Ecologist and philosopher are new Canada Research Chairs

UVic's latest Canada Research Chairs, announced in June, will examine how biodiversity is maintained in ecological communities and illuminate the enduring contributions of Aristotelian thought over the past 23 centuries.

Dr. Brad Anholt, an evolutionary ecologist in the department of biology, is the new Canada Research Chair in Experimental and Applied Community Ecology. As a tier-one chairholder, he'll receive $200,000 for seven years in support of his research program, and his chair can be renewed indefinitely.

Dr. Taneli Kukkonen, Canada Research Chair in the Aristotelian Tradition, is coming to UVic's department of philosophy from the University of Helsinki in Finland. His tier-two chair provides $100,000 over five years to support his research program, and is renewable once.

Anholt will continue with lab and field studies to understand how biodiversity is maintained in ecological communities. His research uses model systems to test current theory of the maintenance of biodiversity. He studies: predator-prey interactions in a protozoan; temperature-dependent sex determination in a marine copepod; and the ecology of biological invasions, including the mechanisms of the local bullfrog invasion and its consequences for native amphibians.

Anholt joined UVic in 1996 from a position at the University of Zurich after completing Killam and NSERC postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Michigan and Queen's University. His research has led to 42 papers, international recognition, and a UVic faculty of science Excellence in Research Award.

Earlier this year, Anholt was offered the first University Professorship in Population Ecology at the University of Vienna, but declined the post in favour of continuing his research program in Canada under a Canada Research Chair.

Kukkonen is an internationally recognized specialist in medieval Arabic philosophy and its interpretation and transmission of Aristotelian thought.

Over the past 23 centuries, the ideas of Aristotle and their continual reinterpretation have helped frame and inform thought in Greek, Jewish, Islamic, and Christian civilizations. The Aristotelian tradition pervades Western thought and still plays a vibrant role in the modern world in, for example, recent discussions of the foundation of morality.

Kukkonen will trace the development of Aristotelian physics, metaphysics, and logic from the third through the 16th centuries, clarifying the essential unity of the Aristotelian tradition, demonstrating its influence on the three major monotheistic religions, and exploring the integral role Arabic philosophy has played in the Western reception of Aristotle.

He is editor of a series of scholarly volumes on Islamic philosophical cosmology, psychology, and logic, and is a participant in a major research program on logic East and West, 500-1500, at Cambridge University. He has held appointments as a visiting scholar at the University of Toronto and New York University.

UVic now has 17 Canada Research Chairs and is expected to be awarded 15 more.