Louise Barrett is Professor pf Psychology and Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Cognition, Evolution and Behaviour at the University of Lethbridge. She has a PhD in Anthropology from University College London, and her research interests consider the ways in which sociality has selected for particular kinds of psychological and behavioural traits in both human and non-human primates. She is interested in the dynamics of social networks, and the means by which network stability is maintained in the face of perturbation, and how complex network structure changes over time. In particular, she is interested in comparing and contrasting non-linguistic primates with humans, as a means to understand more fully the ways in which language and role-identification/ascription influence patterns of social change. As part of this, she is interested in the concept of liberal education, and how to encourage students to be active and engaged participants in both their own education, and in society more generally.
