The Expression, Communication, and the Origins of Meaning (ECOM) research group investigates the various ways we express ourselves and communicate with others and the emergence of linguistic meaning in ontogeny and phylogeny. As these are quintessentially interdisciplinary topics, we regularly bring together scholars from diverse disciplines, such as philosophy, linguistics, psychology, anthropology, biology, and neuroscience, to engage in focused discussion of these interconnected themes. Through regular meetings, speaker series, workshops, and conferences, ECOM fosters collaboration among researchers with various backgrounds, all sharing the goal of achieving a deeper understanding of these core human capacities.

ECOM past and present members and affiliates and conference attendees have produced a number of publications and conference presentations that were directly and indirectly informed by ECOM activities or supported by ECOM fellowships.

Dorit Bar-On and Crispin Wright, Expression and Self-Knowledge (Wiley Great Debates series) appeared in October 2023. Several ECOM members and affiliated member have been involved in this project.

Dorit Bar-On, Expression, Communication, and Origins of Meaning: a manuscript in progress, under contract with Oxford University Press. This project also engages several ECOM members.

In addition to these larger-scale projects, a number of ECOM members and affiliates have published articles and given professional presentations (in the U.S. and abroad) that benefited directly or indirectly from ECOM activities. Among them:

Nimra Asif, Phillip Barron, Constant Bonard, Robyn Carston, Mike Deigan, Trip Glazer, Mary Greg, Ken Ito, Drew Johnson, Michael Hegarty, Aliyar Ozercan, Harry van der Hulst, Jennell Salisbury, Alison Springle, Kate Stainton, Ben Winokur, Nadja-Mira Yolcu.

Topics covered include: