I am part of an international, interdisciplinary team of researchers studying Leadership and Hierarchy in Animal and Human Societies. This research team which consists of anthropogists, biologists, mathematicians, and (evolutionry) psychologists meets at the National Institute for Mathematics and Systems Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

I recently gave a talk at the "New Frontiers in Social Neuroscience" conference in Paris (March 2013), organized by the Ipsen Foundation, on "Leadership: An Organizational Neuroscience Perspective." Here is the press release with a summary of this 1 day conference.

Darwin en duurzaamheid. Interview for EOS science magazine about evolutionary psychology and sustainability.

I recently gave a talk for the Cliniclowns on our research, titled "Laughter as painkiller: On the evolution and psychology of laughter and humor" (Lachen als Pijnstiller). The slides (in Dutch) can be found under "lectures/presentations"

Here are the proofs of a chapter, titled "Evolution and Groups" that I wrote together with Tatsuya Kameda for the new 2012 Handbook of Group Processes. We have a paper forthcoming in the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, titled "The Evolutionary Bases for Sustainable Behavior: Implications for Marketing, Policy and Social Entrepreneurship" (with Vlad Griskevicius and Stephanie Cantu).  It is one of the first attempts to use an evolutionary psychology framework to understand environmental problems and how to foster environmental sustainability.

Call for papers special journal issue of Evolutionary Psychology on "Evolutionary psychology in the modern world: Applications, perspectives and strategies" (guest editors: Craig Roberts, Robin Dunbar, and Mark van Vugt); deadline abstracts 30 November.

A new grant-funded research project is the "Groene Schoolpleinen"-project (met Dr. Jolanda Maas), funded by Produktschap Tuinbouw and Jantje Beton. This looks at the social and cognitive effects on children of greening up school yards in the Netherlands.

Current NWO (Dutch Science Foundation) funded research projects include "The Psychology of Intergroup Helping" (with Dr. Esther van Leeuwen) and "Ethnic Leadership" (with Dr. Astrid Homan). These are Mozaiek grants for PhD-students Katherina Alvarez and Seval Gundemir. 

Previous grants include "Leadership in social networks" (with Dr,. Brian Spisak funded by US Naval Office) and "the social guilt hypothesis" (with DR. Roger Giner-Sorolla, University of Kent, funded by ESRC).

We have also obtained KNAW funding for a NIAS/Lorentz workshop on "biological markets and social dilemmas"(with Ronald Noe) in January 2012. 

Past research has been funded through the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), The British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust,  The US Office of Naval Research, and various governments and NGO's.