The Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST) and the Toulouse School of Economics and Quantitative Social Sciences (TSE) will host the 12^th annual workshop on Economics and Biology, themed Sex Differences in Human Life History Evolution.

 

Background

Life history traits are the key milestones and characteristics that define the human life course, such as when we mature, how many children we have, how long we live, and how we grow and develop. The conference aims to advance our understanding of sex-specific differences in life history traits across the human lifespan through an interdisciplinary lens. It will bring together experts from evolutionary anthropology, biology, archaeology, genetics, demography, and economics to explore four key themes: childhood development and learning, cooperative care and resource sharing, residence patterns and social norms, and aging and menopause. By assembling experts who typically work in isolation, the conference seeks to create new connections between core questions of human life history while promoting a more holistic understanding of how sex-specific physiological, developmental, and behavioral differences influence human evolution.

 

This year’s speakers lineup:

Richard Akresh, University of Illinois (Economics) 

Siwan Anderson, Vancouver School of Economics (Economics) 

Piret Avila, University of Helsinky (Biology) 

Judith Burkhart, University of Zurich (Primatology) 

Raphaelle Chaix, Université Paris Cité (Genetics) 

Willem Frankenhuis, University of Amsterdam (Psychology) 

Chris Kuzawa, Harvard University (Anthropology) 

Ronald Lee, University of California, Berkeley (Demography) 

Siobahn Mattison, University of New Mexico (Anthropology) 

Pat Monaghan, University of Glasgow (Biology) 

April Nowell, University of Victoria (Paleoanthopology) 

Ben Trumble, Arizona State University (Anthropology) 

 

Posters: Besides the plenary sessions, there will be a poster session to which postdocs and Ph.D. students are most welcome to submit applications (abstract + CV + cover letter) to econbio_poster@iast.fr no later than March 31^st, 2025.

 

Organizers: Piret Avila, Pablo Varas Enriquez, Ilaria Pretelli

 

Location: Toulouse School of Economics

Dates: June 2-3, 2025

Registration: Online registration will open on April 15th. Note that presentations are upon invitation only. The poster session accepts submissions (see above). The event is held in-person and will not be streamed online.

Contact: For further information, please send an email to econbio@iast.fr

 

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This event is funded by a French government subsidy managed by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche under the framework of the investissements d'avenir programme reference ANR-17-EURE-0010.

   

 

Reference

12th Toulouse Economics and Biology Workshop, Toulouse, TSE/IAST Building, June 2–3, 2025.