Keynote: Michelle Rodrigues, MSc, PhD
Primate Entanglements: Understanding
Human-Primate and Human-Human
Relationships to Conserve Primates
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Abstract: Throughout their ranges, human and non-human primates live alongside one another, and often shape each other’s environments. Early primate research within anthropology often focused on studying primates in
​remote environments, to understand evolutionary environments they imagined to be without significant human pressures. Now we recognize the extent to which humans shape primate environments, and here I will address my recent work to understand both the human-primate and human-human entanglements. I will provide a brief overview of my co-edited volume with Tracie McKinney and Sian Waters, Primates in Anthropogenic Landscapes: Exploring Primate Behavioural Flexibility Across Human Contexts, to contextualize my chapter, Perspectives on the Continuum of Wild to Captive Behaviour, with Partha Sarathi Mishra and Michelle Bezanson. We argue that we can get a better understanding of understanding how anthropogenic pressures shape primate behavior and ecology by considering how these pressures play out across wild, shared, and human-managed environments. Regarding human-human relationships, I will highlight key points from Narratives of positionality in primatology: Foreign/range-country collaborator perspectives form Africa and South America, in press for a special issue in International Journal of Primatology. Consideration of positionality and colonial histories of international fieldwork can help us achieve more equitable, decolonial relationships. Understanding the dynamics of human-primate interactions with a greater awareness of our own cultural and power dynamics will help us better understand and conserve primates.
Dr. Rodrigues is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences at Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI. Her research focuses on the evolution of female social relationships, stress biology, and human-primate interactions across the primate order. In her current teaching and research, she is exploring how racism and colonialism shape primatology and related fields. She is the author of multiple journal publications, and she is actively involved in public engagement activities including Primatweeps, a weekly Twitter game (#PrimatePlaytime), maintainer of #DecolonizePrimatology: A Reading List, and a recent Ted talk speaker. She received a double Bachelor's degree in ecology, ethology, and evolution and psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, an Master's of Arts in anthropology from Iowa State University, and a Doctoral degree in biological anthropology from Ohio State University.