On the occasion of Gregor Johann Mendel's 200th anniversary, a public symposium (Oct 13-14) will be hosted at the KLI to reflect on his work and legacy.

What is life? Where did it come from? Is it all part of a divine master plan, or was it a spectacular chemical “accident”?

We welcome KLI postdoctoral fellow Barbara FISCHER back! Barbara returned from maternity leave and will continue to work on her project "Evolvability and Integration of the Human Pelvis."

In the spring of 2023, six KLI fellows (in alphabetical order) Anna-Katharina Brenner, Corey Bunce, Joyshree Chanam, Marina Knickel, Laura Menatti, and Hari Sridhar pooled their strengths in Philosophy of Science, Biology, Sustainability Science, and Social Ecology to work on an interdisciplinary project for climate change adaptation. Laura Menatti and Corey Bunce led the project, while Guido Caniglia, Scientific Director of the KLI, facilitated the smooth and successful execution of this interdisciplinary effort. The team was rewarded a grant from the SSH Centre (Social Science & Humanities for Climate, Energy and Transport Research Excellence) last summer to contribute a book chapter on adaptation to climate change to the SSH Centre’s multi-volume project on policy recommendations for the European Union. This January, they submitted their forthcoming chapter titled, “Adapting to Heatwaves: Reframing, understanding, and translating Strategies from India to the European Union”. Watch this space for more developments in the near future! (Click on the title to read more about this project.)

The conference is titled: Understanding Life in a Changing Planet: 20+2 Years of Egenis, the Centre for the Study of the Life Sciences, and to be held at the Egenis Centre, University of Exeter from 17-19 April, 2024. Corey Bunce’s presentation (poster) is titled: Rethinking climate change adaptation by bringing Philosophy into dialogue with Social Sciences and Biology; Ludo Schoenmakers’ presentation (poster) is titled: Evolution at the Origins of Life

The conference is organized by ISTA, and aims to bring together various disciplines – including physics, information theory, applied mathematics, and data science – to explore a central problem of developmental biology: how cells integrate external signals and make fate decisions. The focus of the conference is on bridging the gap between the biological phenomena of interest and their theoretical, modeling, and rigorous data analysis treatments. Somya’s talk is titled, "A simple mathematical model to tease out links between tissue morphology and healing".

KLI Fellow Ludo Schoenmakers will give a talk at the conference Evolution at the Edges of Life: Origins, Artificial Systems, and the Conceptual Limits of Evolutionary Theory. This conference will be held at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study (IEA de Paris), from 22-23 April, 2024. Ludo’s talk is titled: Minimal Evolutionary Theory at the Origins of Life.

Laura Menatti is presenting a talk at the 11th International Philosophy of Medicine Roundtable 2024 - Bringing together philosophical work on medicine and health across disciplines and cultures from six continents. Laura's talk is titled: Rethinking Health through a Salutogenic Perspective: Challenges to Face the Current Health and Climate Crises. The conference is online and registration is free. (For talk abstract and details on conference, please click on title)

Members of the KLI family have been connecting with academics around the world though conferences and workshops. Here is a glimpse. (Click in title to read more)

Summer heralds conferences and workshops, and our KLI Fellows will be participating in many of them around the world. Let’s take a look at who’s is presenting what and where this summer! (watch this space for more as the list progresses…)

The 4th World Congress of Environmental History was held at the University of Oulu, Finland, from 19-23 August 2024. This mega event was the largest WCEH so far, with 973 delegates participating (753 in person, 220 online). A team of KLI Fellows, comprising Laura Menatti, Corey Bunce, Hari Sridhar, and KLI alumnus Jonatan Palmblad (Rachel Carson Center, LMU Munich), actively participated in the Fourth World Congress of Environmental History, presenting their research in a panel titled "The Environment Around Us: Relational Approaches as Common Ground." The panel was organized and convened by Laura Menatti and Jonatan Palmblad, and featured 12 talks across three sessions.

KLI fellows Luana Poliseli, Marco Treven, Elis Jones, Cristina Villegas, Alejandro Villanueva and incoming fellow Alejandro Fabregas-Tejeda attended the 6th EASPLS at University of Bordeaux. Isabella Sarto-Jackson gave an input talk on Complexity and the Tyranny of Scales.

She will start a FWF-funded project “Evolvability of inner and middle ears in birds and mammals."

Spring 2021 was an exciting time for pelvis research with four new papers on the evolution of the human pelvis and birth canal.

KLI alum Amitangshu Acharya and coauthor Sudipto Sanyal write about Kolkata's "Black Gold."

Predictive Processing Symposium: From Concept to Circuits – symposium organized by Vienna Cognitive Science Hub featuring K. Friston and N. Uchida. Panel discussants: K. Friston, N. Uchida, I. Sarto-Jackson, M. Grosse-Wentrup, M. Zimmer, moderated by R. Sladky

Join us for the KLI Colloquium by Stuart NEWMAN on 18 OCTOBER 2017, 4.30 pm!

The KLI was present as both a sponsor and as attendees, with fellows and faculty presenting on the historical and philosophical aspects of evo-devo.

The working group explores the value of evolutionary mechanisms for explaining complex social-ecological change.

We congratulate KLI Senior Fellow Wim Hordijk for being awarded one of the ATTRACT projects funded by the Horizon 2020 program of the EU.