PhD Students


  • Ana Lucia Arbaiza Bayona ◌ Behavioral Ecology
    PhD project: Prenatal and postnatal maternal influence on personality development in wild Assamese macaques

  • Saba Amirhaftehran ◌ Developmental Psychology
    PhD project: Levels of complexity of Theory of Mind (developmental perspective)

  • Leonie Baumann ◌ Developmental Psychology
    PhD Project: Factors in the early emergence of modal cognition

  • Leon Behle ◌ Cognition, Emotion and Behavior
    PhD project: To know or not to know - emotional, motivational, and content-related factors of seeking or avoiding information

  • Juliette-Anne Belot ◌ Cognitive Ethology, DPZ
    PhD project: Predictors of curiosity in Guinea baboons (Papio papio)

  • Aishwarya Bhonsle ◌ Cognitive Neurology, University Medical Center
    PhD project: Contribution of heart-brain interactions to conscious visual perception

  • Tiffany Claire Bosshard ◌ Cognitive Ethology, DPZ
    PhD project: Social selectivity and the link between social and ecological risk taking in Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus)

  • Laura Botzet ◌ Cognitive Personality Psychology
    PhD project: Psychological Effects of Hormonal Contraceptives

  • Luz Maria Rivera Guevara ◌ Behavioral Ecology
    PhD project: Influence of social play on the dynamics of social bonds in assamese macaques

  • Faeze Heydari ◌ Cognition, Emotion and Behavior
    PhD project: Analysis of Real-life Emotional Expressions

  • Alice Hill ◌ Behavioral Ecology
    PhD project: Drivers and consequences of male care in wild macaques

  • Marie Hirel ◌ Cognitive Ethology, DPZ
    PhD project: Social evaluation and decision-making in macaques

  • Elif Karakoc ◌ Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology, DPZ
    PhD project: Social Learning in Social Networks: On the interplay between innovation, information transmission and individuals’ social value

  • Ben Kawam ◌ Behavioral Ecology
    PhD project: How between-group competition and within-group relatedness interact to shape social structure

  • Arnout Lindeman ◌ Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology, DPZ
    PhD project: On the fitness benefits of curiosity in grey mouse lemurs

  • Sophie-Claire Lusser ◌ Economics and Social Psychology
    PhD project: Emergence of leadership

  • Anne-Kathrin Mahlke ◌ Psychology of Language
    PhD project: The role of curiosity in infants' and young children's word learning

  • Sriranjani Manivasagam ◌ Cognition, Emotion and Behavior
    PhD project: Neurocognitive mechanisms of emotion communication

  • Marlene Meyer ◌ Cognitive Developmental Psychology
    PhD project: From Individual to Social Metacognition: Metacognitive Development in Early Childhood

  • Maik Mylius ◌ Neuronal Intelligence Group
    PhD project: Information theoretic models of curiosity in hierarchical models of the world

  • Carolin Niederbremer ◌ Cognitive Ethology, DPZ
    PhD project: Drivers and consequences of male care in wild macaques

  • William O'Hearn ◌ Cognitive Ethology, DPZ
    Phd project: Social evaluation and partner choice in the tolerant multi-level society of Guinea baboons

  • Sabine Ostermann ◌ Biological Personality Psychology
    PhD project: Personality predictors, hormonal reactivity and affective consequences of emerging social status in human groups

  • Sofia Pereira ◌ Behavioral Ecology
    PhD project: Acquisition and use of social information in wild Assamese macaques

  • Kerne Rayner ◌ Behavioral Ecology
    PhD project: Social curiosity in Assamese macaques

  • Esther Semmelhack ◌ Cognition, Emotion and Behavior
    PhD project: Identifying psychophysiological parameters that reliably predict user performande in a dynamic human robot interaction

  • Shivani ◌ Behavioral Ecology
    PhD project: Sociality and female fitness in wild Assamese macaques

  • Simon Sina ◌ Biological Personality Psychology
    PhD project: Effects of personality on status acquisition in group interactions: An integrative analysis

  • Tamara Sorg ◌ Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology, DPZ
    PhD project: Evolution of prosocial behavior: a meta-analysis and new experiments

  • Judit Stolla ◌ Cognitive Ethology, DPZ
    PhD project: Disentangling factors that affect foraging decisions in Guinea baboons (Papio papio)

