Evolutionary SIG Annual Conference 2021

The programme is now available.

Randolph M. Nesse joined Arizona State University in 2014 as Professor of Life Sciences and Founding Director of the Center for Evolution Medicine. He was previously a Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. His research on evolution and ageing led to a collaboration with the evolutionary biologist George Williams that initiated much new work in evolutionary medicine. His current mission is to show how the principles of evolutionary medicine can solve psychiatry's problems and advance research and treatment of mental disorders. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and Founding President of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine & Public Health. His recent book, Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry is recognized as seminal for evolutionary psychiatry.

Gul Deniz Salali is a British Academy Research Fellow and Lecturer in Evolutionary Anthropology/Medicine at University College London. She uses tools and concepts from evolutionary biology to answer questions on human behaviour and health. She has been conducting fieldwork in the Congo rainforest since 2013, living with the Mbendjele BaYaka hunter-gatherers. Deniz did her PhD in evolutionary anthropology at UCL studying cultural evolution in hunter-gatherers. She holds a double master’s degree in evolutionary biology from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands and the University of Montpellier, France; and a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology and genetics from Istanbul Technical University, Turkey. Her research has been published in journals including Science, Current Biology, and Nature Human Behaviour.

Ed Bullmore MB PhD FRCP FRCPsych FMedSci trained in medicine at the University of Oxford and St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London; then in psychiatry at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London. He moved to Cambridge as Professor of Psychiatry in 1999 and is currently Director of the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre, and Head of the Department of Psychiatry, in the University. He is also an honorary Consultant Psychiatrist and Director of R&D in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Foundation NHS Trust. From 2005 to 2019, he worked half-time for GlaxoSmithKline, latterly focusing on immuno-psychiatry, as described in his recent book The Inflamed Mind. He has published more than 500 scientific papers and his work on brain network science and brain imaging has been highly cited. He has been elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Jonathan Hill is Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Reading, and Honorary Consultant in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust. He has increasingly focused on the question of whether there can be unifying general theories for the origins of mental disorders, and in particular for development and psychopathology, addressing it both conceptually (Bolton and Hill, Mind Meaning and Mental Disorder, OUP) and empirically in the Wirral Child Health and Development Study (WCHADS). Prenatal measurement of indices of maternal stress has allowed us to examine predictions from evolutionary hypotheses for sex differences (Trivers-Willard (T-R) hypothesis) and for foetal anticipation of postnatal environments (Predictive Adaptive Response (PAR) hypothesis). These are potentially of importance to the broader questions of why sex differences in child and adolescent psychopathology are so marked, and how do adaptations as well as deficits contribute to mental disorders?

Paul Gilbert has been a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist for over 40 years. He has been a professor of clinical psychology since 1992 and has published over 300 articles and books chapters and 22 books covering evolutionary approaches to mental health difficulties and interventions including social rank theory, processes of shame and self-criticism. For the last 25 years, he has been studying the evolved functions and physiology of care and compassion motivational systems and how they can be used therapeutically. He established the Compassionate Mind Foundation as an international compassion education and promotion charity in 2006, was a member of the NICE Committee for depression (2004); President of the British Association for Cognitive Behaviour Psychotherapy (2003) and was awarded an OBE for services to mental health in 2011. Now retired from the NHS, he is engaged in extensive research on how to stimulate and cultivate compassion motivation in mental health settings, schools and businesses.

Daniela F. Sieff, D. Phil is an author and scholar. She has a doctorate in biological anthropology from the University of Oxford, and an active interest in the dynamics of emotional trauma and its healing. Daniela’s doctoral research explored how evolutionary processes contribute to shaping human behaviour. Her research took her to a wilderness region of Tanzania to work with traditional cattle-herding people. For the last couple of decades, Daniela has been exploring emotional trauma and its healing through bringing together her own personal experience with the knowledge that comes from depth psychology, neurobiology, anthropology and evolution. She is the author of Understanding and Healing Emotional Trauma: Conversations with Pioneering Clinicians and Researchers (Routledge 2015), and currently working on a new book.

Please read our terms and conditions before making your booking.

• Access to a reliable internet connection 
• A PC, laptop, tablet or phone 
• Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge browser or Zoom installed on your PC, laptop, tablet or phone 

• You do not need to have a Zoom account to attend.

The event will take place online using Zoom as a webinar. Participants will be able view a video of the speaker alongside any slides. Participants can also pose questions, where the programme allows, and some speakers may use polling or other interactive features.

All registered attendees will have access to a recording for up to two months after the event.