‘Everyone should be part of science’

When did you first get into science communication and public engagement? 

Just prior to 2019, when I was realising that the impact of my research wasn't as broad as I would have liked it to be. If you're working with development and the evolution of who we are, as the upright walking, talking, tool-using great apes, it's relatable to everybody. I didn't want the research just being read by a handful of academics in a niche journal. All of my students who came through were always so excited about doing the work, and it seemed like it could have more impact by creating a public engagement platform from which we could engage with people, the communities, schools and families, and really get people excited about the research.

So you who had to make the first moves to create that platform?

Yes, but I certainly didn't do it alone. I've always had people around me who were as passionate about sharing research as me… not always even within the same subject areas, it was just about creating a vehicle for sharing our research more widely. 

The first big thing I did was a residency at the London Science Museum, called Live Science. They give researchers an opportunity to have three months 'on gallery', working with the public. We created this lovely citizen science project to show people how the way our brains and bodies have evolved is a long evolutionary story, and we share much of the way we operate with other animal species. Here was an opportunity to share those general messages, but also do some basic research on a large population of individuals. That's where we kicked off with Me, Human – the name I've given to all of my public engagement activities. 

So that was an existing scheme… I think that's quite important, because I expect a lot of psychologists would like to have more public engagement and impact with their work, but they might think they have to start by cold calling the Science Museum to ask 'Can I put on an exhibition for you?' But actually, there are schemes out there… probably my own first steps in science communication were with a British Science Association Media Fellowship, which gave me a placement with New Scientist.

There are things out there, but most are geared towards people who want to be the disseminator, the science presenter as their primary career. It can be tricky for the researchers to get out there and show off their stuff, mainly because public engagement money isn't easy to come by. Live Science was a very competitive application process, particularly for the summer programme, where you've got massive footfall from tourists and schools. Other bits that I've done – Soapbox Science, or as a casual exhibitor with the Royal Society Summer Science event – were application-based too, and you still have to find the funding to do the activities. 

The issue is that a lot of funding bodies will only support public engagement if it's tied to a very specific piece of research. There isn't always a general pot, within institutions or funding bodies, to help scientists share more general messages about science more widely. Some big funders have even pulled their public engagement schemes, suggesting that institutions are better placed to support academics with these types of activities. So it's tricky.

Do you think that the primary responsibility for changing that lies with the institutions? What kind of support do you get from your institution for public engagement work?

My institution tries very hard to support public engagement. But I do think there is a wider tendency to support knowledge exchange more heavily, because it is likely to have income generation. It's all tied up with the money that institutions are going to get from the government based on the Research Excellence Framework, and the Knowledge Exchange Framework. 

So, it goes higher up and I think the onus should be on the government to make sure there are funds for public engagement. It's about people's right to information and education. Taxpayers are paying their money to help fund science and progress, and having it then presented back to them in a way that's digestible, informative – and where they also have a chance to give feedback, can make people feel they're actually part of the system. Everyone should be part of science. I feel lucky that I gained an opportunity to do the science, but sharing the science should be required and there should be infrastructure for researchers to do that.

Do you think doing that has made you a better academic, both in terms of teaching and research?

Absolutely. Anybody who's gone to give a public talk – not to students, not to other academics – will recognise that. 

Here's an example, though. I gave a talk at New Scientist Live in 2022. That was great, lots of kids and families, interesting questions. But they are a self-selecting 'science' group of people. Contrast that with doing science at Glastonbury Festival. Science Futures just launched in 2022, and we're bringing science to the public in a way that's meant to be engaging and fun, getting people excited about science. You get so many interesting questions. People who have just stumbled on your stand will ask you questions that really make you consider why you're doing the work that you're doing, and what its full impact can be. They're not already into the detail and minutiae of what you're doing, they can see it more broadly. They want to know, 'how does it relate to me?', and 'Why is it important?' They can really change the way you perceive the work that you do and the perspective from which you approach it, both methodologically and theoretically.

In your particular area of comparative psychology, why do you do that, why is it important?

I'm just compelled to do it. It's something I've been so interested in since I was a small child. I grew up during the studies where researchers were trying to teach chimpanzees and gorillas to talk, and they were failing miserably. Trying to get them to speak like humans speak, then into sign language, then pictograms and symbols. I was always wondering, 'why are we trying to teach them our language without trying to first understand their communication systems?' My work has focused on trying to take a step back and not assume that the precursors to human cognition, human language for example, were as they are in its modern form. They could have presented very differently. Trying to impose modern kinds of communication on other animals to see if they're as smart as we are is not an effective tactic. 

The other reason that I'm passionate about the research now is that we've forever spent our time studying other animals to understand humans better. The tactic has always been, 'if we can use other animals to model human psychology, human brains, human bodies, human disease, disorders, we can work out solutions on these other animals and apply them to humans' – in order to improve the lives of humans. But the work I'm doing with apes is to say, 'hey, we're all great apes, and we've woken up to understanding that our physical and psychological wellbeing interface with each other to create a quality of life'. We've had this mental health awakening, and we need to assume that our great ape cousins also have mental health, but we can't ask them about it or use traditional psychological measures to understand it. But we can use humans as a model to now help them have a better quality of life. 

