Psychology
Profile
Katjja currently works at Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany
Background
My background is mainly in Biology (Diploma, University of Leipzig in 2001). For my PhD I worked on gestural communication of apes in the department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. From 2005 - 2008 I worked as a lecturer in the Psychology department at Portsmouth University before starting a research position at the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. Since 2009 I am a junior professor for Evolutionary Psychology in the Clusterinitiative Languages of Emotion, Free University Berlin.
Teaching Responsibilities
Comparative Psychology, Applying Psychology, Biological Psychology, Observation Research, Primate Communication, Qualitative Research Skills.
Project supervision covers the areas of social communication and socio-cognitive skills of human and nonhuman primates.
Research
My main interest concerns the multimodal communication of primates and the underlying socio-cognitive skills. Currently I am a member of the Excellence Cluster Languages of Emotion at Freie Universität of Berlin. Projects include research on empathy in captive and semi-wild great apes (with Amrisha Vaish and Michael Tomasello), the development of a GibbonFACS (with Bridget Waller and Anne Burrows), and cross-cultural studies to investigate the comprehension and expression of emotions (with Daniel Haun, Juliane Kaminski, and Isabell Wartenburger).
Current projects and collaborations:
- Comparing emotion expression across species - development of a GibbonFACS
Bridget Waller, University of Portsmouth, UK, and Anne Burrows, Duquesne University, US - Evolutionary roots of human social interaction
Daniel Haun, Juliane Kaminski, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig - Processing of Emotion and Language - Development and interaction across lifespan
Isabell Wartenburger, University of Potsdam, Silke Telkemeyer, Freie Universität Berlin - Empathy in great apes?
Amrisha Vaish, Michael Tomasello, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology,
Leipzig