Between 'block course relationships' and abstinence: cultures of sexuality among students at Addis Ababa University

Inspired by African and other feminist scholarship on gender, sexuality and agency, this article studies narrations of norms and practices in sexual relationships between university students. A main aim of the article is to move beyond the problem focus in earlier scholarship on women, sexuality and reproduction, and to identify potential spaces of freedom and expansion of female agency. The article is based on qualitative research conducted with students at Addis Ababa University. The findings a vivid space for male-female relationships. Study participants report being sexually engaged as "the new normal" and claim that many female students are active both in seeking relationships and in discontinuing them. These ideas and practices indicate increasing female agency and emerge in stark contrast to dominant social norms for sexual conduct, which demand chastity before marriage, particularly for women. Students are conscious of this discrepancy and bring it up in their narratives. Findings also show that some students prefer to stay abstinent and make an effort to avoid sexual relations. We argue that expressions of female agency are evident not only in norm-transgressive sexual conduct, but also in norm-conforming strategies of sexual abstinence.

A test of the Morality-Agency-Communion (MAC) model of respect and liking across positive and negative traits

The Morality-Agency-Communion (MAC) model of respect and liking suggests that traits linked with morality are important for respect and liking; traits related to competence or assertiveness are important for respect and traits related to warmth are important for liking. However, tests of this model have tended not to consider traits related to immorality, incompetence, lack of assertiveness or coldness. This study addressed this issue by utilizing a within-subjects design in which participants were required to rate their respect and liking for individuals with specific trait types across four categories (moral; competence; assertiveness; and warmth) at three levels (positive, negative and neutral). The central tenets of the MAC model were supported for 'positive' traits (morality, competence, assertiveness and warmth). However, for 'negative' traits (immorality, incompetence and lack of assertiveness), individuals were similarly not liked and not respected. Individuals who were cold were respected more than liked. The findings of this study extend the MAC model by indicating that the amount that individuals are respected versus liked depends not only on trait type but also whether a trait is positive or negative.

And say the AI responded? Dancing around 'autonomy' in AI/human encounters

The article explores technology-human relations in a time of artificial intelligence (AI) and in the context of long-standing problems in social theory about agency, nonhumans, and autonomy. Most theorizations of AI are grounded in dualistic thinking and traditional views of technology, oversimplifying real-world settings. This article works to unfold modes of existence at play in AI/human relations. Materials from ethnographic fieldwork are used to highlight the significance of autonomy in AI/human relations. The analysis suggests that the idea of autonomy is a double-edged sword, showing that humans not only coordinate their perception of autonomy but also switch between registers by sometimes ascribing certain autonomous features to the AI system and in other situations denying the system such features. As a result, AI/human relations prove to be not so much determined by any ostensive delegation of tasks as by the way in which AI and humans engage with each other in practice. The article suggests a theory of relationality that redirects focus away from questions of agency towards questions of what it means to be in relations.

Believing That We Can Change Our World for the Better: A Triple-A (Agent-Action-Aim) Framework of Self-Efficacy Beliefs in the Context of Collective Social and Ecological Aims

PUBLIC ABSTRACT

Many people do not act together against climate change or social inequalities because they feel they or their group cannot make a difference. Understanding how people come to feel that they can achieve something (a perception of self-efficacy) is therefore crucial for motivating people to act together for a better world. However, it is difficult to summarize already existing self-efficacy research because previous studies have used many different ways of naming and measuring it. In this article, we uncover the problems that this raises and propose the triple-A framework as a solution. This new framework shows which agents, actions, and aims are important for understanding self-efficacy. By offering specific recommendations for measuring self-efficacy, the triple-A framework creates a basis for mobilizing human agency in the context of climate change and social injustice.

The Concept of Child-Centred Care in Healthcare: A Scoping Review

Although child-centred care is increasingly referred to within the nursing literature, a clear definition of child-centred care and clarity around the concept is yet to be achieved. The objectives of this review were to examine the following: (1) What constitutes the concept of child-centred care in healthcare? (2) How has the concept of child-centred care developed? (3) What is the applicability of child-centred care and what are its limitations? (4) How does the concept of child-centred care benefit and inform children's healthcare? In total, 2984 papers were imported for screening, and, following the removal of duplicates and screening, 21 papers were included in the scoping review. The findings suggest that child-centred care is an emerging, ambiguous poorly defined concept; no clear consensus exists about what constitutes child-centred care. Although it seems antithetical to argue against child-centred care, little robust evidence was identified that demonstrates the impact and benefit of child-centred care. If child-centred care is to be a sustainable, convincing model to guide practice and compete with other models of care, it needs to establish robust evidence of its effectiveness, the impact on children and their families, as well as the wider impacts on the healthcare system.