Can you give me an example?

The current work is to look at apes in captivity, sanctuaries and release programmes to use our understanding of how our stress systems work – how arousal works, how emotional shifts can happen based on who you're around and what resources are available – to help the keepers and the release teams understand how mentally fit those apes are. This individual is pretty resilient, they might be a good candidate for a release programme; or this candidate is really patient, you can see that their stress levels don't jump up and down when they're near people that aggravate them, they might be a good foster parent for one of the new intakes who's maybe lost their parents in poaching or bushmeat activity. 

For me now it's about turning the tables – not using animals to help humans, but using our understanding of humans to help other animals. We've made the world what it is today, and it's our job to make it better for those we share the planet with.

I'm going to ask a 'stumbled into a field in Glastonbury' question. Is there any evidence that perceiving other apes as close to us – bridging that gap – increases people's support for conservation efforts? In some strange way, wouldn't you expect people to be more bothered about conserving something that was different from us?

Well, the more something seems like you, the more empathy you tend to express for it. But one of the things we're evaluating is first-hand experiences with nature. We know these are impactful, but can we gain similar results by, for example, using virtual reality to take a walk with guides through Uganda, watching wild chimpanzees, understanding their relationships and their families, how they look for their food and make their beds at night. Would those sorts of experiences create a more empathetic and conservation-active mindset? Not just for kids, but for everyone. And, if so, shouldn't that maybe be the future of zoos?

That immediately makes me think that zoos are massively overdue someone 'disrupting the market', particularly for the new generation. Generally, kids love a zoo, but there must come a point where everyone just thinks 'this is mad'. 

It's tricky, because zoos are businesses, and the income is generated by entertainment. While zoos often really try hard to include education, most people don't leave the zoo that much more clued in about any particular animal species or their plight on this planet. So they absolutely need an overhaul.

I suppose they have changed to a certain extent, but yes. 

Making that case to the public that we need to bridge that gap between us and the natural world is one thing, but are there plenty of psychologists who need to appreciate that as well?

Based on some reviews on my papers recently, I'd say a lot of scientists need a broader perspective on this. I like to look at social and language skills, as modern evolved capabilities. If we're looking at language, we're quite sure that language didn't evolve in the verbal capacity alone, it more likely started as a multimodal communication system – heavy on the gestures. The bit of the brain that controls speech, whether or not you speak with your hands or your mouth, it's the same bit, Broca's region. We kidnapped it as a language-specific area for humans, but actually it exists in all great ape species. It's anatomically larger on the left side than the right side in all great ape species, but it's not used for language in other apes, it's used for tool use and object manipulation and solving problems that require a hierarchical set of rules. It probably emerged as a physical syntax-solving brain area. 

This is still really important in the way babies develop. Motor development is hugely important for cognitive development, particularly their language skills. A baby's use of their hands, the way their dexterity develops, will be highly associated with their language. We're currently getting mums and dads to record the repertoire of the reflexive movements of their infants from the first days of life all the way up until about eight months, and then we're tracking their social and communication skills up to a couple of years old to see how these things unfold. 

All of that has been informed by the fact that we have a pretty good idea that the way our bodies move in space was really important for the emergence of higher cognitive skills during our evolutionary history. Traditional psychology likes to say, 'motor development over here, cognitive development over there', never really connected in any meaningful way. But evolutionary psychology would suggest they absolutely are. And all of the really cutting-edge developmental stuff says they absolutely are as well. If we look at a whole range of neurodiverse conditions like autism, ADHD, they're so often comorbid with motor conditions like dyspraxia, dyslexia, dyscalculia. You have to look at human brains and bodies in a wider framework than just human species alone. There is still this impetus to say, 'humans over here, other animals over there', 'we're special because we have really sophisticated capabilities'. But those all have precursors. And if we ignore those precursors, we don't really understand ourselves within a wider framework. For me, that's important.

Agreed. Okay, take me back to the field in Glastonbury. Many psychologists would love to get asked to play Glastonbury, but presumably, there are both highs and lows that come with doing that?

Sure, but way more highs than lows. Even the lows are learning moments. 

When you've been an academic for so long, your understanding of what everybody else knows gets skewed. Even getting people comfortable saying, 'we're animals, we're primates, we're great apes', can be challenging. Terminology gets confused. Even our students will fall for the misconception that we humans are descended from modern monkeys. They're all legitimate misconceptions, because they're things we don't necessarily learn in school. They're not part of the national curriculum. But the public are so enthusiastic to learn. These people who stumble into science at Glastonbury, they're expecting music, not science. But they stay. They want to learn and engage with the scientists there. They will come back and bring their friends. So it does make me realise there's a huge appetite for it, and it's our job to make it available.

