Elis Jones (former KLI Postdoctoral Fellow 2024-2025), along with Richard Vagnino, was awarded the prestigious Callebaut Prize for Interdisciplinary Research at meeting of The International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB) 2025, held in Porto, Portugal, this July. Congratulations to Elis and best wishes for his future career!

The Callebaut Prize is supported by the KLI, in honour of philosopher Werner Callebaut, and allocated by the ISHPSSB awards committee. Prof. Callebaut served as the first Scientific Director of the KLI (1999 to 2014), and also as the Editor-in-Chief of Biological Theory (2006–2014). The prize is awarded to early-career scholars and recognises ‘the best manuscript utilizing an interdisciplinary approach based on a presentation at one of the two previous ISHPSSB meetings.’

Elis’s paper, ‘Exploring the socio-ecology of science: the case of coral reefs’, was presented at the ISHSSPB Toronto 2023 meeting, and is published as part of a special issue on the nature of research environments. It uses data from interviews with coral scientists, alongside ideas from ecology, philosophy, and science and technology studies, to argue that coral science is heavily shaped by, and in turn shapes, the ecological systems it is embedded within.

Elis currently works in Sabina Leonelli’s group at the Technical University of Munich, Germany.