Honouring Frans de Waal: Annual Lecture & Dissertation Prize by Behaviour and CBEN

Last Friday marked one year since Frans de Waal sadly passed away. Over the past year, we have seen many beautiful tributes in his memory—his work has been widely featured in magazines, scientific journals, podcasts and other media outlets. He was posthumously awarded an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven and UCLouvain, which his wife Catherine Marin graciously accepted on his behalf.

Frans lives on in our memories, in our work, and in the research and discoveries yet to come. He continues to inspire us and we are truly happy to announce, with the support of Behaviour (Brill), that we will honour his legacy with an annual Frans de Waal Honorary Lecture and the Frans de Waal PhD Dissertation Prize. Both will be awarded at the 2025 Cognition, Behaviour & Evolution Network Conference in Antwerp on September 18–19.

Frans’ wife, Catherine Marin, will present the dissertation prize and the inaugural Frans de Waal lecture will be delivered by his former postdoctoral student, Prof. Zanna Clay from Durham University.

Frans de Waal Dissertation Prize

We encourage you to consider self-nominating or nominating your former PhD students for the Frans de Waal Dissertation Prize. Eligible candidates have obtained a PhD degree, must have attended at least one previous CBEN conference, and must have defended their thesis within the past two years prior to the submission deadline. Candidates can self-nominate or be nominated by their doctoral advisor.

The submitted PhD thesis should be original work in the field of CBEN (i.e. work in fields that would typically be suitable for submission for poster and/or oral presentations at the CBEN conference). Only a complete thesis may be submitted . The thesis, along with a short (approximately) 2-page CV should be submitted before June 1, 2025. Submissions can be made through the Behaviour submission platform.

• The winner receives €500 and a free open access publication in Behaviour.
• The winner will write an opinion article for Behaviour on the topic of the thesis and how their work influenced the field or provides future directions.

Interested in joining the selection committee? Please contact Behaviour editor-in-chief Prof. dr. Mariska Kret at m.e.kret@fsw.leidenuniv.nl.