Meg Crofoot is Director of the Department for the Ecology of Animal Societies at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and an Alexander von Humboldt Professor at the University of Konstanz. Before relocating to Germany, she was a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at University of California, Davis (2013-2019); and before that a lecturer in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary at Princeton University (2009-2011) and a research fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama (2008-2013).

A behavioral ecologist and evolutionary anthropologist, she is interested in the evolution of social complexity. Her research—which yokes field-based study with emerging remote sensing technology—has been recognized by the highest honors in the US and Europe, including the Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering (2016), the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship (2018), and the European Research Council Consolidator Grant (2022).