Our Team
Dr Angela Dassow
Prof. Angela Dassow is an Associate Professor and Chair of Biology at Carthage College. She has over 15 years of research experience in bioacoustics. Part of her work focuses on understanding vocal communication systems of white-handed gibbons, cao-vit gibbons and grey wolves. The other part of her work focuses on how we can use vocal behavior as a conservation tool through passive acoustic monitoring of rare and endangered species. Current projects include studying human-wildlife conflict with tigers in Nepal and mapping out territory usage of Cao-vit gibbons in Vietnam.
Dr Arik Kershenbaum
Arik is a Fellow at Girton College, University of Cambridge, and researches animal vocal communication across many different species.
His first popular science book, The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy was a Times/Sunday Times Book of the Year, and received accolades from among others, Richard Dawkins and Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal.
The evolution of different forms of animal communication is the subject of his second popular science book: How Animals Talk, was published in January 2024.
Dr Holly Root-Gutteridge
Holly is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Lincoln, UK.
Her work focuses on dog cognition and behaviour, particularly their perception of the world. For her PhD, she investigated the use of wolf howls as a survey tool and developed tools for individual identification of wolves from their howls.
Dr Bethany Smith
Beth is a postdoctoral researcher at Institute of Zoology, ZSL. She has recently finished her PhD at Nottingham Trent University on interactions between wildlife and livestock guarding dogs in the Carpathian Mountains, Romania. For several years, she has also been working on developing acoustic localisation for passive wildlife monitoring and conservation.