Nicola Clayton


Nicola Susan Clayton PhD, FRS, FSB, FAPS, C is a British psychologist. She is Professor of Comparative Cognition at the University of Cambridge, Scientist in Residence at Rambert Dance Company, co-founder of 'The Captured Thought' , a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, where she is Director of Studies in Psychology, and a Fellow of the Royal Society since 2010. Clayton was made Honorary Director of Studies and advisor to the 'China UK Development Centre' in 2018. She has been awarded professorships by Nanjing University, Institute of Technology, China , Beijing University of Language and Culture, China, and Hangzhou Diangi University, China. Clayton was made Director of the Cambridge Centre for the Integration of Science, Technology and Culture in 2020.

Early life and education

Clayton graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in zoology from the University of Oxford in 1984, before gaining a PhD from the University of St Andrews in 1987.

Career

University of Cambridge

Clayton has made major contributions in the study of animal cognition as well as cognitive development in human children, with significant impact in the neurobiology of memory and overall cognitive development. Her expertise in the study of comparative cognition integrates a knowledge of both biology and psychology in providing new methods of thinking about the evolution and development of intelligence in non-verbal animals and pre-verbal children. Clayton studies cognition not only in humans but also in members of the crow family. This work has challenged many assumptions that only humans can reminisce about the past and plan for the future, and that only humans can understand other times as well as other minds. Her work has also led to a re-evaluation of the cognitive capacities of animals, specifically birds, and resulted in a theory that intelligence evolved independently in at least two groups, the apes and the crows.

Rambert Dance Company

Since 2009, Clayton has worked with the Rambert Dance Company as science collaborator, then scientific adviser, and now scientist-in-residence. As a dancer, specializing in tango and salsa, she draws evidence from both the arts and science in her collaborations. In 2009, Clayton experienced her first collaboration by becoming involved in a dance piece called The Comedy of Change, which was inspired by Charles Darwin's ideas of natural and sexual selection. She met the choreographer and Artistic Director of Rambert Dance Company, Mark Baldwin, and gave input about science that could inform the piece. Other choreographic works inspired by science Clayton has collaborated with Baldwin on include Seven For a Secret, Never To Be Told, What Wild Ecstasy, The Strange Charm of Mother Nature, The Creation, Perpetual Movement and Bold.
The piece Seven For a Secret, Never To Be Told was based on the psychology of children, an area of Clayton's research. Clayton singled out themes related to the behavioural development of children, such as the importance of play, which helped to inspire the choreography. This piece was another collaboration between Clayton and Baldwin; the title inspired by a line from the nursery rhyme One for Sorrow, which was based on a superstition associating the number of magpies one sees to prediction of one's future.

The Captured Thought

Another of Clayton's collaborations is with the artist and author, Clive Wilkins, who has been Artist in Resident in the psychology department at the University of Cambridge since 2012, a position created especially for Wilkins. Their collaboration arose out of a mutual interest in mental time travel and resulted in Clayton and Wilkins co-founding "The Captured Thought~ an arts/science collaboration." Their work and lectures explore the subjective experience of thinking, by drawing evidence from both science and the arts to examine perception and the nature of mental time travel, as well as the mechanisms we use to think about the future and reminisce about the past. The goal of this project is to illuminate ideas concerning memories and question the power of analysis. Important aspects of The Captured Thought's work have been highlighted in articles in 'The Guardian' newspaper in 2019 and in 'Die Zeit' magazine in 2020. The Captured Thought were invited speakers at The University of Vienna's CogSciHub inauguration 2019 and India's National Brain Research Centre 16th Foundation Day. Clayton and Wilkins continue to present their work in lectures to universities and conferences across the globe~ including UK, Europe, USA, Asia, China and Australasia.

Published works