AFFECT-EVO

📢 Grant opportunities!

Our 2nd Grant Period is open. We offer funding opportunities for research visits, virtual collaborations, and conference grants.

🗓️ Deadline: 9 Jan 2026

Apply via e-COST: e-services.cost.eu

Explore behavioural and cognitive indicators of positive emotion from vertebrates to invertebrates.
Participation is free, but registration is required. All early-career researchers and interested persons are invited.
@affect-evo.bsky.social

On Tuesday, we hosted Dr Tom Smulders from @affect-evo.bsky.social for a discussion of the COST Action's progress and future plans for developing a framework to better understand affective states across species. Read more on our website (diverseintelligences.st-andrews.ac.uk/news)

Image: Nate DeWaele

Just returned from a @affect-evo.bsky.social ‬in Latvia, where we discussed how to map out affective states across phylogeny. No easy feat! Very proud to co-lead the 'joy' subgroup & will try my best to represent captive wildlife. A super challenging yet exciting COST Action to be a part of!

Affect Evo meeting - Riga

Members of #AffectEvo Working Group 1 met in Riga last week for some very productive discussions on affective states across species.

Lots of good preparatory work done in Lisbon, looking forward to what is to come! #AffectEvo

And here we are - all basking in some Lisbon sunshine ☀️

#AffectEvo-Lisbon2025

Thank you to everyone who joined the first #AffectEvo meetup for three inspiring days of talks and discussions.

#AffectEvo-Lisbon25

Summary of affect evo discussions

Summary of affect evo discussions

Final day of #AffectEvo-Lisbon25 begins with a recap of breakout room discussions. What are the benefits of taking a phylogenetic mapping approach to study affect?

#AffectEvo

Affect evo day 2 discussions

We wrap up the second day of #AffectEvo-Lisbon25 meetup with some more great discussions.

#AffectEvo

Rui presenting

We are back for our afternoon session at #AffectEvo-Lisbon25 ready to go back to discussions on dimensional approaches to affect and discreet emotions such as fear or disgust.

#AffectEvo-Lisbon25

Name tag

Welcome slide for affect evo meet up

Day 2/3 of the first #AffectEvo MeetUp! Great discussions and plenaries.

Excited for the outputs that will come out from this meetup.

#AffectEvo-Lisbon25

Valence definitions

Great discussions emerging from Working Group 1!

#AffectEvo-Lisbon25
#AffectEvo

Day 2 of our first meeting in Lisbon. This morning we divided into 3 groups to discuss the definitions of Valence and Fear as an exercise to help us think on the optimal ways to map affective states of animals. #AffectEvo #AffectEvo_Lisbon25

And the last keynote of the day was a tour de force by David Anderson (Caltech, USA) on neural dynamics and the encoding of emotion primitives.

Edmund Rolls (Warwick, UK), in his keynote, gave a comprehensive overview of emotion, motivation, reasoning, and how they are related in terms of brain structure-function.

Next up, we had Mike Mendl (Bristol, UK) giving us a brief tour of some emotion concepts and theories and their translatable characteristics.
#AffectEvo
#AffectEvo-Lisbon25

We are in the beautiful @gimmfoundation.bsky.social Oeiras campus for our first in-person meeting of #AffectEvo.
#AffectEvo-Lisbon25 is the hashtag we are using.

Liz Paul, affective terms in animals

Liz Paul, affective terms in animals

Liz Paul, affective terms in animals

We continue with Liz Paul (Bristol, UK) presenting on how to define affective terms for use in animals.

#AffectEvo #AffectEvo-Lisbon25

Carrie Figdor (Iowa, USA) delivers the first keynote: “From Affect and Emotion Theories to a Phylogeny of Affect and Emotion”

Picture of my name tag for the meeting

Very excited to be in person for the first meeting of @affect-evo.bsky.social ! The program is sick and will be the place for fascinating discussion to refine our vision of animal affective state and its evolution across species.

Do give us a follow here and on LinkedIn to hear all about our latest updates!

Rui Oliveira, WG1 lead and the local organizer for the meeting, discusses the WG1 aims, meeting overlook and goals.

Our chair Tom @smulderslab.bsky.social
opening the meeting with his welcome address.

The first in person @affect-evo.bsky.social meeting is about to start with a mammoth program! Looking forward to 3 days of discussion on phylogeny, affect & welfare!

Ready to kick-off the first in person meeting of our COSTaction here at @gimmfoundation.bsky.social

On my way to Lisbon to hear and discuss all about the terminology and frameworks of #affective states across species in our meeting of the @affect-evo.bsky.social EU COST Action.

#Behaviour #Affect #Phylogeny

@costprogramme.bsky.social
@smulderslab.bsky.social
@pierafilippi.bsky.social

Excited for our first meeting in Lisbon this week.

We will be welcoming COST action members and keynote speakers:
Carrie Figdor, Iowa
David Anderson, Caltech
Edmund Rolls, Warwick
Liz Paul, Bristol
Mike Mendl, Bristol

Discussing terminology & frameworks of #affective states across species.

We invite you to @eseb2025.bsky.social in Barcelona 😁 With 51 symposia at a unique location and around 2000 delegates expected, this is shaping up to be the biggest ESEB meeting ever!

ESEB members are entitled to reduced registration fee - we look forward to seeing you there - don't miss out!

Job announcement - we're hiring!

Postdoctoral Fellow, 2 yrs, Adelaide Uni

Plastic brains: Neural adaptations to changing environments in reptiles

Team led by @jcroweriddell.bsky.social with @draliceclement.bsky.social‬ Shaun Collin & myself.

Details here:
careers.adelaide.edu.au/cw/en/job/51...