Lauren Robinson
Visiting Assistant Professor of Animal Behavior
Lauren M. Robinson is an animal welfare scientist and psychologist specializing in the welfare, personality, and cognition of animals and has multiple publications across these topics.
She has a Ph.D. in psychology and wrote her thesis on nonhuman primate personality and welfare. She has worked across several countries (U.K., U.S., and Austria) and done postdoc work in animal behavior and endocrinology, animal joy, and canid cognition and cooperation for universities including UCLA, the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, and the University of Michigan. Her work has spanned zoos, research facilities, and sanctuaries and she has worked with more than a dozen species, including half a dozen nonhuman primate species, wolves and dogs, and even the occasional Nubian goat.
Recent and Upcoming Courses
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Using Dugatkin's 4th edition of Principles of Animal Behavior (not required to purchase), this class will cover the principles of animal behavior science. Students should be prepared to take on the role of an animal behavior researcher and as such, we will focus on the principles, evolution, and function of animal behavior, and the methods and application of what we learn. Guest lecturers may include researchers focused on dog domestication and/or great apes in the wild. Students will also put into practice some of the ways that scientists observe, record, and measure behavior in the natural world, through hands on work at the Hampshire Farm. We will use Martin and Bateson's 4th edition of Measuring Behavior: An Introductory Guide (not required to purchase) to review current challenges in animal behavior work. At the end of term, students will be challenged to apply what is learned in a research proposal. Keywords:animal, behavior, senses, cognition, farm
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Following Robinson and Weiss' Nonhuman Primate Welfare: From History, Science, and Ethics to Practice (not required to purchase), this class will review the study of animal well-being through focusing on nonhuman primates. We will discuss the history of primates in captivity, current uses of primates in captivity and the arguments for and against their use, primate behaviors related to well-being, and indicators of positive and negative well-being. We will discuss animal well-being as a science and area of philosophy and law. Given that animal well-being is an individual experience, we will also discuss other individual differences including personality and cognitive performance. Where appropriate, we will also briefly cover other areas of animal well-being (e.g., farm animals, zoo animals) so to give a broad review of current animal well-being topics. Keywords:animal, behavior, primates, well-being, captivity
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