Announcements

May 17, 2018 - Workshop program

You can download the POBAM 2018 workshop program here.

May 7, 2018 - Seminar schedule

The seminar schedule is now posted on the seminar page.

April 9, 2018 - Seminar update

The instructors and topics for this year's POBAM seminar are listed below.

There are nine seminar sessions scheduled. For each session, the instructor has been asked to teach to a problem, rather than propose their solution to it. The goal of each session is to motivate a particular research problem in the philosophy of biology, and to present tools and other material relevant to addressing that problem.

Each session will be called, “Why you should care about…”. Instructors and topics include:

• Patrick Forber (Tufts University), Why you should care about (the evolution of) cooperation and punishment
• Matt Haber (University of Utah), Why you should care about genealogical discordance
• Joyce Havstad (Oakland University), Why you should care about specimen collection and function
• Stefan Linquist (University of Guelph), Why you should care about transposable genetic elements
• Lucas Matthews (University of Virginia), Why you should care about the missing heritability problem
• Jay Odenbaugh (Lewis & Clark College), Why you should care about conservation biology
• Anne Peterson (University of Utah), Why you should care about Aristotelian biology
• Carlos Santana (University of Utah), Why you should care about the evolution of language
• Jim Tabery (University of Utah), Why you should care about the NIH’s ‘All of Us’ research program

Enrollment in the seminar is open to everyone, and we invite students, postdocs, and other scholars working in the philosophy of biology and related fields to attend. Registration for the workshop is included when you enroll in the seminar. Please see the seminar page for more details. To enroll in the seminar and register for the workshop, please see the registration page.

April 6, 2018 - Workshop program

We wish to congratulate those below on being selected for this year's workshop program. We received 69 submissions in all, and were very impressed with the quality of work and range of topics covered. There is a lot of good work being done in our field, and we are pleased to see a mix of junior and senior scholars engaging with such a broad range of interesting topics. To learn more about this year's workshop presenters and read their abstracts, please visit the workshop page.

• Aleta Quinn, Assistant professor (University of Idaho), Species in the Time of Big Data
• Lauren Ross, Assistant professor (University of California Irvine), Causal concepts in biology: Distinguishing pathways from mechanisms
• Patrick Forber & Rory Smead, Associate professors (Tufts University; Northeastern University), Out of spite? On the evolutionary origins of punishment
• Ryan Ketcham, Graduate student (Indiana University), Eusocial insects and the research questions that target them: How to let go of ‘division of labor’
• Stefan Linquist, Associate professor (University of Guelph), The genome as ecosystem: Clarifying a novel approach to the study of “jumping genes”
• William Bausman, Postdoctoral researcher (University of Geneva), Methodologies Order Factors

March 9, 2018 - Registration

Registration details have been posted to the registration page.

March 2, 2018 - Five-day seminar

In conjunction with the two-day workshop, the Department of Philosophy at the University of Utah is offering a five-day seminar that will include readings and discussion on topics relevant to the talks. The seminar will begin on Monday, May 14 and conclude with the talks on Thursday and Friday, May 17-18. Enrollment in the seminar is open to everyone. Please see the seminar page for details.

February 23, 2018 - Keynote speaker

We are excited to announce that Elliott Sober will be the keynote speaker at this year’s workshop. Elliott Sober is the Hans Reichenbach Professor and William F. Vilas Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and has recently published the book, Ockham's Razors–A User's Manual, on the role of Ockham’s razor in scientific explanation.

February 15, 2018 - CFA closed

The CFA for POBAM 2018 is now closed. Thanks to those who submitted their work.