Dr Tatyana Humle is a zoologist by training (BSc in Zoology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland) and completed her PhD in the Department of Psychology at the University of Stirling in 2004. Tanya was then granted a NIMH Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Department of Psychology based at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA (2004-2007) before taking on a position as an Associate Professor with the Primate Research Institute and the Wildlife Research Centre at the University of Kyoto, Japan (2007-2010).
Dr Humle joined the School of Anthropology at the University of Kent in 2010 and DICE in 2012. She has been conducting fieldwork on wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in West Africa, both habituated and non-habituated individuals, since 1995, and has been working collaboratively with African Great Ape sanctuaries since 2008.
Dr Humle’s main research focuses on understanding how great apes adapt to environmental change and manage life in anthropogenic landscapes shaped by small- and large-scale development, identifying drivers of tolerance and attitudes toward wildlife, and developing and evaluating mitigation schemes aimed at improving co-existence between non-human great apes and people. Tanya is also interested in great ape rehabilitation and reintroduction with the aim to improve both welfare and conservation objectives for the species.
Dr Humle also nourishes a keen research interest in the study of learning and culture in non-human animals, with a special focus on primates, the respective roles of the social and physical environment on learning in young, inter- and intra-community behavioural differences in chimpanzees, and behavioural ecology and cognition.
Tanya has been an active member of the executive committee of the IUCN (The International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) Section on Great Ape Conservation (SGA) of the Primate Specialist Group since its inception.