RACHNA BEERAVOLU REDDY portrait
  • Assistant Professor, Anthropology Department
  • Assistant Professor, Sch Of Environ,Society&Sustain
  • Research Associate, Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
  • Co-Director, Ngogo Chimpanzee Project
  • Research Associate, Natural History Museum of Utah
801-581-5529

Research Summary

My research centers on understanding the behavioral, cognitive and emotional dimensions of social relationships and their functional consequences across the lifespan. I adopt a cross-species approach focused on bonobos and chimpanzees and am one of few people fortunate to have studied both of these closest living relatives to humans in the wild. I co-direct the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project, a 30-year study in Kibale National Park, Uganda on the largest known chimpanzee community in the world.

Education

  • B.A., Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University
  • PhD., Anthropology, University of Michigan

Biography

I am a biological anthropologist and primatologist and assistant professor of anthropology and environment, society and sustainability at the University of Utah. I am also a research associate of the Natural History Museum of Utah and the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. Prior to coming to the U, I held postdoctoral fellowships in Psychology and Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and at Duke University. I received my PhD in anthropology from the University of Michigan and my BA with Distinction in evolutionary anthropology from Duke University. 

My research aims to uncover an evolutionary basis for how and why social relationships shape human life. Through longitudinal studies of wild chimpanzees and bonobos - our closest living relatives - I examine how social relationships manifest, develop, and contribute to learning, status, health, survival, resilience and reproduction across the lifespan. I integrate approaches from social, developmental and clinical psychology into my field research program with the goal of understanding how chimpanzees and bonobos learn and socially integrate throughout development. My current research focuses on the adolescent transition.

 

My primary research takes place at Ngogo in Kibale National Park, Uganda where I have studied wild chimpanzees annually since 2013. I became co-director of the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project in 2024. I have also studied wild bonobos in Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve in Democratic Repbublic of Congo. Alongside these field programs, I apply experimental approaches and broad comparative perspective to study the psychological mechanisms that underlie social relationships in humans and a range of other species.

My research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, The National Geographic Society, the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, the Nacey-Maggioncalda Foundation, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, Duke University and the Duke Lemur Center.

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