Basic or Adaptation: The Assessment and Heritability of a Brief Measure of Agency

The interpersonal circumplex describes two major axes of personality that guide much of social behavior. Agency, one half of the interpersonal circumplex, refers to relatively stable behavioral patterns that center on self-focused dominance and assertiveness. Past empirical work on agency tends to treat the dimension as a characteristic adaptation, rather than a basic component of personality, in part due to the relatively large gender difference in agency with masculine individuals tending to behave more agentic. However, the psychometric overlap between agency and the most closely linked big five dimension, extraversion, is not well-established, and no behavior genetic work has documented evidence concerning the role of genetic and environmental influences. It is unclear whether agency is more similar to a personality trait, with no evidence of shared environmental influence and moderate heritability, or a characteristic adaptation, with some evidence for shared environmental influence and possibly lower heritability. We used the Midlife Development in the United States study to examine agency, big five, and generativity with replication and robustness check (Nnon-twins = 5,194; Ntwins = 1,914; NMilwaukee = 592). Results indicated that agency was higher in men (d = -.24), moderately heritable (44.4%), strongly correlated with extraversion (r = .51), moderately correlated with generativity (r = .36), and that approximately 40% of the variance in agency was shared with the big five. Agency also changed strongly with extraversion and openness, but less so generativity. Altogether, these results indicate that agency functions similar to other basic personality dimensions but is not clearly a dispositional trait.

Integration of Psychosocial Theory into Palliative Care: Implications for Care Planning and Early Palliative Care

Palliative care improves patients' symptoms, quality of life and family satisfaction with caregiving, reduces hospital admissions and promotes alignment of medical care with the patient's needs and goals. This article proposes the utility of integrating three psychosocial theories into standard palliative care with implications for care planning, early palliative care and optimizing quality of life. First, Control Theory focuses on the complex juxtaposition of promoting agency/empowerment in patients and carers and coping with often highly uncertain outcomes. Second, Optimal Matching Theory accounts for the alignment of need and provision of care to potentiate the quality of life effects of supportive care in a complex social process involving health care providers, patients and carers. Third, Hope Theory represents a dynamic process, which is marked by variation in the qualities of hope as the patient and carer confront challenges during palliative care. Future work will be translational in nature to adapt both assessment and interventions based on this theoretically driven augmentation of palliative care as well as to evaluate whether it provides a conceptual framework that has incremental utility in palliative care planning.

The Role of Agentive and Physical Forces in the Neural Representation of Motion Events

How does the brain represent information about motion events in relation to agentive and physical forces? In this study, we investigated the neural activity patterns associated with observing animated actions of agents (e.g., an agent hitting a chair) in comparison to similar movements of inanimate objects that were either shaped solely by the physics of the scene (e.g., gravity causing an object to fall down a hill and hit a chair) or initiated by agents (e.g., a visible agent causing an object to hit a chair). Using an fMRI-based multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA), this design allowed testing where in the brain the neural activity patterns associated with motion events change as a function of, or are invariant to, agentive versus physical forces behind them. A total of 29 human participants (nine male) participated in the study. Cross-decoding revealed a shared neural representation of animate and inanimate motion events that is invariant to agentive or physical forces in regions spanning frontoparietal and posterior temporal cortices. In contrast, the right lateral occipitotemporal cortex showed a higher sensitivity to agentive events, while the left dorsal premotor cortex was more sensitive to information about inanimate object events that were solely shaped by the physics of the scene.

A Two-Phase Qualitative Enquiry Into Storytelling's Potential to Support Palliative Care Patient-Led Change, Using a Systematic Review Approach

A terminal diagnosis can diminish an individual's sense of agency and identity. Leading change appears to restore a sense of agential self. The first phase of this literature review explores factors influencing patient-led change across the palliative care ecosystem. The second phase illuminates how storytelling can support palliative care patients in leading ecosystem-wide change. 35 studies were identified in Phase 1 and 36 in Phase 2. This research highlights the need to situate patient leadership activity within a palliative care ecosystem to understand factors likely to support or hinder patient leadership activity within it. The evidence indicates the potential use of storytelling to support patients with a life-limiting illness to lead change across the palliative care ecosystem. This challenges current conceptualisations of such patients and offers them instead as an additional source of palliative care support.

