Nobel Prize Dialogue
Karen B. Strier
Karen B. Strier is a Vilas Research Professor and an Irven DeVore Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A distinguished primatologist and conservationist she is an international authority on the endangered northern muriqui monkey.
Karen B. Strier is a Vilas Research Professor and an Irven DeVore Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She earned her PhD from Harvard University and is an international authority on the endangered northern muriqui monkey, which she has been studying in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest since 1983.
She is co-chair of the Inter-American Network of Academies of Sciences (IANAS) and served as president of the International Primatological Society from 2016-2022. She is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, and a foreign member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. She has chaired committees and served in leadership roles within these and other professional societies.
A distinguished primatologist and conservationist, she has received numerous awards for her contributions to science, conservation, and education. Her pioneering, long-term field research has been critical to conservation efforts on behalf of the muriqui and has been influential in shaping comparative perspectives on primate behavioral and ecological diversity more broadly.