Cyril C. Grueter

Cyril C. Grueter is Associate Professor in Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford’s Institute of Human Sciences and Tutorial Fellow in Human Sciences at Wadham College. He also serves as Executive Director at the International Centre for Biodiversity and Primate Conservation at Dali University (China), and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Rwanda.

Cyril earned his PhD in biological anthropology at the University of Zurich, where he conducted a pioneering 20-month field study of snub-nosed monkeys in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He went on to a postdoctoral position at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, including 18 months of fieldwork on the socioecology of mountain gorillas in Rwanda. In 2012, he joined the University of Western Australia as a faculty member, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2023, and in 2017 he held a Visiting Scholar appointment at Harvard University. His work has attracted over £500,000 in competitive research funding. Cyril is a member of the IUCN Primate Specialist Group and serves as Associate Editor for Primates, Frontiers in Mammal Science, and Current Zoology, in addition to other editorial board roles. His research has been widely featured in international media, and he has acted as scientific advisor for BBC documentaries and as an expert for UNESCO World Heritage Site nominations.

Cyril’s research sits at the intersection of behavioural ecology and evolutionary anthropology, with a focus on the evolution of primate and human sociality. His most influential contribution has been the development of a theoretical framework for the evolution of intergroup tolerance and multilevel societies, examining how core social units integrate into larger collective structures and what this reveals about the evolution of social complexity. He also investigates how primates adapt to ecologically extreme environments, particularly high-elevation habitats where food scarcity and climatic challenges exert strong selective pressures. To address these questions, he leads long-term field programs on snub-nosed monkeys in China and chimpanzees in Rwanda, complemented by comparative, experimental, and cross-cultural analyses in collaboration with international partners. Current projects span intergroup dynamics, sexual selection, and behavioural thermoregulation, all with the twin aims of advancing our understanding of human evolution and contributing to the conservation of endangered primates.

Cyril has published more than 130 refereed journal articles in leading outlets such as Science, Nature Communications, Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Science Advances, Biological Reviews, and Current Biology, along with two books and an edited volume.

See Cyril's website for a full list of publications.