Itai Roffman

Itai Roffman, PhD, an evolutionary anthropologist and conservationist, is a senior lecturer/researcher and co-executive director of the Jane Goodall Institute Israel, based at the Max Stern Yezreel Valley College, Israel. His MA thesis focused on examining the iconographic competencies of bonobo-chimpanzees as a way of studying the close cultural links between the sister-species chimpanzees and humans, by comparing their abilities to that of late Homo cave art representational iconography and mark-making. For his dissertation, he established a field site in Mali, West Africa, to study wild chimpanzee Hominin/early Homo survival strategies, cultural diversity, and adaptations to near-arid mosaic-habitat cliff range environments.

He established the "Mali Chimpanzee Cultural Preservation, Rehabilitation and Tribal Heritage League" dedicated to the initiation of tribal-protected reservations for chimpanzees. Roffman's research supports Hominid Great Ape rights of Habeas Corpus and reclassification of chimpanzees as Hominin members of the early Homo genus. Roffman advocates for wildlife rights for their release from zoos to ecological rehabilitation sanctuaries and from there to the wild.