I obtained my bachelor’s degree at Oxford University, and my PhD at the University of Auckland. I then worked as a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, before taking up a lectureship at the University of Auckland, where I was awarded by the Royal Society of New Zealand both a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship (2014-19), and the Prime Minister’s Emerging Scientist prize (2015). In 2022 I was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant (2023-2028) for my project ‘UNIPROB’. I took up my ICREA Professorship in 2023.
Research interests
My research is focused on comparing and understanding the similarities and differences between human and animal minds. At the heart of my research program is an experimental framework I term the signature testing approach (Taylor et al. 2022). This uses the information processing errors, biases and other patterns agent exhibits to make inference about the content of different minds. This approach generates powerful intelligence tests that strongly constrain the possible cognition an agent is using and allows for the comparison of both biological and artificial intelligences. I use this approach to understand the cognitive and affective processes of animals. My lab currently works with a wide range of study species, including the kea parrot, rats, and adult humans on topics including statistical inference, affective integration and positive animal welfare
Selected publications
– Rault JL, Bateson M, Boissy A, Forkman B, Grinde B, Gygax L, Harfeld JL, Hintze S, Keeling LJ, Kostal L, Lawrence AB, Mendl MT, Miele M, Newberry RC, Sandoe P, Spinka M, Taylor AH, Webb LE, Whalin L & Jensen MB 2025, ‘A consensus on the definition of positive animal welfare‘, Biology letters, 21 – 1 -20240382.
– Bastos A P, Claessens S, Nelson X J, Welch D, Atkinson Q D & Taylor A H 2025,’Evidence of self-care tooling and phylogenetic modeling reveal parrot tool use is not rare‘, iScience, 28 – 4.
– Sol D, Bateman-Neubert A, Noguer L. & Taylor AH 2025, ‘The evolutionary puzzle of cognition: challenges and insights from individual-based studies‘, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B380, 20240123.
– ManyBirds Project, Miller R, Šlipogor V, Caspar KR, Lois-Milevicich J, Soulsbury C, et al. 2025, ‘A large-scale study across the avian clade identifies ecological drivers of neophobia‘, PLoS Biol, 23 – 10 – e3003394.