Medical professionals' agency and pharmaceuticalization: Physician-industry relations in Russia

In the contemporary world pharmaceuticals have become a go-to answer to a growing number of questions. This process of pharmaceuticalization gives rise to a concern with the increasing influence of the pharmaceutical industry on physicians' decision-making. Critics suggest that companies' for-profit-interests might compromise the integrity of medical practice. This article employs qualitative research methodology to explore how Russian physicians deal with the industry's efforts to expand and shape the use of pharmaceuticals. By bridging perspectives of social studies of science and sociology of professions, we offer a contextualized account of physicians' daily practices and interpretations related to pharmaceuticalization. The findings question conventional assumptions of physician-industry relations and allow to delineate a new form of medical professionalism that emerges in the context of pharmaceuticalization and cannot be reduced to either "resisting" industry marketing activities or "giving in" to them and thus corrupting biomedical expertise. Instead, the ways in which physicians navigate abundant sources of knowledge and use industry resources to overcome constraints of their organizational environment attest to mundane forms of agency exercised by physicians in their relations with industry.

Drivers of child marriages for girls: A prospective study in a low-income African setting

Child marriage has adverse consequences for young girls. Cross-sectional research has highlighted several potential drivers of early marriage. We analyse drivers of child marriage using longitudinal data from rural Malawi, where rates of child marriage are among the highest in the world despite being illegal. Estimates from survival models show that 26% of girls in our sample marry before age 18. Importantly, girls report high decision-making autonomy vis-à-vis the decision to marry. We use multivariate Cox proportional hazard models to explore the role of 1) poverty and economic factors, 2) opportunity or alternatives to marriage, 3) social norms and attitudes, 4) knowledge of the law and 5) girls' agency. Only three factors are consistently associated with child marriage. First, related to opportunities outside marriage, girls lagging in school at survey baseline have significantly higher rates of child marriage than their counterparts who were at or near grade level. Second, related to social norms, child marriage rates are significantly lower among respondents whose caregivers perceive that members of their community disapprove of child marriage. Third, knowledge of the law has a positive coefficient, a surprising result. These findings are aligned with the growing qualitative literature describing contexts where adolescent girls are more active agents in child marriages.

Identity status and narrative identity processes in female adolescents' stories about committing crimes and being convicted

INTRODUCTION

Adolescent delinquency has been suggested to evolve from a normative motivation to establish independence and identity. However, few studies have examined this in detail, especially in young women. The aim was, therefore, to investigate identity formation in adolescent females with limited delinquency by focusing on identity status and identity processes in narratives about committing crimes and being convicted.

METHODS

Interviews with 10 females, 15-18 years old, sentenced to youth service in three Swedish cities were conducted on Zoom.

RESULTS

The results showed an equal distribution of all identity statuses within the group. Thematic analysis of their stories about crime and conviction showed that delinquency was described in terms of exploration and commitment, although commitment appeared more clearly. Social relations, in particular peers, played an important role in both committing as well as desisting from delinquency. In terms of narrative processes, the stories contained elements of agency, although diminishing of one's own capability and/or responsibility was common, and meaning making, mostly lesson learning, usually pertained to behaviors, interactional rules, or norms.

CONCLUSION

These findings point to the importance of viewing delinquency among young women in a social and developmental context, where delinquency may be a part of the process of identity formation. Interventions focusing on expressing needs of belonging as well as finding oneself in more adaptive ways are warranted, where supporting pro-social relations and contexts is a suggested focus.

What happens when people develop dementia whilst working? An exploratory multiple case study

PURPOSE

This study is an in-depth exploration of the unfolding experiences of five persons who developed dementia while still in paid work/employment, and of their significant others. Namely, we explore how they experienced the actions and decisions taken with respect to work, and what the consequences meant to them.

METHODS

A qualitative longitudinal case study design with multiple cases was used, including five participants with dementia and significant others of their choice. Interviews were undertaken longitudinally and analysed with the Formal Data-Structure Analysis approach.

RESULTS

The joint analysis resulted in two intertwined themes: 1) The significance and consequences of a dementia diagnosis: a double-edged trigger, and 2) Sensemaking and agency. The prevalent images of what dementia is, who can/cannot get it and what it will bring, were revealed as the critical aspects. Having the opportunity to make sense of what has happened and participate in decision-making, contributed decisively to the participants' experiences.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings illustrate how a dementia diagnosis is alien in work-life, but once diagnosed, it may trigger self-fulfiling expectations based upon stereotypical understanding of dementia. A shift is needed from a deficit-focused perspective, to viewing people with dementia as citizens capable of agency.

