IPS2008 Affiliates

Congress Affiliates

The Executive Committee for IPS2008 is delighted to announce a number of important Affiliates to the Congress. These organisations share a number of common goals with IPS2008 and are working closely with us in three ways:

to deliver an event of the highest scientific and organisational quality
to maximise the local educational impact of the congress
to ensure a socially enjoyable event for all the congress delegates

Royal Zoological Society of Scotland's zoo at Edinburgh is one of Europe's leading centres of conservation, education and research. Their mission is 'to inspire and excite our visitors with the wonder of living animals, and so to promote the conservation of threatened species and habitats'. The zoo works collectively with many other zoos and conservation agencies in the UK, Europe and around the world in co-ordinated conservation programmes, to help ensure the survival of many threatened animal species. They also support various conservation projects in the wild through funding and expertise.

Our Dynamic Earth is a charitable trust committed to the education and lifelong learning of Earth sciences, through the running of the exhibition and dedicated education service. You can journey to the centre of the earth, become an astronaut and witness “outer space”, go time travelling back to the beginning of time, wander through a tropical rainforest, feel the chill of polar ice and even come face to face with your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great ancestors! You can also take a helicopter flight across Scotland’s dynamic landscape, dive to the depths of the oceans, come face to face with a dinosaur and go time travelling into our distant and unknown future.

The National Museum of Scotland – two iconic buildings, one amazing museum. Their collections in the landmark Museum of Scotland building tell you the story of Scotland its land, its people and culture. The Royal Museum building, with its magnificent glass ceiling, houses international collections covering nature to art, culture to science. Their World in Our Hands gallery focuses on environmental and conservation issues, looking at extinctions, habitat loss, threats to eco-systems and attempts to save species. The Museum houses an internationally important primate collection some of which was used by W.C. Osman Hill as reference material in the production of his seminal series of monographs on Primates: Comparative Anatomy and Taxonomy published by Edinburgh University Press in the 1950s and 60s.

The Scottish Primate Research Group was formed in 1987, with a core membership of fieldworkers from the triangle of Edinburgh, St Andrews and Stirling Universities, each about an hour's travelling time from the others. Regular joint research meetings and seminars by national and international visitors are held and a network of associates swells attendance at these meetings. Field studies by core Group members are carried out at several sites in Africa, Asia and South America; studies of captive primates rely on well-housed breeding groups at Edinburgh Zoo, as well as major primate centres in France, Japan and U.S.A. The focus of SPRG research is the natural behaviour, mentality and ecology of primates. Results are often of a kind that inform welfare and conservation policies. The SPRG were recently awarded a grant by the Scottish Funding Council to construct a new primate research centre, entitled ‘Living Links to Human Evolution’ to be sited in Edinburgh Zoo.