Dr. Christine Webb is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University, where she is part of the Animal Studies program. Her research is driven by growing awareness that the ecological crisis demands a profound shift in how we understand other animals and our place among them, leading to two intersecting lines of inquiry. First, her work seeks to elucidate the complex dynamics of animal social life, and to apply this knowledge to foundational questions in animal ethics and conservation. Specifically, she investigates how animals manage and mitigate social disruptions, the emotional and motivational states that underlie those processes, and the cultural influences shaping them, with a focus on nonhuman primates. Second, she is interested in how prevailing societal norms, values, and institutions shape contemporary scientific knowledge of other animals and the environment more generally. In particular, her recent work engages critically with human exceptionalism, and how this pervasive ideology—oftentimes hidden—biases scientific exploration of the more-than-human world. Her debut book, The Arrogant Ape: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why it Matters (Avery/Penguin Random House), was recently named one of the The New York Times’s 100 Notable Books of the Year.