Marlen Fröhlich

🚨 Job alert! The University of Tübingen announces a W3 (Full) Professorship in Early Hominin Evolution in the framework of the DFG Cluster of Excellence 'HUMAN ORIGINS':

uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet...

Application deadline: 11.03.2026 🚨

Opening for PhD position (3.5 years) on

Language Evolution | Computational Modeling | Primate Communication

Joint project with @marlenfroehlich.bsky.social & @elmanubohn.bsky.social at @unituebingen.bsky.social in CRC "Common Ground".

Share, apply, or reach out for details!

tinyurl.com/y2av9hhd

New article just out in NBR, co-authored with some brilliant linguists I’m working with in the new @dfg.de-funded CRC “Common Ground” (link below)!
What can ambiguity in nonhuman communication teach us about the evolution of language? 🐵🗣️🐘

Thank you, Jane. I will never forget that chance encounter at Nairobi airport - both of us heading home from the field. As a grad student, it meant everything to me.

Call for papers for Evolang 2026 is now posted! evolang2026.org. Workshop proposals due Sept 22nd. Paper submissions October 26th. Evolang is interdisciplinarity at its best. We hope to see you in Plovdiv!!

📢 Come to Tübingen and get your PhD with us! Unique opportunity to explore great ape communication 🐵🦧🦍 from multiple disciplinary angles within a single, integrated project. 👇

Individual variation in animal communication: from species averages to unique voices The comparative study of communicative behaviour in non-human animals, especially primates, has yielded crucial insights into the evolution of human language. This research, mostly focused on the spe...

Congratulations to my superb PhD student Angèle Lombrey on publishing her first article in Biological Reviews
@camphilsoc.bsky.social — no less! 😎🍾

Curious about individual differences in animal communicative behavior? 🐦🐬🦧Check out our open-access paper:
👉 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Now published! 📝✅📢
Our review on flexibility in animal communication is out in Biological Reviews @camphilsoc.bsky.social (Open Access).
Huge thanks again to my fantastic co-authors, especially @kirstyegraham.bsky.social. It was a delight to learn from them!

📖 Read it here: doi.org/10.1111/brv....

We are hiring! Two PhD positions for interdisciplinary work on great ape communication and language evolution in a joint project with @marlenfroehlich.bsky.social & @elmanubohn.bsky.social.

🎯 evolutionary or probabilistic modeling
🗓️ deadline: Aug 13
🔗 tinyurl.com/2cnzwakj

📢 2 PhD positions (E13 TV-L, 75%) in our DFG-funded project on great ape communication & the evolution of common ground!

🧠 Backgrounds in biology, psychology or linguistics welcome.
🗓️ Deadline: Aug 13
🔗 bit.ly/4l8p7hy & bit.ly/46jcfAq

Please share!
@elmanubohn.bsky.social @meanwhileina.bsky.social

w/ @kirstyegraham.bsky.social @julietteaychet.bsky.social @taichimpproject.bsky.social, Peter Clark, Nancy Rebout, Guillaume Dezecache, Carel van Schaik!

🚨 New preprint! 3 years after our symposium at the EFP-GfP meeting in Arnhem, I'm happy to share a prefinal draft of our review on approaches to studying flexibility in animal communication. Thanks/Merci beaucoup to the 7 stellar presenters & coauthors who made this possible! osf.io/preprints/ps...

press release (sadly only in German): uni-tuebingen.de/en/universit...

This was fast! :) thank you, Cedric! Congrats on your latest publications!

🎉Exciting times ahead for @elmanubohn.bsky.social, Michael Franke, and me! We will soon be advertising 2 PhD positions (linguistics/biology/psychology) for our SFB subproject "Modeling Great Ape Signaling Behaviour" 🧮 🐵 Stay tuned!

Book cover by Simon Kirby

Delighted to announce the publication of a collaborative effort, co-led by @limorraviv.bsky.social @mpi-nl.bsky.social, showcasing the ways in which researchers have made language evolution an empirical issue: A handbook of experimental approaches to the fascinating problem of language evolution 🧪

Huge thanks to @limorraviv.bsky.social & @cedricboeckx.bsky.social for their wonderful editing work! 🙌📚

🚨 New chapter alert 🚨 What can variation in great ape communication—across individuals, dyads, populations, species—tell us about language origins and communicative flexibility? 🦧🤷‍♂️ My latest piece w/ Carel van Schaik is out now in the OH of Approaches to Language Evolution.
doi.org/10.1093/oxfo...

Very proud to be part of this extraordinary team! What a time to be working and living in Tübingen ⚒️🐵🦧🦴💀

A great success for archaeology and human origins research in Germany 🥳 Two clusters of excellence to be funded for (another) 7 years. Congratulations to @clusterroots.bsky.social, @uni-kiel.de, @unituebingen.bsky.social, @harvatilab.bsky.social, @marlenfroehlich.bsky.social @ctennie.bsky.social!

Interested in biology and comparative psychology, and working in an interdisciplinary project and research team? I’m advertising two PhD positions on the evolutionary origins of cooperative sociality and communication (start 1.10.) at the University of Konstanz👇 links below!

I'm looking for a PhD Student at the intersection of Machine Learning and Developmental Psychology.

We study everyday experiences in children from 🇰🇪🇩🇪🇹🇷 and use ML models to quantify interactions.

4 years, fully funded, great team, beautiful location. Please share and apply!

tinyurl.com/2mafdyh4

🚨 Job opportunity 🚨
A 3-year post doc position is opening as part of my #APELANG project funded by the @agencerecherche.bsky.social

It’s about multimodal combinatorial communication in wild #chimpanzees 🐵

Job ad here: maelleroux-research.weebly.com/apelang.html
And here 👇🏻

🔜🗓️ Five days left to apply for a 2-yr postdoc position on bonobos! Don't miss this opportunity 🐵👇

🚨Come work with us in charming Tübingen and become a member of our growing Freigeist group! We offer a 2-year postdoc position on the communicative plasticity in wild and captive bonobos, fully funded by @volkswagenstiftung.bsky.social. Applications open until March 15th. bit.ly/4gVa5Je

The role of exploration and exploitation in primate communication | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences The concepts of social learning and exploration have been central to debates in comparative cognition research. While their roles in the origins of human cumulative culture on the one hand and creativ...

New paper out with @cedricboeckx.bsky.social and @ctennie.bsky.social: We discuss the role of explore-exploit tensions in shaping primate communication systems 🐵👶, integrating individual and social learning processes. Such a fun paper to write! bit.ly/40I7j4R

Final paper of the orangutan gesture saga published this week! 🦧👋Wild-captive contrasts in non-voc communicative repertoires seem to be mainly driven by additional interaction partners, not by diffs in interaction outcomes or environmental affordances. t.ly/pBwmD