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By Prof. Mark Rutter

I’m writing this on the Eurostar heading back to the UK from Utrecht in the Netherlands, having participated in the .

My two-year term as the ISAE’s Senior Vice President came to an end at the society’s AGM on Thursday, August 7, ending a total of six years in the presidential roles. I participated in my first international congress of the ISAE (then known as the Society for Veterinary Ethology) back in Skara, Sweden in 1988, and I have now attended a total of 29 of the society’s international meetings (three of them online, the rest in person).

From L to R: Dr Ellen Williams, Professor Mark Rutter, Dr Juliana Garcia Alvarez, Dr Holly Vickery

The ISAE congress is the international forum for applied ethologists to meet and exchange research findings, ideas and opinions, and as such it plays an essential role in steering the future direction of the field of applied animal behaviour science as well as supporting the development of the next generation of ethologists.

The ISAE helps bring cutting edge science to exploiting new opportunities and solving old challenges in many of the myriad ways humans interact with animals around the world.

Face-to-face participation at an ISAE congress is the ultimate applied ethology networking opportunity, and many an international research consortium has been established at a congress.

Most ethologists use the congress to present their initial findings from a study. They can then get feedback from others regarding their approach to data analysis and interpretation, helping improve the quality of the subsequent full analysis when submitted to a refereed journal.  Workshops help tackle specific issues or exploit new opportunities.

The congress also features keynote talks which help advance the theoretical aspects of applied ethology or bring in multidisciplinary angles to advance our science.

The meeting opens each year with the Wood-Gush Memorial Lecture which aims to bring in a speaker from outside the field to help broaden our perspectives. And it was the 2025 Wood-Gush talk that, for me, was the most exciting and intellectually stimulating talk in Utrecht. It was by Meghan Barrett (Indiana University) and entitled Horizons of animal welfare: insects in farming and research.

Meghan presented very compelling and robust scientific evidence to support the plausibility of sentience in at least some insects. Although focussing on insects managed by humans in labs or, increasing, on insect protein farms, the research being carried out by Megan’s and others challenges traditional ideas about the capacity of our six-legged ‘friends’ to suffer.

Hopefully I have convinced you - if you were not already convinced - that such congresses are a crucial forum for the exchange of scientific results and ideas. They would not be possible without a lot of effort by volunteers behind the scenes.

Most obviously, the local congress organisers have the very significant task of reviewing abstracts and arranging a stimulating scientific programme, and this is usually done by a team of volunteer researchers and academics.

Increasingly, the local scientific organisers now use a professional congress organising company to register delegates, sort the audio-visual equipment and so on. Although this eases the workload of academic volunteers, it does raise registration costs, making participation more expensive.

And the society itself also needs a team of volunteers, the vast majority of whom also have a ‘day job’ as research scientists and/or academics. This team helps to coordinate activities from year to year, including managing membership, engaging with other societies and governments, managing sponsorship funding, coordinating regional activities and so on.

Over the past six years in the ISAE presidential roles I have been interacting with many scientists and academics around the world, and I have seen a very worrying and unfortunately growing trend. It is getting increasingly difficult to find people able to volunteer to join council or organise a congress.

There are volunteers that are willing when first approached, but increasingly they then report back that their mangers will not support them, unless they do these activities in their own personal time, which is not tenable. Engaging in the latest research findings and ideas through scientific societies is a vital part of the research process and not just a hobby!

I urge those reading this blog to take action!

If you are a manager, I appreciate that university budgets are being increasingly stretched, but please do not undervalue the role scientific societies play in supporting and advancing the relevant fields of research.

Please help by supporting your researchers in attending congresses, and also support them if they volunteer to help host a congress or if they wish to join a society’s council. If you are not a manager, I encourage you to draw this to your manager’s attention and ask them to pass it up the chain to someone who hopefully can ensure staff volunteering for roles in scientific societies and congress organisation have the university’s full support.

 The European COST Action LIFT Satellite Workshop which was held the day before the ISAE congress