Rate My Professor Stephanie King

Professor Stephanie King is Professor of Animal Behaviour in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Bristol. She earned her PhD in Biology from the University of St Andrews in 2012, an MRes in Marine Mammal Science from the University of St Andrews in 2008, and a BSc (Hons) in Zoology from the University of Leeds in 2006. Her career includes positions as Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews from 2012 to 2015 and Postdoctoral Scientist at the Dolphin Research Centre in Florida from 2014 to 2015. From 2015 to 2019, she held a Branco Weiss Fellowship as Research Fellow at the Centre for Evolutionary Biology, University of Western Australia. She joined the University of Bristol as Senior Lecturer in 2019 and was promoted to Professor of Animal Behaviour. King has nearly two decades of experience studying marine mammal acoustic communication, including the temporal and social aspects of vocal interactions in bottlenose dolphins and their use of individually distinctive signature whistles. She assesses the consequences of anthropogenic noise on marine mammal populations and explores how vocal communication mediates complex social behaviours such as cooperation.

King is Principal Investigator of the Shark Bay Dolphin Research project alongside Professors Richard Connor, Michael Krützen, and Dr Simon Allen. Her research employs hydrophone arrays, overhead video, and sound playback experiments to investigate communication in male alliance formation and maintenance, identity signalling, polyadic cooperation, and decision-making strategies. She has received the Zoological Society of London Scientific Medal in 2023 for distinguished work in zoology and a Branco Weiss Fellowship from 2015 to 2020. She secured a European Research Council grant of 1.44 million for her project 'The Social Origins of Rhythm'. Key publications include 'Allied male dolphins use synchronous displays to strengthen social bonds in a cooperative context' (Movement Ecology, 2025), 'What can we learn from bonobos and bottlenose dolphins about the evolution of between-group cooperation?' (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2026), and 'Ontogenetic evidence of socially learned call sequences in Western Australian magpies' (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2026). Her work, published in journals such as PNAS, Current Biology, and Nature Communications, advances cetacean biology through state-of-the-art technology and wild playback experiments, contributing to understanding social cognition in dolphins. With over 2500 citations, her research has been featured on the BBC and influences studies on animal cooperation and communication.