The program committee selected, based on a thorough peer review process, out of 192 submissions 75 contributions for oral presentation and 39 for poster presentations. Additionally, there will be 20 invited talks, including 8 plenaries. These presentations will cover the full range of subdisciplines of language evolution research, from anthropology to computational modelling, and from behavioral biology to theoretical linguistics.

The plenary speakers are Stephen Anderson (Yale) , Morten Cristiansen (Cornell), Terrence Deacon (Berkeley), Peter Gardenfors (Lund), Marc Hauser (Harvard), Wil Roebroeks (Leiden), Eors Szathmary (Budapest) and Maggie Tallerman (Newcastle). The other invited speakers are: Alan Barnard (Edinburgh), Robert Berwick (MIT), Rebecca Cann (Hawaii) & Karl Diller (Hawaii), Julia Fischer (Goettingen), Kathleen Gibson (Texas and Houston), Patricia Greenfield (UCLA), Eva Jablonka (Tel Aviv) & Daniel Dor (Tel Aviv), Gerhard Jaeger (Tuebingen), Constance Scharff (FU Berlin), Ann Senghas (Columbia) & Asli Ozyurek (MPI, Nijmegen), Marilyn Vihman (York), Thomas Wynn (Colorado at Colorado Springs) & Frederick Coolidge (Colorado at Colorado Springs).

At the first day of the conference, April 14th, four workshops will be held on the topics below. Calls for papers for these workshops are available through the conference website (http://evolang2010.nl ); registration goes through the conference registration site.

1. The evolution of semantic structure, abstract submission deadline January 31st
2. Birdsong and the evolution of speech,  abstract submission deadline January 22nd
3. Models of Language Evolution - Does the Math Add Up?, abstract submission deadline January 31st
4. Cerebral dominance
   

*About Utrecht*
Utrecht is a historic city, founded by the Romans and now the fourth largest city in the country. Its university is more than 350 years old and one of the largest in the country with about 25,000 students. Utrecht has a beautiful, medieval city centre with canals, old churches, museums, a modern concert hall and a municipal theatre. Located in the heart of the Netherlands, it can be easily reached from almost anywhere in the country. There is a direct and very quick train connection to Amsterdam city center (27 minutes) and Amsterdam's international airport Schiphol (32 minutes), which provides air connections to all major airports in the world. High speed trains connect Utrecht and Amsterdam to Brussels, Paris and Frankfurt.

Registration for the conference is now open. Prospective participants are invited to take advantage of the early registration fee, and advised to book a hotel room as early as possible. The websites for registration and hotel bookings can be reached through the general conference website at http://evolang2010.nl