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...)

Sultan's project "Updating the Single Evolutionary Currency" will seek to resolve the role of genetic variation in adaptive evolution from an ecoevodevo perspective.

We are very happy to welcome our new Writing-Up Fellow Wiktor Rorot to the KLI! Wiktor comes from a background in cognitive science and philosophy, and is currently a PhD student at the Interdisciplinary Doctoral School, University of Warsaw. He will be working on his project “Scale-Free Communication? An investigation of the use of the concept ‘communication’ in biology and cognitive sciences”, at the KLI from 1 Sep 2024, to 31 Mar 2025. Here’s wishing Wiktor a warm welcome and a fruitful time at the KLI. (Click on the title to read more.)

KLI Colloquium: Ron PINHASI (University of Vienna), 28 May, 5.00 pm

We interviewed our current cohort of dissertation writing-up fellows to explore the diversity of our "diversity" fellows.

KLI fellow Alejandro Villanueva Hernández talks about how he combines music- both through research and performances- with philosophy of the biological and cognitive sciences.

What is a social-ecological system? How does it connect to evolutionary theorizing? Co-organizer Tim Waring explains the backstory and hopes for the KLI working group: Evolutionary Theories for Social-Ecological Change.

KLI Colloquium: Orsolya Rita MOLNÁR (Centre for Ecology Research, Tihany), 11 February 2020, 5.00 pm.

If we want to contribute to sustainability transformations, why should we spend time theorizing? New paper by Schlüter et al. talk about theories as assemblages, spaghetti bowls, and ecologies of theories.

KLI fellow Orsolya Bajer-Molnár integrates citizen science into a research program that allows us to Document, Assess, Monitor, and Act on emerging infectious diseases.

KLI Colloquium: William BAUSMAN (University of Geneva), 22 January, 3.00 pm.

Sharon CRASNOW (Norco College) & Kristen INTEMANN (Montana State University), 11 March 2021, 5.00 pm. To join our colloquium please register with Zoom.