Jan Havlíček
His main research interest is in evolutionary aspects of social perception. His group studies how odours, faces and voices influence impression formation, primarily in mating and competitive contexts, mainly within the theoretical frameworks of signalling, sexual selection and dual inheritance theory. His interests further include romantic relatioship formation and interaction of biological and cultural evolution.
His background is in biology (BSc) and anthropology (MSc). He received a PhD (2004) from Charles University, Prague, for a study on human chemical communication. He was promoted to Associate Professor in Anthropology in 2010. He worked at the Faculty of Humanties between 2001-2013 where he established the Human Ethology research group and a graduate programme in human ethology. Since 2013 he works at the ethology unit, departmetn of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague and as the senior researcher at the National Insitute of Mental Health. He has recent or ongoing fieldwork projects within communities in Namibia, Cameroon and Papua New Guinea. He has published over 80 academic papers (h-index = 22), including articles in Psychological Science and Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
He served as President of the Czech and Slovak Ethological Society in 2000-2009, served a term as an Outreach Officer for the European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association (EHBEA) in 2014-16 and served on the ISHE Board of Trustees of the International Society for Human Ethology in 2013-2017. Currently, he is the principle investigator of the University research centre „Nature and culture – interactions of the biological and cultural evolution in interdisciplinary perspective”.