Patrick Kennedy, Ph.D.

Patrick Kennedy is a postdoctoral researcher studying the evolution of animal social behavior. Starting in January 2021, he will be based at Columbia University, working with Dr. Dustin Rubenstein. He will be focusing on ecological and climatic drivers of social insect cooperation, supported by the Simons Junior Fellowship and a Marie Curie Global Fellowship, using theoretical models and field experiments with African wasps.

Kennedy received his B.A. in biological sciences from the University of Oxford and did his Ph.D. in zoology at the University of Bristol. For his Ph.D., he studied the evolution of paradoxical forms of cooperation in neotropical paper wasps, using fieldwork in French Guiana, Brazil and Panama, and supported by the National Geographic Society, the Centre for the Study of Biodiversity in Amazonia and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama (where he was a Short-Term Fellow). After his Ph.D., he worked as a postdoc on theoretical models of conflict and cooperation, with Professor Andy Radford (Bristol).