Monkey business: A girl’s once strange dream

For close to 50 years, my research has focused on social relationships and social structure, particularly in macaques, and has been marked by a gradual broadening of scope. Supported by open-minded parents, I followed a once unconventional path into field primatology largely by ignoring distinct gender-based ideas about appropriate occupations for women that were prevalent when I was a child. Later, as Robert Hinde’s PhD advisee, I benefited enormously from his mentoring and from the transformative experience he provided. I began by examining infant social development in free-ranging rhesus monkeys and the integration of infants into the kinship and dominance structures of their groups. I gradually branched out to look at (1) kinship and dominance in additional age classes and macaque species, (2) additional aspects of social structure (reciprocity, agonistic support, tolerance, cooperation, conflict management), (3) mechanisms and organizing principles (e.g., attraction to kin and high rank, intergenerational transmission, demography, reciprocity, social style, time constraints) and (4) evolutionary underpinnings of social relationships and structure (e.g., parental investment, kin selection, socioecology, phylogeny, biological markets). For much of this journey, I have been accompanied by talented PhD students who have enriched my experience and whom I am now proud to call colleagues and friends. It is gratifying to realize that my career choice is no longer considered as unconventional as it once was.