Participants

Pierrick is a philosopher of biology at Macquarie University, in Australia, with a background in evolutionary biology and ecology. Pierrick works mainly on conceptual issues related to evolutionary theory, the concept of biological individuality, and major transitions in evolution. He also has interests in the philosophy of causation and cognitive science.
Pierrick has recently published a short book at Cambridge University Press in which he explores the status of units and levels of selection in evolutionary theory. He proposes a suite of criteria to distinguish genuine from arbitrary or conventional units and levels of selection.

Guilhem Doulcier is an evolutionary biologist who focuses on major evolutionary transitions.

Katrin Hammerschmidt is a group leader at the Institute of Microbiology at Kiel University in Germany. Before, she held positions as postdoctoral fellow at the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study in Auckland, at the University of Sheffield, UK, and at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany. Katrin is an evolutionary biologist and interested in the origin of the hierarchical structure of life. Exemplary, she investigates the evolutionary transition to multicellularity and the evolution of symbiosis. In her work, she combines the approach of experimental evolution with phenotypic and genomic analyses. Through the integration of evolutionary principles in microbiology she recently started projects in translational evolutionary research and science education. She values interdisciplinary collaborations, in particular with a diverse range of biologists, bioinformaticians, science educators, theoreticians and philosophers of biology.

Peter Takacs is currently an ARC (Australian Research Council) Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy and Charles Perkins Centre at The University of Sydney. His current research spans the philosophy of biology and evolutionary biomedicine, with special emphasis on the fundamental conceptual and empirical challenges that arise when determining the ontology of individuals, ascribing biological fitness, and identifying biological (dys)functions. He also has longstanding interests in explanations of major evolutionary transitions and whether the life sciences in fact require a “New Synthesis.”

Graham is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Macquarie University, with a background in the philosophy of cognitive science and evolution. His PhD thesis is on the origins and cultural evolution of storytelling, in particular the application of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis to understanding how and why storytelling has become a ubiquitous behaviour in humans across cultures. His interests lie broadly in conceptual issues around evolution, cognition, agency, and the self.