Professor Nicola S Clayton FRS

Scientist in Residence

Nicola Clayton is the Professor of Comparative Cognition at the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge and a Don at Clare College Cambridge. By training she is a zoologist-cum-psychologist, who earned her degree in Zoology at the University of Oxford. She has always been fascinated by birds – their elegance, beauty, and showy displays – and is even more intrigued by their minds. Her research programme is on corvid (rooks, jays and ravens) cognition; they have huge brains for their body size and she is curious about how their minds work.
Passionate about dance, Nicola spends much of her spare time practising or performing salsa and Argentine tango, as well as taking weekly jazz and ballet classes. As a result of her collaboration with Mark Baldwin and Rambert, the two sides of her life have finally come together.