Honours for CASS biological anthropologist

An ANU biological anthropologist known for her work preserving endangered species of primates has been recognised as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy for outstanding teaching.

Dr Alison Behie of the ANU School of Archaeology and Anthropology lectures at both the ANU and in Cambodia at her annually run primatology field school. She said teaching should be about more than just lectures and classrooms.

"I'm a big believer in research-led teaching, we take the research that I'm doing in Asia and build that into the theories as practical examples," Dr Behie said. 

"The students really love research-led teaching. The field school in particular is renowned for it and it's worked fantastically."

"You can sit in a classroom and talk about the issues, but it's not until they're out there they see just how big the forest is and start to think more critically about it." 

Dr Behie's reputation for her work in primate behaviour and conservation led to an invitation to help rebuild endangered primate populations in Vietnam and Cambodia.

"I've been working in Vietnam with the Cat Ba langur monkeys, the last survey showed there are less than 70 of them left in the wild and their population was in the thousands in the 1960s," Dr Behie said.

"The threat in the past was hunting which is now seemingly controlled, the problem seems to be that the breeding populations are really small and fragmented." 

Dr Behie has campaigned for the end of unethical animal testing in China and is currently continuing research on the cause of population decrease in the Cat Ba langur population.

 She hopes that through her work, her students will become actively involved in the conservation of primates.