a Confirmed Keynote Speakers  Kevin Lala Kevin Lala is Professor of Behavioural and Evolutionary Biology in the School of Biology, University of St Andrews, U.K. Previously, he held positions at University College London, UC Berkeley and Cambridge University. His laboratory combines animal experimentation with mathematical and statistical approaches to investigate a range of topics on the interface of evolutionary biology, ecology and behavioural science, including: (i) niche construction, inclusive inheritance and the extended evolutionary synthesis, (ii) animal social learning and the evolutionary of human cognition, and (iii) human evolution, particularly gene-culture co-evolution. He has published 14 books and over 300 scientific articles on these topics, with his works cited over 60,000 times (h=115). He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, and recipient of a Royal Society Merit Award, Royal Society University Research Fellowship, BBSRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, and Human Frontier Science Program Postdoctoral Fellowship. Lala is also active in EDI and antiracism initiatives. Lala’s books include Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony. How Culture Made the Human Mind (2017), and Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution (2003, with John Odling-Smee and Marcus Feldman). His most recent book, Evolution Evolving: The Developmental Origins of Adaptation and Biodiversity (2024, with Tobias Uller, Nathalie Feiner, Marcus Feldman & Scott Gilbert), draws on the latest findings in evolutionary genetics and evo-devo, as well as insights from studies of epigenetics, symbiosis, and inheritance, to examine the central role that developmental processes play in evolution.     Beverley Glover Beverley Glover is Professor of Plant Systematics and Evolution at the University of Cambridge and Director of Cambridge University Botanic Garden. She studied Plant and Environmental Biology at the University of St Andrews, before completing her PhD at the John Innes Centre. Her main area of interest is the evolution and development of floral features that attract pollinating animals. She approaches questions of floral evolution in an integrative way, combining molecular genetic approaches to understand floral development with functional analyses using bumblebees and other pollinators. Where possible, these projects are carried out with regards to the phylogenetic context to understand how floral developmental programmes evolve.  aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaa Abderrahman Khila Abderrahman Khila received a joint PhD in cell, molecular and developmental biology from the University of Fez, Morocco and the University of Toulouse France in 2003. He has done two postdoctoral trainings at the University of Western Ontario and at McGill University in Canada, between 2003 and 2010, working on the development of spider mites and the effect of social organization on reproduction in ants. He was hired as a junior researcher at CNRS to start his group at the Institute of functional genomics in Lyon (IGFL), France, then promoted to the level of research director at CNRS. He was awarded an ATIP-Avenir grant, ERC-Consolidator grant, and other national and international grants. He is currently the deputy director and will become the director of IGFL in 2027. He has developed water striders as prominent models for the study of phenotypic evolution, and his lab has been developing state of the art tools, sequence resources and protocols in many species of this group. He has experience with non-standard model insects in general and regularly conducts fieldwork worldwide. He is a former Special Visiting Scientist at Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and held a Guest Professor status at Uppsala University, Sweden. He currently holds an Academic Editor role at PLoS Biology and an Associate Editor role at the journal Evolution Letters.     Laura Nuño de la Rosa Laura Nuño de la Rosa holds a degree in Humanities, a Master’s in Biophysics, and a PhD in Philosophy of Science from the Complutense University of Madrid and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Vienna, she returned to Spain with a Juan de la Cierva contract at the IAS-Research Group of the University of the Basque Country, and later joined the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid. Between 2021 and 2026 she served as Assistant Professor at the Complutense University until obtaining a permanent research position at the Institute of Philosophy, at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Her research spans the history and philosophy of biology as well as broader questions in the philosophy of science, particularly the relationship between science and society in the development of scientific theories. Historically, she has worked on the history of morphology, though most of her work focuses on the recent history of evolutionary biology, especially evolutionary developmental biology. She combines bibliometric and oral history methods to reconstruct the dynamics of scientific practice, while drawing on conceptual tools from cultural evolution to interpret these patterns. Philosophically, her work examines the role of propensities in evolutionary explanations, the interaction between imaging technologies and biological theory in embryology, and the nature of teleological and agential explanations in development and evolution. More recently, she has focused on the study of reproduction, addressing it both from a theoretical perspective and through feminist critiques of scientific practices that represent and explain female sexuality. Her broader interests include interdisciplinarity and theoretical integration, the role of values in science, new materialisms, and emerging forms of scientific realism.