Malene Friis Hansen

Human-other-animal interfaces have existed for millennia, but recent human habitat expansions have increased the amount and intensity of the interfaces leading to conflicts and deleterious management decisions overshadowing the deep current and historical relations between sympatric humans and other animals. Understanding these relations, the adaptive responses and the co-constructed behaviors and niches can enable coexistence, yet this requires a novel transdisciplinary approach, such as Cultural Biology. This project seeks to develop the theory and methods of Cultural Biology through literature immersion, interdisciplinary workshops and inspirational field trips to human-macaque interfaces in Bali, Indonesia. Cultural Biology is an underexplored field of study that combines a suite of theory and methods from Anthropology and Biology to understand past and current human-other animal interfaces, their cultural relationships, individual choices, interspecific communication and social learning, and co-constructed ecologies.