News

Filippo Aureli and PhD student Eugenia Polizzi di Sorrentino attended the INCORE workshop “Feathered Apes meet furry crows” in Strasbourg (France) on 26-28 February. Filippo gave an invited talk, and Eugenia chaired a session. The workshop was also attended by Orlaith Fraser, one of the Centre former PhD students and now postdoctoral fellow at the University of Vienna.

Professor Silvia Gonzalez' and Professor David Huddart's research, as part of an international team, on hominin footprints is published in Science today (27th Feb. 2009). A press release on this topic can be downloaded from here. 

Dr David Wilkinson's new book, in collaboration with Professor Tom Sherratt from Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada) has been published by Oxford University Press.  Entitled 'Big Questions in Ecology and Evolution' the book considers such questions as ’why do creatures age?’, ‘why is the world green?’ and ‘why co-operate?’. Dave's previous book 'Fundamental processes in ecology: an Earth systems approach' received the Marsh Ecology book Prize in 2007.

Congratulations to Federica Amici who successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled “Inhibitory control and other cognitive abilities critical to fission-fusion dynamics in primates”.  Frederica's work was examined by Robin Dunbar. Some of her results were recently published in Current Biology, and featured in a Science online news story.

Nicola Koyama and Filippo Aureli organised the event “Do primates avoid fights and what happens when they fight with friends?” at the 2008 BA Festival of Science held in Liverpool in September 2008. Speakers included Orlaith Fraser (former LJMU PhD student), Colleen Schaffner (University of Chester) and Nathan Emery (Queen Mary University of London). This session attracted international media interest, with articles on the radio, BBC website and numerous newspapers and websites.

Welcome to Julien Louys who has come from Australia to join the Research Centre as a postdoctoral researcher working with Laura Bishop on the 3 year  project 'Taxon-free palaeontological methods for reconstructing environmental change'  funded by the Leverhulme Trustand being undertaken in collaboration with colleagues from Hull York Medical School and the University of Oxford.

Congratulations to Orlaith Fraser who successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled 'Reconciliation, Consolation and Relationship Quality in Chimpanzees'. Orlaith's work was examined by Frans de Waal and some of her results were recently published in PNAS.