We are delighted to welcome our new Postdoctoral Fellow Anne Le Maitre to the KLI! Anne received her doctoral degree from the Université de Poitiers for her dissertation on the adaptation and phylogeny of the inner ear in extant and fossil primates. For her postdoc, she joined the department of theoretical biology at the University of Vienna in 2017 where she studied the evolutionary mechanisms (developmental canalisation, evolvability) underlying morphological variation from an empirical perspective. Here at the KLI, Anne's project... (continued)

We are delighted to have KLI alumna Barbara Fischer join the KLI again, this time as Group Leader, Evolutionary Biology! Barbara is an evolutionary biologist and data scientist with a background in mathematics and theoretical biology. She studies phenotypic evolution using theoretical and empirical approaches. Her work centers on the classical problem of adaptation vs. constraint in evolution: Why are some traits easily adapted by evolution, while others are not, with particular focus on the evolution of birth in humans. Currently, Barbara is an Elise Richter fellow at the Unit of Theoretical Biology, Department of Evolutionary Biology of the University of Vienna, Austria. (Click on title to continue....)

Hallgrimsson's project "Development and Evolvability: The Conceptual Foundations of Evo-Devo" aims to clarify key-concepts in the field.

Stadtmauer’s project “The Developmental Evolutionary Basis of Tissue Type” aims to develop a theory for the developmental-evolutionary concept of "tissue type".

We are very happy to welcome our new Post-Doctoral Fellow Elis Jones here at the KLI. Elis had earlier come to the KLI as a Visitor Fellow in 2022. Since then, he has been awarded a PhD degree in Sociology from Exeter University’s Egenis Centre in October 2023 for his thesis, “Understanding the role of value in coral reef science”. Here at the KLI, Elis’s post-doc project, “Theorising the Blue Economy: Connecting Economic, Ecological and Epistemic Value in Coral Reef Research”, aims to integrate the scientific and ecological significance of reef ecosystems into the emerging concept of 'blue economics’. (Click on title to continue.)

Enrico Petracca’s project “Embodied Rationality: Normative and Evolutionary Foundations” introduces a novel naturalistic perspective on rationality, called "embodied rationality".

We warmly welcome our new Writing-up Fellow Franziska Reinhard to the KLI! Franziska is currently a PhD researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Vienna. Her PhD project studies practices from origins-of-life research from a philosophy of science perspective, combining aspects of general philosophy science, philosophy of biology, and philosophy of the historical sciences. Franziska has completed a BA in Chemistry and Philosophy at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, and an MA in Logic and Philosophy of Science at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. (Click on title to continue...)

Brown's stay at the KLI is a joint visiting fellowship with Kevin Lala to work on their project 'Promoting a Progressive Vision of Evolutionary Science'.

We heartily welcome our new Visiting Fellow Ievgeniia Ivanova who will be with us till 28th June. Ievgeniia is a Visiting fellow at the University of Stirling, UK (2023-2024), and was an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen, UK (2022-2023). From 2012 to 2022 she held positions of senior lecturer and associate professor at the Odesa National Polytechnic University (Ukraine), National Medical University (Ukraine), and National University "Odesa Maritime Academy" (Ukraine). Ievgeniia’s research interests cover interdisciplinary areas such as philosophy and methodology of knowledge, epistemology, and philosophy of science using a systems approach to research complex intellectual, value, and social objects. During her stay here at the KLI, Ievgeniia will also give a colloquium talk titled, "Parametric General Systems Theory and How to Apply It".

Project: Transdisciplinary research and its scientific impact: Insights and implications from health research and sustainability research on interconnected health-environmental challenges, collaborative approaches, and structural development in science

We are very happy to have Juno Salazar Parreñas with us at the KLI. Juno is an Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies and Feminist Gender and Sexuality Studies at Cornell University (USA). She is the author of Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation, which received the 2019 Michelle Rosaldo Book Prize from the Association of Feminist Anthropology. During her stay at the KLI Juno will also be giving a KLI Colloquium talk titled "Co(w)-Evolution: Dairying from the Holocene to the Anthropocene in German Speaking Europe" on June 6th. (Click on title to continue.)