The feasibility of artificial consciousness through the lens of neuroscience

Interactions with large language models (LLMs) have led to the suggestion that these models may soon be conscious. From the perspective of neuroscience, this position is difficult to defend. For one, the inputs to LLMs lack the embodied, embedded information content characteristic of our sensory contact with the world around us. Secondly, the architectures of present-day artificial intelligence algorithms are missing key features of the thalamocortical system that have been linked to conscious awareness in mammals. Finally, the evolutionary and developmental trajectories that led to the emergence of living conscious organisms arguably have no parallels in artificial systems as envisioned today. The existence of living organisms depends on their actions and their survival is intricately linked to multi-level cellular, inter-cellular, and organismal processes culminating in agency and consciousness.

Temporal Dynamics of Brain Activity Predicting Sense of Agency over Muscle Movements

Our muscles are the primary means through which we affect the external world, and the sense of agency (SoA) over the action through those muscles is fundamental to our self-awareness. However, SoA research to date has focused almost exclusively on agency over action outcomes rather than over the musculature itself, as it was believed that SoA over the musculature could not be manipulated directly. Drawing on methods from human-computer interaction and adaptive experimentation, we use human-in-the-loop Bayesian optimization to tune the timing of electrical muscle stimulation so as to robustly elicit a SoA over electrically actuated muscle movements in male and female human subjects. We use time-resolved decoding of subjects' EEG to estimate the time course of neural activity which predicts reported agency on a trial-by-trial basis. Like paradigms which assess SoA over action consequences, we found that the late (post-conscious) neural activity predicts SoA. Unlike typical paradigms, however, we also find patterns of early (sensorimotor) activity with distinct temporal dynamics predicts agency over muscle movements, suggesting that the "neural correlates of agency" may depend on the level of abstraction (i.e., direct sensorimotor feedback versus downstream consequences) most relevant to a given agency judgment. Moreover, fractal analysis of the EEG suggests that SoA-contingent dynamics of neural activity may modulate the sensitivity of the motor system to external input.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The sense of agency, the feeling of "I did that," when directing one's own musculature is a core feature of human experience. We show that we can robustly manipulate the sense of agency over electrically actuated muscle movements, and we investigate the time course of neural activity that predicts the sense of agency over these actuated movements. We find evidence of two distinct neural processes: a transient sequence of patterns that begins in the early sensorineural response to muscle stimulation and a later, sustained signature of agency. These results shed light on the neural mechanisms by which we experience our movements as volitional.

The agency domain and behavioral interactions: assessing positive animal welfare using the Five Domains Model

Animal welfare denotes how an animal experiences their life. It represents the overall mental experiences of an animal and is a subjective concept that cannot be directly measured. Instead, welfare indicators are used to cautiously infer mental experiences from resource provisions, management factors, and animal-based measures. The Five Domains Model is a holistic and structured framework for collating these indicators and assessing animal welfare. Contemporary approaches to animal welfare management consider how animals can be given opportunities to have positive experiences. However, the uncertainty surrounding positive mental experiences that can be inferred has resulted in risk-averse animal welfare scientists returning to the relative safety of positivism. This has meant that aspects of positive welfare are often referred to as animal 'wants'. Agency is a concept that straddles the positivist-affective divide and represents a way forward for discussions about positive welfare. Agency is the capacity of individual animals to engage in voluntary, self-generated, and goal-directed behavior that they are motivated to perform. Discrete positive emotions are cautiously inferred from these agentic experiences based on available knowledge about the animal's motivation for engaging in the behavior. Competence-building agency can be used to evaluate the potential for positive welfare and is represented by the Behavioral Interactions domain of the Five Domains Model. In 2020, The Model was updated to, amongst other things, include consideration of human-animal interactions. The most important aspect of this update was the renaming of Domain 4 from "Behavior" to "Behavioral Interactions" and the additional detail added to allow this domain's purpose to be clearly understood to represent an animal's opportunities to exercise agency. We illustrate how the Behavioral Interactions domain of The Model can be used to assess animals' competence-building agency and positive welfare. In this article, we use the examples of sugar gliders housed in captivity and greyhounds that race to illustrate how the agentic qualities of choice, control, and challenge can be used to assess opportunities for animals to exercise agency and experience positive affective engagement.

Complaints: Mechanisms for prisoner participation?

