Sir Kenneth Mather Memorial Prize 2018/19 – Gonçalo Faria

It is a tremendous honour to receive Sir Kenneth Mather Memorial Prize.  I am very thankful to the Genetics Society for honouring me with the award, and to Professor Andy Gardner for the nomination, for the support, and for the supervision during my PhD, titled “Integrating the theories of kin selection and sexual selection”.

My PhD aimed to bring together, as the title suggests, the theories of kin selection and sexual selection.  The work that I developed turned out to be just a stepping-stone to that objective. The literature of both kin selection and sexual selection are vast, and four years were not enough to cover all the potential for overlap between the two theories.  Immediately after finishing my PhD, I moved to Toulouse, France, to start a research fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse.  Because the four years of my PhD were so motivating and interesting, the objective of my current research continues to be, through the integration of kin selection theory with sexual selection theory, to provide a broader synthesis of the theories of natural, sexual, and kin selection.