Christine Sievers
Christine Sievers wrote her PhD at the University of Basel on "ostensive intentional communication in nonhuman primates“ under the supervisor of Prof. Markus Wild (Universität Basel) and Prof. Klaus Zuberbühler (Université de Neuchâtel). During that time, she investigated potential research paradigms and theoretical implications with regard to the ascription of intentional communication to chimpanzees, both on a philosophical and an empirically level, investigating chimpanzee interactions in the wild at the Budongo Conservation Field Station, Uganda.
After her PhD, Christine received an Early Postdoc Mobility stipend from the SNSF on the evolution of negotiating conflicts communicatively, comparing wolves, dogs and human conflict behavior at the Wolf Science Center Austria and at the Research Chair for Animal Minds at York University Toronto, under the supervision of Prof. Friederike Range and Prof. Kristin Andrews.
Generally speaking, Christine’s research approach is to merge methods and paradigms from different fields of research - predominantly analytic philosophy, ethology, ethics, comparative cognition and pragmatics - to tackle questions within the Philosophy of Animal Minds, not just with regards to other species’ cognitive capacities, but also to the broader implications following from these capacity ascriptions, e.g., our perception of other species in relation to us.
Outside of academia, Christine is a passionate, but averagely talented climber. She also works as a freelance writer.
Research project
From cognition to affect: a paradigm change in describing concepts in human and nonhuman learning and communication”