In prisons, participatory mechanisms can foster important outcomes including fairness, legitimacy and dignity. Complaints are one significant (symbolic) mechanism facilitating prisoner participation. Ombud institutions/Ombudsmen handle complaints externally, providing unelected accountability mechanisms and overseeing prisons around the world. A fair complaints process can stimulate prisoner voice, agency and rights protection, potentially averting self-harm and violence, and facilitating systemic improvements. However, complaints mechanisms are little studied. Addressing this gap, we: i) contextualise discussion by demonstrating that prisoners' actions have directly shaped complaints mechanisms available today; ii) outline prison complaints mechanisms in the case study jurisdiction of England and Wales; and iii) provide a critical review of literature to assess whether prison complaints systems are, in practice, participatory, inclusive and fair? We conclude that complaints mechanisms hold clear potential to enhance prison legitimacy, facilitate prisoner engagement and agency, and improve wellbeing and safety. However, myriad barriers prevent prisoners from participating in complaints processes, including culture, fear, accessibility, timeliness, emotional repression, and bureaucracy. The process of complaining and experiences of these barriers are uneven across different groups of prisoners. Our article provides a springboard for future empirical research.

Agency in Reproduction

While niche construction theory and developmental approaches to evolution have brought to the front the active role of organisms as ecological and developmental agents, respectively, the role of agents in reproduction has been widely neglected by organismal perspectives of evolution. This paper addresses this problem by proposing an agential view of reproduction and shows that such a perspective has implications for the explanation of the origin of modes of reproduction, the evolvability of reproductive modes, and the coevolution between reproduction and social behavior. After introducing the two prevalent views of agency in evolutionary biology, namely those of organismal agency and selective agency, I contrast these two perspectives as applied to the evolution of animal reproduction. Taking eutherian pregnancy as a case study, I wonder whether organismal approaches to agency forged in the frame of niche construction and developmental plasticity theories can account for the goal-directed activities involved in reproductive processes. I conclude that the agential role of organisms in reproduction is irreducible to developmental and ecological agency, and that reproductive goals need to be included into our definitions of organismal agency. I then explore the evolutionary consequences of endorsing an agential approach to reproduction, showing how such an approach might illuminate our understanding of the evolutionary origination and developmental evolvability of reproductive modes. Finally, I analyze recent studies on the coevolution between viviparity and social behavior in vertebrates to suggest that an agential notion of reproduction can provide unforeseen links between developmental and ecological agency.

Impaired cardiac modulation in patients with functional seizures: Results from a face intensity judgment task

OBJECTIVE

Although interoceptive abnormality in patients with functional seizure (FSs) has been demonstrated using explicit tasks, implicit measurements of interoception such as the effect of interoception on perceptual brain processes have not been investigated. It has been shown that perception is normally modulated by interoceptive signals related to the different phases (systole vs diastole) of the cardiac cycle (cardiac modulation effect). Given our previous findings using explicit measures of interoception, we hypothesized that cardiac modulation would be impaired in FSs.

METHODS

Thirty-two patients with FSs and 30 age- and sex-matched non-clinical individuals conducted a face intensity judgment task, in which their intensity rating when fearful or neutral faces was presented was compared between systolic and diastolic phases. They also conducted the heartbeat discrimination task as a measure of their capacity to integrate both interoceptive and exteroceptive information.

RESULTS

Patients with FSs had impaired cardiac modulation of the perception of neutral faces (corrected p = .044). Individual differences in the heartbeat discrimination task predicted the degree to which cardiac modulation occurred across the whole group (p = .028). This cardiac modulation effect was significantly associated with seizure severity (p = .021). Regardless of cardiac phase, patients rated fearful facial expressions as less intense compared to control participants (p = .006).

SIGNIFICANCE

These findings highlight impaired implicit cardiac modulation effects in patients with FSs. This reflects interoceptive dysfunction in patients with FSs, and an inability of the brain to integrate interoceptive signaling with perceptual processing. This may have implications for our understanding of the pathophysiology in FSs and inform novel diagnostic approaches.

Longitudinal assessment of mental health after a flood: roles of social support, hope, recovery stressors, and prior lifetime trauma

OBJECTIVES

Severe weather events have mental health consequences for survivors that may change over time. We assessed post-flood mental health longitudinally in three groups of mostly middle-aged and older adults who varied in current and prior severe weather experiences.

METHOD

Predictors of central interest were age, perceived social support, state hope (including agency and pathways), recovery stressors, and prior lifetime trauma. Criterion variables included symptoms of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and worry.

