Dr WELI's kangaroo research turned into music, school workshops, keynotes and books. WELI fronts it, WildWooHoo directs it.
WildWooHoo x WELI (the studio's work, built from founder Dr WELI's own kangaroo research) turns a peer-reviewed kangaroo research programme into music, school workshops, keynotes and books. WELI fronts it and WildWooHoo directs it, through the studio's method. Music is the first format. Schools, festivals, funders, broadcasters, publishers and universities can book a programme or commission new work. The cards below set out what you can book and how.
The science base
The research
WELI is an evolutionary ecologist (PhD, ANU) who studies animal behaviour across individual personality, the social environment and maternal effects. The music and the classroom work grow from this research.
Read the research lines
Kangaroos: personality and social life
WELI's peer-reviewed PhD at the Australian National University studied the personality and social behaviour of wild eastern grey kangaroos. It looked at individual personality, the social environment an animal lives in, and maternal effects passed from one generation to the next. The fieldwork ran at Wilsons Promontory in Victoria. The findings are published in Behavioral Ecology. You can read the 2023 paper.
Goats: an earlier line
Before the PhD, WELI's undergraduate fieldwork studied goat social behaviour, including the mating-season dominance hierarchy and the signals that organise it. This is honest undergraduate research, a grade below the peer-reviewed kangaroo paper, and it is the second science the music draws on.
Science in music and popular culture
A second academic line studies how science lives in popular culture, and how culture pictures science and scientists. WELI runs it as an ANU CPAS Visiting Fellow, with Dr Anna-Sophie Jurgens. Two writing projects are in progress. The first treats music as science communication, with Kangaroo Time as the case study. The second is on camp science, and what alien cinema contributes to science communication. Some of this work becomes audience-facing material, and some stays academic.
Forward research interests
The forward interests sit across evolutionary ecology and cultural cognition.
Comparative cognition. Personality, rank, group decisions and learning read across species.
Cultural cognition. How culturally learned templates shape views of longevity, evolution and other species.
Cultural musicology. How music shapes people's connection to the natural world.
Cognition in digital environments. Open questions for attention, mental health and child development in a screen-mediated world.
Open to research partnerships and co-supervision for universities, HDR supervisors and student applicants.
Kangaroo Time Kids puts kangaroo behaviour into music, dance and embodied learning for primary and lower-secondary students. It is the kids version of Kangaroo Time, in delivery now. Formats include assemblies, STEAM classroom sessions and festival keynotes, in plain language and across more than one language.
Live formats carry the research to a wide audience: keynotes, conference energisers, festival and community performance, and science-art. We match the format to the audience and the occasion.
Two songs grew from WELI's research. Kangaroo Time is the kangaroo study turned into music and film, and it won the AAAS Dance Your PhD Overall Winner 2024 award. Cabra da Peste grows from the earlier goat research, and it was commissioned for and performed at the Etologia 2024 plenary in Brazil, on the theme of creativity and science unifying communities. These two songs are where WELI's sci pop method began, contemporary pop songs that carry science as theme and meaning, and the upcoming EVER+GROW sets its sound.
Sci pop is not an abstract idea here. It is sci pop through WELI: the framework is built around who the artist is, so the science and the sound come from a real person and a real place.
Two realities meet in the songs:
The reality of WELI. His science, animal behaviour, evolution and ecology, and the social and musical communities he moves through in Australia.
The reality of Australia. A country that is multicultural and science-driven at once, carrying the longest continuous human history alongside a future built on progress and technology.
The album EVER+GROW sits where those two realities meet. It is grounded in Australia today, and it uses science to move out from there into cultural imaginaries, fiction and different times. Pop music makes sense of a place in a moment. This one does it for Australia now.
Children's books grounded in the behavioural-ecology research are in development, and we name the wider scope here so partners can plan with us. Nothing in this list is shipping yet.
Children's books. Illustrated story collections grounded in the behavioural-ecology research.
Classroom and school materials. Educator-facing kits and lesson formats built around how children learn.
Merch and character goods. Theme-based goods through the shop.
Themed content. Short-form material organised around the current research themes.
Animation and television. A children's animated series, if a writer-producer partner comes on board.
The work has travelled. Here is where it has landed so far.
AAAS Dance Your PhD Overall Winner 2024, for Kangaroo Time.
Falling Walls Engage 2025 Top 30.
238+ media features across the work.
Live delivery has run through Floriade 2025 in Canberra, ACT National Science Week in 2024 and 2025 with Inspiring Australia ACT, the Encontro Anual de Etologia 2024 in Brazil, the ANU HDR Research Festival, Athens Sci-Co, and a guest lecture at the ANU Centre for the Public Awareness of Science.
Partner with the studio
Join the register
WildWooHoo directs and WELI fronts it. Three ways to work with us: back a programme, share the creative work, or commission something new.
Schools, museums and science centres. Programming and live engagement grounded in current research.
Publishers and broadcasters. Children's media, illustrated books, animated series and school formats.
Universities and research partners. Co-supervision, research collaboration and public engagement.
Festivals, funders and cultural partners. Residencies, place-based collaborations and commissioned work.
Tell us your audience, date, format and budget, and we match the right programme. School workshops book through the schools programme, keynotes and conference sessions through the engagement pages, and larger residencies or commissions through a conversation with us. If you are not sure which fits, start a conversation and we will point you to the right one.
