Mawa Dafreville

I am a researcher in developmental and comparative psychology in human and non-human primates. My works mainly focus on the social cognition development in primates by using a pluridisciplinary approach. 

From the evo-devo perspective, my PhD (supervisors: Dr. Marie Bourjade and Prof. Michèle Guidetti ; lab: CLLE, CNRS, Toulouse Jean Jaurès) aimed at expanding our knowledge of primates’ communication development through theoretical models related to the research field of (i) the origins of human language and of (ii) the pragmatic skills in prelinguistic infants. My PhD is part of a more global project named MODAL (led by Dr. Marie Bourjade) involving both cross-species and cross-cultural comparisons.

Thanks to the Fyssen Foundation, I start my cross-institutional postdoctoral position at the Department of Ecology and Evolution (Lausanne, Switzerland) in September 2023, within the van de Waal group – Cultural Evolution and Cognition (supervisors: Erica van de Waal, Simon W. Townsend and Charlotte Canteloup).