We look forward to having Kevin Lala in our midst again. Kevin is Professor of Behavioural and Evolutionary Biology at the University of St Andrews (Scotland), and also serves as an External Faculty of the KLI. In their latest book, Evolution Evolving: The Developmental Origins of Adaptive Diversity (Princeton University Press, 2024), Kevin and his co-authors makes the scientific case for an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. While the book is aimed at a specialist audience, it is written in a way that makes it accessible to general readers as well.

Lala's stay at the KLI is a joint visiting fellowship with Gillian Brown to work on their project 'Promoting a Progressive Vision of Evolutionary Science'.

Schoenmakers’ project “The Origins of Evolution” examines the application of evolutionary theory to the origin and early development of life.

We are very happy to welcome our new Fellow Visitor Martin Andreas Schmid to the KLI. Martin is an environmental historian trained in history and archaeology. He studies the biophysical and symbolic relationships of society with nature since c. 1500 with focus on Austria and Europe. He currently holds the position of Associate Professor for Environmental History at the Department of Economics and Social Sciences (WiSo), University of Natural Resources & Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU). Martin’s KLI project is titled, “What Is Socio-Ecological Industrialization in Co-Evolutionary Terms?”

We are very happy to welcome Nora Hein to the KLI! Nora is a student in the master's program Organic Agricultural Systems and Agroecology at BOKU University in Vienna, where she had previously obtained a master's degree in Environment and Bio-Resources Management. At the KLI, Nora is working as a research assistant in the EU project PLUS Change, which uses a transdisciplinary perspective to investigate land use strategies and decision-making processes to address social, climate, and biodiversity objectives.

We are very happy to have our new Postdoctoral Fellow Olesya Bondareko at the KLI! Olesya has recently defended her PhD in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Her current research focuses on the integration between genomics and the social sciences including psychology, sociology, and social policy-oriented research. Olesya was born and grew up in Ukraine which continues to suffer from the Russian invasion. You can help Ukrainian medics save lives by donating to https://www.hospitallers.org.uk/ or https://www.leleka.care/. (Click on the title to know more about Olesya!)

We are very happy to welcome our new Writing-up Fellow Onerva Kiianlinna to the KLI. Onerva Kiianlinna is in the final phase of her PhD at the Doctoral Programme in Philosophy, Arts and Society, University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests lie in evolutionary aesthetics, especially in the relationship between philosophical and empirical aesthetics. Her PhD research project is titled “Aesthetic Judging in Contemporary Evolutionary Aesthetics”. Onerva aims to ‘provide perspectives on how the act of aesthetic judging could and should be understood in contemporary evolutionary aesthetics’.

We are very happy to welcome our new Fellow Visitor Sean Pears to the KLI. Sean is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Philosophy in Biology and Medicine at the University of Bordeaux, with a focus on the philosophy of biology, particularly evolutionary theory and the expanded evolutionary synthesis. He will be at the KLI for two months, from September 1 to October 31, 2024. During his time at the KLI, Sean will be working on his project titled, ‘Eco-Evo-Devo and Restoration: Cultivating Evolvable Socio-Ecosystems’.

We warmly welcome our new Postdoctoral Fellow Somya Mani to the KLI! Somya Mani is a theoretical biologist, and has studied evolutionary transitions in genetic, cellular and multicellular systems. She received her PhD from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India, where she studied the evolution of the eukaryotic cell through mathematical modeling. During her postdoctoral research at the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea, she began to build her research on developmental evolution, and also produced the first modeling framework for the study of de novo gene birth. In general, her work involves building mathematical models to capture evolution of biological systems using tools from physics and mathematics, particularly statistics and graph theory. (Click on title to continue...)