In terms of how you pitch what you're doing, is that the same across platforms – live events, podcast, TV or radio, print? 

You always have to know your audience and pitch it appropriately. Something for BBC Radio Four is going to be pitched differently than to a public audience at Glastonbury. But I would never want my audience to feel like it's condescending … instead, you always need to think 'what would I want to learn? How would I want to engage?' I usually use my family members – especially my mother-in-law to test pitch levels and gain feedback. At Glastonbury, and in general, it seems it's about letting people do things, hands on – that has the greatest impact. Don't overwhelm people, get a few main messages out there and then let them ask the questions they think are important. That's where you really learn how people relate to your work, and it makes you change the way you operate.

Given what you've been saying about the importance of motor action, it's interesting that a lot of your engagement is very 'hands on'. I often see attempts at that from psychologists at public engagement events, but it tends to be 'here's a squeezy brain to touch'… it's quite difficult to make things genuinely hands on, I think.

I probably have an advantage seeing that most of my participants are children and other apes. I need to make things work across species, so my experimental design has to work without verbal instruction. I love that you can just allow anybody to approach your design, and they can just go for it without needing to have verbal instruction. For me, that's the best way to do a direct comparison between species. If you start bringing language into it, and you're trying to study language, then you've confounded your study at the get go. 

You say experimental design… that 'citizen science', actually getting usable research data out of the public, is that something you've got more into as your experience of engagement has gone on?

That's a good question. The first really big citizen science project for me was that Science Museum residency, and we saw almost 2000 people come through. We had multiple measures for individuals – nobody had a dataset like that. But to be honest, as I've gone on with public engagement, I've done less and less of actually collecting the data with the public, and more just trying to make sure the messages are clear, that people have fun, and come back for more. 

For example, last year, at the Royal Society – I had a public exhibit that demonstrated that humans and other great apes have this signature reaction in temperature change in their face when they're stressed. For example, if you get a jump scare in a film you get that fight or flight response: the temperature in your nose decreases because blood rushes away and goes around your eyes so that you can pay attention to what's around you in space. It's an evolutionarily old, adaptive, vigilance behaviour. We can use this on other great apes, and see what they're feeling without having to use traditional human psychological tests. So I took the thermal camera to the Royal Society, and the aim was to collect loads of data with humans. I got through about 20 people of the hundreds that we saw, because there wasn't any time to get consent forms signed, to explain to people properly what the science was about, and how their data might be used. I just thought actually, what's more important here is just engaging, and making sure people feel they are allowed to touch the equipment, to move around and explore. That's what usually excites people – getting involved and approaching the science it in their own way and asking the questions they want to ask. So we stepped back from collecting on that occasion. And next Glastonbury, I don't think I'll try to collect either… it's just too much to do both at the same time. But, that said, they're both important.

One final question. I do occasionally see positions of 'Professor of Science Communication', or 'Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology'. But, broadly speaking, they tend to be occupied by male professors. I guess that's the case with a gender imbalance in Professorships and in academia or Psychology more broadly – something we've discussed in our pages over the years. But do you see that as a goal, to encourage more women into public engagement and science communication?

Sure, that's always been on my radar. In my own career, I've seen big differences in the way that that men and women navigate their academic careers. Most of my male contemporaries gained their professorships a decade before I gained mine, for various reasons. I took three years out with children, and I was lucky enough to find the Daphne Jackson Trust on my way back in. They fund postdocs half-time to retrain and get back up on their feet. So I had a three-year half-time postdoc at Sussex, which was fantastic. If I hadn't found the Daphne Jackson Trust, I probably wouldn't have gotten back into academia. 

I had two girls, so of course that's on my mind – I want them to have all of the same opportunities available to males. They've grown up in a very sciencey household. They've been part of all of my public engagements, volunteering and helping all through their lives. It's a normal part of their life. In fact, my older daughter now works at the London Science Museum, which is lovely. My younger daughter is at the Slade Art School at UCL, much of her sculpture and mixed-media work focuses on the intersection of science and philosophy. So they both have their science angles. 

And then there's the whole Soapbox Science scheme – which I love – looking beyond that stereotypical view of a professor or a scientist as a male in a lab coat, mixing chemicals in a lab.

I guess that that 'soapbox' aspect of it seems particularly interesting… if you were to take a very broad brush approach to gender characteristics, you might say that literally standing up on a soapbox and proclaiming feels quite a male thing to do.

Exactly. So with the Me, Human platform I open it up to my students and my colleagues and we get individuals who work with us and volunteer from all stages of their of their careers. It's about mentoring those who want an opportunity, but also saying 'please do come and just try it out'. Because I'm the last person I thought who would ever do public speaking. I avoided teaching all through my PhD because I was pathologically shy, I was absolutely terrified of it. So it is kind of bizarre that I find myself in this position now. But I do really enjoy it.