About

I am an evolutionary biologist interested in the causes and consequences of within-organism conflicts. I’m a Research Associate in the Theory Division at the Lerner Research Institute of the Cleveland Clinic and a Part-time Lecturer in the Department of Biology at Case Western Reserve University. I’m also a Visiting Fellow at the Evolutionary Biology Centre at Uppsala University. 

My work is deeply rooted in the history and philosophy of biology, and I wrote a book on the gene’s-eye view evolution, also known as selfish gene theory (published 2021 by Oxford University Press).

Previously, I was a Wenner-Gren Fellow and I spent the first part of the fellowship at the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, hosted by David Haig, and the second as an independent researcher at the Evolutionary Biology Centre at Uppsala University.

After receiving my doctorate, I was a postdoc in Andy Clark‘s lab in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Cornell University, funded by the Sweden-America Foundation. 

My PhD was on transposable element and genome size evolution with Stephen Wright at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. Throughout my time at U of T I was a Junior Fellow at Massey College. Before that I read biology at the University of Edinburgh.

I can be reached at arvid.agren [at] ebc.uu.se or agrenj[at]ccf.org