologist and palaeoanthropologist. I was one of main founders of the field of Primate Archaeology. I have been studying stone tool use by wild chimpanzees in Bossou, Guinea, West Africa, since 2006, and carrying archaeological research in the Koobi Fora area, Kenya, East Africa since 2008, with a current focus on the archaeology of the Pliocene. I am the director of the Paleo-Primate Project Gorongosa since 2015, where an international team of 20 senior researchers is carrying an unprecedented interdisciplinary approach to understanding hominin origins and adaptations. In Mozambique, I am focusing on extant primates (baboons vervets) as models for behavioural evolution, and I am also directing surveys, excavations of fossil sites, and actualistic experimentations to achieve a more holistic understanding of our past evolution.
I received a BA in Archaeology from Oporto University (1997), then a MSc in Human Evolution from Coimbra University (2007), after having worked some years in between in municipal archaeology. My PhD in Biological Anthropology from Cambridge (2013) focused on living primates as behavioural models for the origins of technology. I held a Junior Research Fellowship at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and had postdoctoral positions at Oxford and at the Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology, George Washington University, USA. I joined the University of Oxford in 2015, as Associate Professor of Palaeoanthropology and Fellow of St. Hugh's College, since becoming Professor of Palaeoanthropology in 2021.
I am a Primatologist and Paleoanthropologist interested in the evolution of behaviour and in using extant primates as models for our early hominin records. I have carried long term work with wild chimpanzees and baboons in Africa, and i have been pivotal in the broadening of archaeology to include non-human records AND earlier Pliocene records. I am one of the founders of the field of primate archaeology. I have projects in East Africa (Kenya) and West Africa (Guinea). In 2015 I started a fantastic endeavour as Director of Paleontology and Primatology in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique, leading the Paleo-Primate Project. In 2016 I founded the Primate Models for Behavioural Evolution Lab, at the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, where we now host ca.15 researchers! In 2018, I started the Oxford-Gorongosa Paleo-Primate Field School, a unique opportunity for students to get multidisciplinary field training in animal behaviour and paleoanthropology. I teach PG seminars in Principles of Evolution and Behaviour, UG lectures in Human Evolution, Behavioural Evolution and Primatology, and provide practicals on hominin evolution.