Research interests

Evolution of preferences
Moral and altruistic preferences
Family systems and family ties
Contract theory

Biography

Ingela Alger is a CNRS Senior Scientist (DR1) in Economics. Her research, which has been published in international peer-reviewed journals such as the American Economic Review, Econometrica, and PNAS, focuses on the evolutionary foundations of human preferences, when these are transmitted from generation to generation and are subject to selection. She is particularly interested in the evolutionary foundations of morality and distributional preferences, as well as preferences guiding family-related behaviors. She has been awarded numerous grants, notably ANR Chaire d’Excellence 2012-2017, and ERC Advanced Grant 2019-2023. In 2022 she was awarded the CNRS Silver Medal. Since 2012 she has been heavily invested in the development of the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST), as first as Biology programme direction (20120-2020), then as Scientific Director (2020-2021), and finally as Director (2021-2024). She also headed the creation of the Department in Social and Behavioral Sciences in 2023.