Amy Parish

After graduating UCD, Parish moved to University College London, where she worked with Volker Sommer on behavioural patterns of animals.^[3] During this time Parish became an expert on bonobos.^[4][5] Whilst studying bonobos at San Diego's Wild Animal Park, she demonstrated a distinct preference of bonobo females for each other's company.^[6] Parish moved to the University of Giessen in Germany, where she focussed on reciprocity.^[7]

Parish uses an evolutionary approach to understand human behaviour.^[8] In 1999 Parish joined the University of Southern California.^[9] At USC she has taught eighteen different topics in across a range of disciplines, including Anthropology, Gender Studies, Arts and Letters, Health and Humanities, School of Education, Psychology.^[10] She taught a course on "love, marriage and the experience of being a wife and on the cultural impact of Darwin’s theories".^[11]

In 2012 she gave a talk at the Natural History Museum, where she revealed "bonobos have more sex, in more ways, and for more reasons, than most humans can imagine".^[12] Whilst at Wilhelma, a zoo in Stuttgart, she observed "two females attack a male at the Stuttgart Zoo in Germany and bit his penis in half".^[13] In 2013 Parish spoke at World Vasectomy Day about the Evolution of Contraception.^[14] In 2016 she gave a keynote talk at the In2In Thinking Forum, "Apes, Power, and Sex: Why We Make War Not Love".^[15]

Alongside research, Parish teaches English at La Jolla Country Day School.^[16][17]

For centuries, the mainly male evolutionary scientists overlooked the significance of female animals behaviour; treating it as a passive constant in a drama dominated by aggressive males.^[18] Darwinian Feminism began when Parish and her then supervisor, Sarah Hrdy, began to reevaluate animal behavior.^[1] Their goal has been simple; to pay equal attention to male and female interests.^[18] In Bonobos, Parish found a matriarchal society, which she thinks "should give hope to the human feminist movement".^[19][13] Parish was featured in Angela Saini's 2017 book Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story.^[20][21]

Parish has been featured in Ms Magazine, as well as on the television Nova, National Geographic Explorer and Discovery Channel.^[18][22] Her research formed part of the PBS evolution library for teachers and students.^[23] She regularly gives public talks about her research.^[24][10]

Parish is a fellow of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities.^[25] She is on the board of the Kids Eco Club.^[26] She is the scientific advisor for the Bonobo Conservation Initiative.^[27][28]