Professor Alex Thornton

I was born and grew up in Mexico City and later moved to the UK and studied biology in Oxford. I then moved to Cambridge to do a PhD examining how interactions with adults help meerkat pups learn to forage for themselves. Following my PhD, I took up a Drapers’ Company Research Fellowship at Pembroke College, Cambridge, focusing on the spread of information and the establishment of traditions in meerkat groups. This work led me to spend much of my early career wandering about the Kalahari Desert, but in 2010 I began a programme of research closer to home, investigating culture, cognition and collective behaviour in jackdaws. Other recent lines of research include work on the cognitive foundations of human cumulative culture and collaborative work on culture in great tits and cognition in Australian magpies. I have been based at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter’s Cornwall campus since October 2012, where I am now the Professor of Cognitive Evolution.

Dr Guill McIvor

I joined the research group after completing my PhD at the University of St Andrews in 2012. An ever-present in the team since we put up the first nest boxes, I oversee the field management that has facilitated the Cornish Jackdaw Project’s growth into a system with huge scientific potential that can accommodate diverse avenues of research.  

Aside from storing the entire jackdaw database in my head, during the winters I have been leading a team that uses a synchronised camera array to film jackdaw flocks flying to their winter roosts, as part of our research into the effects of heterogeneity and social substructure on group movement. I am also interested in how animals learn and generalise about danger, and in what we can learn about maternal condition and investment in reproduction from the size and colour of eggs. 

Dr Noa Truskanov

Josh Arbon

I’m a PhD student and sometimes ornithologist interested in all aspects of sociality, but currently social information and learning. I’ve been using a variety of automated feeders and mysterious coloured cheeses to investigate how information flows through jackdaw society. I also dabble in dominance and previously worked on cooperative behaviours in Dwarf mongooses, spending six months in the South African bush as part of my master’s at the University of Bristol.

I have particular loves for Ipswich Town and the colour orange, but will happily be engaged for hours playing, watching or talking about all and any sport.

Matt Lomas

I am an Exeter-based PhD student exploring the connection between theory of mind and how humans teach. I am a graduate of both Bangor and Bath (Psychology), and my previous roles involved studies of memory in epilepsy and the importance of communication in healthcare settings for treating depression and suicidal ideation. In my spare time, I subject myself to supporting Southampton Football Club each week – with varying degrees of satisfaction.

Tristan Canterbury

I am an artist in my free time, fan of anime, FromSoftware and prog metal. I am interested in how behavioural flexibility and its mechanisms relate to information and individual differences. I am currently doing a theory focused project, using state-dependent dynamic games to investigate what types of information, social or otherwise, might drive convergent cognitive evolution between seemingly disparate taxa such as corvids and primates.

Hannah Broad

I am a Masters by Research student with an interest in social learning and how human activities impact animal behaviour. I am currently researching how anthropogenic disturbance, such as noise and light pollution, impacts sleep and collective behaviour at jackdaw roosts. I will also be investigating if jackdaw nestlings learn to recognise novel predators through association with acoustic social cues.

Luca Hahn

Humans have always been interested in the behaviour of conspecifics and other animals, but we now live in a time where we study behaviour and cognition as meticulously and systematically as never before. As an inquisitive animal watcher and passionate learner since my childhood, I consider myself as extremely lucky to study animal behaviour. I am fascinated by cognition and sociality in animals, particularly corvids and primates (including humans), but also less commonly studied taxa, such as lizards. My aim is to address scientific questions about behaviour and cognition holistically, i.e. through the lenses of different disciplines, such as behavioural ecology and comparative psychology. More specifically, I am captivated by the ‘social mind’, that is, how organisms navigate their social life by learning from other individuals, by managing their social relationships, and by cooperating and communicating with group members.

Dr Beki Hooper

Beki finished her PhD in 2021, with her research focussing on jackdaw pair-bonds, sexual behaviour, and the link between social relationships and cognition. Beki is now a postdoctoral research fellow with Dr Lauren Brent at CRAB Exeter, studying the informational demands of sociality as part of the FriendOrigins project.

Isabel Driscoll

Isabel completed her masters by research with the group in 2019 studying responses to secondary predator cues in wild meerkats. Izzy has continued her research with a PhD at the University of Zurich investigating emotion integration in meerkat vocalisations

Dr Vic Lee

Victoria (Ellen Hellen) Lee was part of the jackdaw project team from 2015 and 2020, as both a Master’s and PhD student. Her research focussed upon partner recognition, relationship tracking, and on the behavioural adjustments that allow jackdaws to thrive while living close to humans. Vic now works at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) near Edinburgh, where her research now addresses the role of cognition and affective, so potentially improving welfare in pig farming.

Dr Devi Wittle