  • Shreya Venkatesan ◌ Psychology of Language
    PhD project: Exploration in the wild: bringing curiosity to the real world

  • Pinar Yurt ◌ Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, DPZ
    PhD project: Natural distribution of cognitive abilities in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) and common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus)

  • Giulia Zantonello ◌ Educational Psychology
    PhD project: Curiosity-driven learning in children’s reading behaviour and knowledge acquisition


  • ALUMNI:

  • Lena Ackermann ◌ Psychology of Language
    PhD project: Exploring infants' learning

  • Laura Almeling ◌ Cognitive Ethology, DPZ
    PhD project: Aging and its impact on sociality in Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus)

  • Simone Anza ◌ Behavioral Ecology
    PhD project: Prenatal stress effects on sociality, health and fitness in wild Assamese macaque

  • Anaïs Avilés de Diego ◌ Cognitive Ethology, DPZ
    PhD project: Patterns of social behaviour and partner preferences in infants, yearlings and juveniles of wild Guinea baboons (Papio papio)

  • Nicolas Becker ◌ Experimental Psychology
    PhD project: Is semantic priming possible without consciousness?

  • Peter Bednarik ◌ Evolution of Cooperation, CRC "Evolution of Social Behaviour"
    PhD project: Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of the Evolution of Cooperative Behavior

  • Eva Ricarda Bothe ◌ Psychology of Language
    PhD project: Crossing the borders: the interplay of language, cognition and the brain in early human development

  • Natalie Bleijlevens ◌ Cognitive Developmental Psychology
    PhD project: The role of pragmatics in disambiguation and the relation between referent selection and retention

  • Katja Brodmann ◌ Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center
    PhD project: The influence of oxytocin on the neural activity implicated in action control and decision making

  • Lauren Cassidy ◌ Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, DPZ
    PhD project: Advancing multi-modal laboratory animal welfare assessment systems towards objectivity and comparability

  • Charlotte Defolie ◌ Sociobiology and Behavioral Ecology, DPZ
    PhD project: A healthy social life? Sociality, stress and indicators of health in wild redfronted lemurs (Eulemur rufifrons)

  • Ronja Demel ◌ Affective Neuroscience and Psychophysiology
    PhD project: The Role of Emotion in Moral Judgments: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Evidence

  • Delphine de Moor ◌ Behavioral Ecology
    PhD project: Paternal and maternal kin biases in the social behavior of male and female wild Assamese macaques

  • Julie Driebe ◌ Cognitive Personality Psychology
    PhD project: Predictive Validity and Change of Partner Preferences: A Longitudinal Investigation

  • Federica Dal Pesco ◌ Cognitive Ethology, DPZ
    PhD project: Dynamics and fitness benefits of male-male social bonds in wild Guinea baboons (Papio papio)

  • Martina De Eccher ◌ Psychology of Language
    PhD project: The role of digital automatized feedback in early word learning

  • Johanna Eckert ◌ Cognitive Developmental Psychology
    PhD project: The evolutionary roots of intuitive statistics

  • Sarah Eiteljörge ◌ Psychology of Language
    PhD project: Cross-domain influences of early word and action learning

  • Neele Engelmann ◌ Cognition and Decision Making
    PhD project: The Role of Causal Representations in Moral Judgment

  • Lauriane Faraut ◌ Cognitive Ethology, DPZ
    PhD project: Social monitoring in a multilevel primate society

  • Feride Nur Haskaraca Kizilay ◌ Cognitive Developmental Psychology
    PhD project: The scopes, limits, and the cognitive foundations of implicit theory of mind

  • Christine Haunhorst ◌ Behavioral Ecology
    PhD project: Evolutionary Origin of the Human Pair-Bond - the Adaptive Significance of Male-Female Friendships in Wild Assamese Macaques

  • Johanna Henke-von der Malsburg ◌ Sociobiology & Behavioral Ecology, DPZ
    PhD project Cognition in two sympatrically living mouse lemur species, the Gray mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus) and the Madame Berthe's mouse lemur (Microcebus berthae)

  • Franziska Hübner ◌ Sociobiology & Behavioral Ecology, DPZ
    PhD project: The link between cognition and fitness in wild gray mouse lemurs (Microcebus murinus)

