Eugenia Polizzi di Sorrentino

Hi everyone, I am a post-doc student at the Unit of Cognitive Primatology link title, CNR in Rome.

Research interests

During the earlier stages of my research experience I focused my scientific interest on the study of cooperation in group-living animals, specifically non-human primates, and on the mechanisms underlying the reciprocation of altruistic/cooperative acts. During my PhD in Animal Behaviour at the Liverpool John Moores University I continued this line of research by stressing the cognitive and social implications of conflict management strategies in primates. Both cooperation and conflict management are complex social phenomena, which implies that the interactions between dyads cannot be investigated without taking into account the social environment in which individuals live.

Goals related to CSSS

I am interested in acquiring competence in new methodologies to further investigate the complexity of social interactions among group living animals, and in particular on the emergence of group level properties otherwise not detectable with a traditional dyadic-interaction approach. In particular, I am interested in learning something more (and talk with people that have already these experties!) about social network analyses and agent-based modelling, which represent a novel and powerful tool for the investigation of group dynamics in social animals. Primatological studies applying these approaches to explain social relationships are still rare, and there is little knowledge of how dyadic social relationship may scale to a more global social structure.

Monkeys can be really surprising in what they do and how they reflect human (social) behaviour..

I am sure this summerschool will be a great opportunity to meet very interesting people from the most different research areas and I am confident we will find a common language to communicate how complex systems match our specific interests.