Plenary Speakers

Invited Speakers IPS names Prof Toshisada Nishida (Kyoto Univ.) as the recipient of the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award The Executive Committee for IPS 2008 has invited four of the world's most eminent primatologists to give plenary presentations at the Congress. Between them they represent a broad spectrum of disciplines within primate biology from evolutionary studies through to behaviour, ecology and conservation. The contribution of these world-leaders in their fields to the Congress will attract delegates from around the world and help make this the best IPS Congress ever. IPS 2008 is honoured to present its plenary speakers.

Prof Robert D. Martin \| Prof Karen Strier \| Prof Andrew Whiten \| Prof Louise Barrett \| Prof Toshisada Nishida

			Robert D. Martin Plenary title: "Primate Evolution: The General Framework Revisited " Prof. Martin is the A. Watson Armour III Curator of Biological Anthropology at The Field Museum, Chicago. He has devoted his career to studying primate development and evolution. In his quest to achieve a reliable reconstruction of primate evolutionary history, he has studied an extensive array of characteristics in the living species, including anatomical features, physiology, chromosomes and DNA, taking a particular interest in the brain and reproductive biology, as these systems have been of special importance in primate evolution. He has worked on both fossil evidence, enabling the inclusion of geological time into the picture, and living primates in Africa, Madagascar, Brazil and Panama, so incorporating behavior and ecology into an overall synthesis.

		Karen Strier Plenary title: "Primate Populations: Where Behavioral Variation, Life Histories, and Conservation Coincide" Karen Strier is Hilldale Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her main research interests are to understand the behavioral ecology of primates from a comparative perspective, and to contribute to conservation efforts on their behalf. The northern muriqui (Brachyteles hypoxanthus), which she has been studying in Brazil's Atlantic forest since 1982, are a model for comparisons with other primates as well as one of the most critically endangered primates in the world. One of the current priorities of her long-term field study is to understand how stochastic demographic fluctuations and individual life histories affect population viabilities and behavior. She is also interested in understanding population-level variation and its relevance to basic research in biological anthropology. [BACK TO TOP]

			Andrew Whiten Plenary title: "Living Links to Human Evolution: Culture in the Primates" Andrew Whiten is Professor of Evolutionary and Developmental Psychology and Wardlaw Professor of Psychology. He conducts research on the evolution and development of mind and behaviour. Recent and current studies have focussed on theory of mind (mindreading), imitation, social learning, culture, cooperation and related aspects of social cognition in both captive and wild non-human primates as well as normal and autistic children. [BACK TO TOP]

	Louise Barrett Plenary title: "Baboon Natural Histories" Louise Barrett is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Lethbridge. Professor Barrett's research interests lie in the field of comparative evolutionary psychology and social cognition, her research centres on the cognitive adaptations underpinning group-living, cooperative and parental investment strategies and the socioecology of human and non-human primates. She has become increasingly interested in the neurobiological foundations of social cognition, as well as in cognitive science more generally. She hopes to incorporate neuroscientific approaches as a means of investigating both the ontogenetic and phylogenetic evolution of social capacities. In particular, she is interested in developing ideas based on an embodied and distributed view of cognition as a means of understanding how brain, body and world combine to produce a behaviourally competent individual. Further work on baboons and children aims to identify how they come to understand and learn about their world through physical interaction with it, and to combine this with data on neurobiological changes over the course of primate evolution to produce a neuroscientifically coherent theory of cognitive evolution and development. [BACK TO TOP]

			IPS Lifetime Achievement Award Winner 2008 Toshisada Nishida Plenary title: "Forty Years of Chimpanzee Research at Mahale: Traditions, Changes, and Future" The following is an extract from the award committee's citation: Professor Nishida’s research has included studies of Japanese monkeys, red colobus and bonobos, but he is known best as the pioneering founder of the second-longest running field study of wild chimpanzees, in the Mahale Mountains, Tanzania. Since 1965, he has headed this project that has revealed findings about all aspects of the natural lives of our nearest relations, from diet to technology, social organisation and communication. Notable discoveries included the fact that female chimpanzees are the transferring sex, complex coalitionary tactics employed by male chimpanzees, much about the nature of female chimpanzee relationships and intergroup relations, and the medicinal use of plants.
			In addition to his research, Nishida has trained a generation of students in Japan and provided research opportunities at Mahale to several Western scientists, leading to more than 200 scientific articles from Mahale. Professor Nishida served as President of IPS (1996-2000), and continues to strengthen primatology in his current role as Executive Director of the Japan Monkey Centre. He is Editor-in-Chief of one of our leading journals, Primates, and has served on the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Primatology (1997 – present) and African Primates (1995 – present), and edits Pan Africa News (1997 – present). As primate populations have dwindled everywhere throughout the world, Nishida has advocated importantly for primate conservation. He spearheaded an effort to establish the Mahale Mountains area as a Tanzanian National Park in 1985, and set up a non-profit conservation organisation devoted to this cause, the Mahale Wildlife Conservation Society. He has been a member of the IPS Conservation Committee (1988 - 1992) and the African Section of the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group (1982 - present). He continues to lobby for the conservation of great apes as a Patron of the UNEP’s Great Ape Survival Project (GRASP) and has led an attempt to establish great apes as “World Heritage Species.” Finally, Professor Nishida was cited for his trailblazing efforts to lead Japanese primatology into engagement with the rest of the world on the scientific front. In 1973 he published the first empirical article by a Japanese primatologist in a western journal (Journal of Human Evolution). In 1976 he authored the first Japanese primatological research report to appear in a non-Japanese primatology journal (Folia Primatologica). In 1999 he also led the team that published the first comprehensive ethogram for the genus Pan (Anthropological Science).[BACK TO TOP]