  • Isa Garbisch ◌ Cognitive Developmental Psychology
    PhD project: Cognitive Foundations of Ascribing Intentional Action


  • Annika Grass ◌ Experimental Psycholinguistics, CRC "Text Structures"
    PhD project: Origins of Early Emotion Effects in Written and Spoken Word Processing

  • Francesco Grassi ◌ Cognition, Emotion and Behavior
    PhD project: Modulations of emotional valence by motivational salience

  • Daria Gutleb ◌ Behavioral Ecology
    PhD project: Integrating Behavior, Hormones & Genes associated with the Primate HPA-Axis

  • Wiebke Hammerschmidt ◌ Affective Neuroscience and Psychophysiology
    PhD project: Dissociating Biological and Associated Salience in Human Faces

  • Jonas Hermes ◌ Cognitive Developmental Psychology
    PhD project: Cognitive foundations and ontogenetic roots of selective trust in preschoolers

  • Marina Josephs ◌ Biological Developmental Psychology
    PhD project: The development of social cognition and normativity in young children

  • Julia Jünger ◌ Cognitive Personality Psychology
    PhD project: Hormones, personality and social signalling

  • Tobias Kordsmeyer ◌ Biological Personality Psychology
    PhD project: The effects of male testosterone reactivity in the mating context on self- and observer-rated personality

  • Alexandra Korzeczek ◌ Clinical Neurophysiology, University Medical Center
    PhD project: Neurophysioglogical mechanisms enhancing speech fluency of persons who stutter

  • Alexander Kraut ◌ Experimental Psychology
    PhD project: Unmasking the perception of temporal successions: bridge building between metacontrast masking and temporal integration and segregation processes

  • Adi Lausen ◌ Affective Neuroscience and Psychophysiology
    PhD project: Emotion communication: neurocognitive mechanisms and inter-individual differences

  • Elisabeth Lindner ◌ Sensorimotor Group, DPZ
    PhD project: Sensory attenuation and agency

  • Caio Margarido Moreira ◌ Cognitive Neurosciences, DPZ
    PhD project: Neural mechanisms of mental and physical effort in adaptive decision-making in primates

  • Juan Carlos Marulanda Hernández ◌ Cognition and Decision Making
    PhD project: Moral Judgments about Permissible and Non-permissible Harm in War

  • Kristina Miloserdov ◌ Cognitive Neurology, University Medical Center
    PhD project: Visual perception in Parkinson's disease: Dissocation of vision for action and vision for perception

  • Nadja Miosga ◌ Cognitive Developmental Psychology
    PhD project: Selective advice taking in children

  • Davide Montanari ◌ Cognitive Ethology, DPZ
    PhD project: Group Coordination in Guinea Baboons

  • Nadine Müller ◌ Behavioral Ecology
    PhD project: The costs and benefits of sociality in semi-free ranging Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus)

  • Sonia Tatiana Murillo Corrales ◌ Sociobiology & Behavioral Ecology, DPZ
    PhD project: Social relationships: key to gut microbiome composition in wild redfronted lemurs?

  • Niina Nurmi ◌ Behavioral Ecology
    PhD project: The tolerant chimpanzee - Quantifying the costs and benefits of sociality in wild female bonobos (Pan paniscus)

  • Vivien Outters ◌ Psychology of Language
    PhD project: Infant-driven learning from different kinds of social signals

  • Johanna Prüfer ◌ Economic and Social Psychology
    PhD project: Emergence of Leadership

  • Nese Oktay-Gür ◌ Cognitive Developmental Psychology
    PhD project: Theory of Mind and Intentionality Development

  • Sarah Placì ◌ Cognitive Ethology, DPZ
    PhD project: Statistical learning and social inferences in human children and nonhuman primates

  • Annika Primaßin ◌ Clinical Neurophysiology, University Medical Center
    PhD project: Structural and functional brain correlates of long-term clinical improvement of speech fluency in adults who stutter undergoing intense stuttering therapy

  • Lea Prox ◌ Sociobiology & Behavioral Ecology
    Phd Project: Social structure and stable affiliative relationships

  • Johanna Prüfer ◌ Economics and Social Psychology
    Phd Project: Emergence of Leadership

