Annual Symposium
2025 Groningen Symposium on Social Evolution: “Foundations of Cooperation”
Location: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands
Sponsors: NWO (Spinoza); Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung
Organizer: C.K.W. De Dreu (c.k.w.de.dreu@rug.nl)
The symposium brings together scientists working on the mechanisms and functions of cooperation across taxa – from social insects and fish to birds and mammals, (non)human primates included. Loosely organized around four themes: (1) life history and the social brain; (2) socio-ecologies and fitness interdependency; (3) managing and maintaining social ties and (4) cooperation and conflict in structured populations, it featured flashtalks and research talks (30 minutes) from junior and senior scientists from across Europe with backgrounds in animal behavior, neurobiology, experimental social psychology and economics, computational sociology, and evolutionary theory. Within and across themes, we covered a range of methods to examine cooperation, including behavioral experiments, field observations, and formal theory and agent-based simulations.
