Know more

Current position: Professor, Humboldt University Berlin (since 2017).

Main field of research: Animal behaviour, farm animal welfare, rearing. Before becoming a welfare scientist, Edna worked on communication of songbirds and primates. Her current research deals with the welfare of animals in artificial housing systems. Although her approach focuses on the ethology of animals, she uses additionally information on the health of the animals, measures (stress-)physiological variables as well as marketable features such as meat quality. In addition, she considers ethical and legal aspects. When dealing with a new research question, she aims at testing her hypotheses in controlled conditions, and doing a proof of concept on-farm afterwards. She has worked with several animal species, namely pigs, cattle, goats, sheep and horses. She conducted several projects on dam rearing in cattle, and is currently planning to study the effects of artificial vs dam rearing in goats.

PhD: ETH Zürich (2000-2003), on thermal effects on acoustic communication and behaviour in domestic pigs.

Positions after PhD: Postdoc at ETH Zürich (2003-2009) on dam rearing in cattle and emotions in domestic pigs; Senior Scientist at ETH Zürich (2009-2012), head of Ethology and Animal Welfare Unit at ETH Zürich (2012-2017); Professor for Animal Husbandry and Ethology at Humboldt University Berlin (since 2017).

Further information:https://www.agrar.hu-berlin.de/en/institut-en/departments/dntw-en/tierhaltung