Ruth Mace

The European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association (EHBEA) conference is an annual international event specialising in presenting emerging research on the evolution of human behaviour. It is an inclusive and interdisciplinary society, with its primary aim to advance high-quality scientific research in evolutionary accounts of human cognition, behaviour, and society. It brings together diverse researchers from a broad range of fields including anthropology, human behavioural ecology, evolutionary psychology, cultural evolution, primatology, demography, economics, genetics, and archaeology. The conference hosts 7 plenary speakers and around 200 delegates (~50% students and postdocs) from across the world who participate in 3 days of talks, poster sessions and networking events. Topics are wide-ranging and have included talks on human caregiving, cross-cultural differences, hunter-gatherer social structure, mate choice, the evolution of cooperation, punishment, and warfare. The conference also provides networking and training sessions specifically targeting early career researchers, for example peer review skills and interdisciplinary collaboration. The conference in 2023 will continue these aims by building cross-disciplinary opportunities within the evolutionary social sciences and providing opportunities for international researchers, particularly early-career researchers. Overall, helping to further our understanding of human behaviour through the application of anthropological evolutionary theory to the wide variation of human behaviour.