• Black-and-white portrait of a smiling middle-aged woman with dark hair wearing a white blouse

    Alicia P. Melis

    Principal Investigator

    Associate Professor in Experimental Psychology, UCL. Studies the evolutionary and developmental origins of human cooperation, comparing chimpanzees, children and adults.

  • Portrait of Shaozhe Cheng

    Shaozhe Cheng

    Postdoctoral Researcher

    Cognitive scientist studying how uniquely human forms of agency support coordination, comparing children, adults and AI agents to inform more human-compatible AI. Incoming British Academy International Fellow (2027–2029).

  • Portrait of Ankita Raj

    Ankita Raj

    Research Volunteer

    MSc in Cognitive and Decision Sciences, UCL. Interested in how social preferences, expectations and strategic reasoning shape cooperation and decision-making.

Collaborators

María Victoria Hernández-Lloreda — Complutense University of Madrid
Esther Herrmann — University of Portsmouth
Juliane Kaminski — University of Portsmouth
Laura Simone Lewis and Amanda Goguen (PhD student) — University of California, Santa Barbara
Elliot Ludvig — University of Warwick
Federico Rossano and Madeline Meade (PhD student) — University of California, San Diego
Felix Warneken — University of Michigan

Former lab members


Amanda Goguen – Research Assistant (2024), now PhD student at UC Santa Barbara
Hannah Brown – Research Assistant (2022–2023)
Stefanie Keupp – Postdoctoral Researcher (2019–2022)
Shona Duguid – Postdoctoral Researcher (2018–2019), now Lecturer in Psychology at York St John University