  • Yasaman Rafiee ◌ Affective Neuroscience and Psychophysiology
    PhD project: Endocrinologic and neural basis of emotion perception during the menstrual cycle

  • Eva-Maria Rathke ◌ Cognitive Ethology, DPZ
    PhD project: Determinants of cognititve performance and social preferences across age in Barbary macaques

  • Anja Richter ◌ Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center
    PhD project: Functional neuroimaging of pathophysiological mesolimbic dopamine system and aberrant motivational salience in schizophrenia

  • Alan Rincon ◌ Behavioral Ecology
    PhD project: The quality of affiliative relationships and endogenous oxytocin

  • Marie Ritter ◌ Social and Communication Psychology
    PhD projectEffective decision making in groups - HoneyComb as a tool in decision research

  • Johannes Rollwage ◌ Economics and Social Psychology
    Projekt: Emergence of leadership: Predicting leadership initiative and followership from individual traits and behavioral styles

  • Katja Rudolph ◌ Sociobiology and Behavioral Ecology
    PhD project: Health consequences of group size variation in Verreaux's sifakas (Propithecus verreauxi)

  • Johannes Ruß ◌ Biological Personality Psychology
    PhD project: Interindividual Differences in Transparent Dyadic Interactions

  • Jana Samland ◌ Cognition and Decision Making
    PhD project: The mutual influence of judgments of causality, intentionality and morality: Cognitive processes and intercultural comparison

  • Baptiste Sadoughi ◌ Behavioral Ecology
    PhD project: Effects of progressing age on energy balance, sociality and health in wild female Assamese macaques (Macaca assamensis)

  • Rajalakshmi Satarai Madhavan ◌ Psychology of Language
    PhD project: Language acquisition under a curiosity-driven framework: the interaction between input and selective interest

  • Lukas Schad ◌ Cognitive Ethology, DPZ
    PhD project: Auditory and social learning and its link to social network position in West African green monkeys (Chlorocebus sabaeus)

  • Lydia Schidelko ◌ Cognitive Developmental Psychology
    PhD project: Meta-cognition and its developmental consequences for social cognition and pragmatics

  • Lara Schleifenbaum ◌ Biological Personality Psychology
    PhD project: Hormone-linked shifts in female motivational priorities and empathic accuracy in romantic couples

  • Benjamin Schmid ◌ Cognitive Developmental Psychology
    PhD project: Learning from reliable and unreliable speakers

  • Britta Schünemann ◌ Cognitive Developmental Psychology
    PhD project: Do we have two systems to explain and evaluate other people's behavior? - A systematic examination of the 2-system theory

  • Fatih Sivridag ◌ Psychology of Language
    PhD project: Interactive alignment between pre-schoolers during L2 live video communication

  • Anne Sommerfeld ◌ Experimental Psychology
    PhD project: Do different types of masking interfere with information processing on different levels in the visual hierarchy

  • Mareike Spengler ◌ Social Interaction and Developmental Neuroscience, University Medical Center
    PhD project: Social Avoidance and Reinforcment Learning in Psychiatric Diseases

  • Anna Sperber ◌ Sociobiology and Behavioral Ecology, DPZ
    PhD project: The role of social network structure and personality in group movement decisions in red-fronted lemurs

  • Simon Stephan ◌ Cognition and Decision Making
    PhD project: The mutual influence of generic-level causal information and single-case level causal information on causal cognition

  • James Stranks ◌ Behavioral Ecology
    PhD project: Social buffering and genetic variation in wild macaques

  • Rowan Titchener ◌ Cognitive Ethology, DPZ
    PhD project: Social information sampling and decision-making: An evolutionary and ontogenetic perspective

  • Sonia Touitou ◌ Behavioral Ecology
    PhD project: Physiology and energetics of female reproduction in wild assamese macaques (Macaca assamensis)

  • Dominique Treschnak ◌ Cognitive Ethology, DPZ
    PhD project: The microcosm of Guinea baboon units: Regulation of mating and social relationships within the basal level of the Guinea baboon society

  • Sarah Wolter ◌ Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center
    PhD project: Pathophysiological changes of neurofunctional interaction between hippocampus, prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens in schizophrenia

  • Annika Ziereis ◌ Affective Neuroscience and Psychophysiology
    PhD project: Audio-visual integration in emotion communication- neurophysiological evidence