this book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th european workshop on modelling autonomous agents in a multi-agent world, maamaw97, held in ronneby, sweden, in may 1997.maamaw97 is devoted to multi-agent rationality, thus reflecting the fact that there is presently a transition in the multi-agent community from the study of individual rationality to the study of group rationality. the volume presents 15 revised full papers selected from a total of 51 submissions; also included are the abstracts of three invited talks. the volume covers all current issues in multi-agent rationality.