RESULTS

Analyses of variance yielded significant Disaster Exposure Group x Wave interactions for depression and PTSD symptoms. Those with flooded homes and properties had elevated symptoms at Wave 1 which were reduced at Wave 2. Older age was associated with fewer symptoms of depression, PTSD, and worry. Recovery stressors and lifetime trauma predicted more PTSD symptoms. Greater agency predicted less PTSD and depression symptoms, whereas pathways predicted less worry.

CONCLUSION

These data show that mental health symptoms may decrease over time for those directly impacted by severe flooding. State hope appears to contribute to better mental health after exposure to a devastating flood. Implications for understanding the dynamic relationships among risk variables and positive factors that promote post-disaster mental health in the years after a flood are considered.

Agential autonomy and biological individuality

What is a biological individual? How are biological individuals individuated? How can we tell how many individuals there are in a given assemblage of biological entities? The individuation and differentiation of biological individuals are central to the scientific understanding of living beings. I propose a novel criterion of biological individuality according to which biological individuals are autonomous agents. First, I articulate an ecological-dynamical account of natural agency according to which, agency is the gross dynamical capacity of a goal-directed system to bias its repertoire to respond to its conditions as affordances. Then, I argue that agents or agential dynamical systems can be agentially dependent on, or agentially autonomous from, other agents and that this agential dependence/autonomy can be symmetrical or asymmetrical, strong or weak. Biological individuals, I propose, are all and only those agential dynamical systems that are strongly agentially autonomous. So, to determine how many individuals there are in a given multiagent aggregate, such as multicellular organism, a colony, symbiosis, or a swarm, we first have to identify how many agential dynamical systems there are, and then what their relations of agential dependence/autonomy are. I argue that this criterion is adequate to the extent that it vindicates the paradigmatic cases, and explains why the paradigmatic cases are paradigmatic, and why the problematic cases are problematic. Finally, I argue for the importance of distinguishing between agential and causal dependence and show the relevance of agential autonomy for understanding the explanatory structure of evolutionary developmental biology.

The agential perspective: Countermapping the modern synthesis

We compare and contrast two theoretical perspectives on adaptive evolution-the orthodox Modern Synthesis perspective, and the nascent Agential Perspective. To do so, we develop the idea from Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther of a 'countermap', as a means for comparing the respective ontologies of different scientific perspectives. We conclude that the modern Synthesis perspective achieves an impressively comprehensive view of a universal set of dynamical properties of populations, but at the considerable cost of radically distorting the nature of the biological processes that contribute to evolution. For its part, the Agential Perspective offers the prospect of representing the biological processes of evolution with much greater fidelity, but at the expense of generality. Trade-offs of this sort are endemic to science, and inevitable. Recognizing them helps us to avoid the pitfalls of 'illicit reification', i.e. the mistake of interpreting a feature of a scientific perspective as a feature of the non-perspectival world. We argue that much of the traditional Modern Synthesis representation of the biology of evolution commits this illicit reification.

Hybrid Life: Integrating biological, artificial, and cognitive systems

Artificial life is a research field studying what processes and properties define life, based on a multidisciplinary approach spanning the physical, natural, and computational sciences. Artificial life aims to foster a comprehensive study of life beyond "life as we know it" and toward "life as it could be," with theoretical, synthetic, and empirical models of the fundamental properties of living systems. While still a relatively young field, artificial life has flourished as an environment for researchers with different backgrounds, welcoming ideas, and contributions from a wide range of subjects. Hybrid Life brings our attention to some of the most recent developments within the artificial life community, rooted in more traditional artificial life studies but looking at new challenges emerging from interactions with other fields. Hybrid Life aims to cover studies that can lead to an understanding, from first principles, of what systems are and how biological and artificial systems can interact and integrate to form new kinds of hybrid (living) systems, individuals, and societies. To do so, it focuses on three complementary perspectives: theories of systems and agents, hybrid augmentation, and hybrid interaction. Theories of systems and agents are used to define systems, how they differ (e.g., biological or artificial, autonomous, or nonautonomous), and how multiple systems relate in order to form new hybrid systems. Hybrid augmentation focuses on implementations of systems so tightly connected that they act as a single, integrated one. Hybrid interaction is centered around interactions within a heterogeneous group of distinct living and nonliving systems. After discussing some of the major sources of inspiration for these themes, we will focus on an overview of the works that appeared in Hybrid Life special sessions, hosted by the annual Artificial Life Conference between 2018 and 2022. This article is categorized under: Neuroscience > Cognition Philosophy > Artificial Intelligence Computer Science and Robotics > Robotics.