Speaker Series

Academic Year 2023-2024

Note: Zoom below = Zoom Event

Date Time Location Speaker Title
Apr 19 4 – 5:30 pm Hybrid Psyche Loui The Sciences of New Musical Systems, and Their Implications for Brain Health
Feb 16 2 – 3:30 pm Zoom Rie Asano On the Relationship between Language and Music
Sept 15 10:30am – 12pm Zoom Letty Naigles Autism Illuminates Language: Acquisition, Development, Use

 

Academic Year 2022-2023

Note: Zoom below = Zoom Event

Date Time Location Speaker Title
Apr 21 2:00-3:30pm Cancelled Jen Hornsby Varieties of Agency
Feb 10 4:00-5:30pm FSB220 Alison Springle Radicalizing Practical Representations
Nov 11 4:00-5:30pm FSB220 Kate Stanton Conventional Reanalysis and Semantic Creativity
Oct 28 2:00-4pm FSB220 Robyn Carston Words: Pragmatic innovations and linguistic constraints

Academic Year 2021-2022

Note: Zoom below = Zoom Event

Date Time Location Speaker Title
Apr 22 12:30-2pm Zoom Disa Sauter Emotion recognition: Studies of spontaneous nonverbal expressions
Mar 25 12:30-2pm Zoom Martha Manser Emotions and reference in animal vocal communication
Feb 11 4pm-5:30pm Zoom Aniruddh Patel The speech-to-song illusion: acoustic foundations and individual differences
Dec 3 Postponed Zoom Disa Sauter Emotion recognition: Studies of spontaneous nonverbal expressions
Oct 22 4pm-5:30pm Zoom Trip Glazer Emotionshaping: A Situated Perspective on Emotionreading

 

Academic Year 2020-2021

Note: WBX below = WebEx Event

Date Time Location Speaker Title
Apr 23 12:00pm-1:30pm WBX Peter Gardenfors Theory of Mind and the Evolution of Cognition
Jan 28 12:15pm-1:15pm WBX Richard Moore The Communicative Foundations of Propositional Attitude Psychology
Nov 13 4:00pm-5:30pm WBX Jonathan Prather How the Brain Evaluates and Responds to Signals Used in Communication: Lessons from Studying Mate Choice in Female Songbirds
Nov 12 12:15pm-1:30pm WBX Jonathan Prather How the Brain Enables Imitative Learning: What Songbirds Can Teach Us About Learned Vocal Communication

Academic Year 2019-2020

Note: ARJ below = Arjona 307 

Date Time Location Speaker Title
April 16-17 Cancel Cancel Jonathan Prather Due to COVID-19, Prof. Prather’s visit has been cancelled
March 25 Online Crispin Wright
March 5 12pm-1:30pm ARJ Harry van der Hulst The Innateness Debate in Linguistics
Feb 6 12pm-1:30pm ARJ Dimitris Xygalatas The Puzzle of Ritual
Dec 5 12pm-1:30pm ARJ Eiling Yee Fluid Semantics: Conceptual knowledge is experience-based and dynamic
Oct 17 12pm-1:30pm ARJ Emily Myers Language Plasticity on Multiple Timescales.

Academic Year 2018-2019

Note: HISR below = Humanities Institute Seminar Room (4th Floor Homer Babbidge Library)

Academic Year 2017-2018

Note: HISR below = Humanities Institute Seminar Room (4th Floor Homer Babbidge Library)

Academic Year 2016-2017

Note: HISR below = Humanities Institute Seminar Room (4th Floor Homer Babbidge Library)

Academic Year 2014-2015

Note: HISR below = Humanities Institute Seminar Room (4th Floor Homer Babbidge Library)

Date Time Location Speaker Title
Jan 23 HISR Laurie Santos Do Primates Have a Theory of Mind?: New Insights and New Questions
Dec 4 HISR Robert W. Lurz Testing Consciousness and Cognition in Apes
Nov 20 HISR Diane C. Lillo-Martin The Points of Language
Sep 26 HISR Philippe Schlenker Monkey Semantics: Two ‘Dialects’ of Alarm Calls

 

Past ECOM Speaker Series (at UNC – Chapel Hill)

AY 2013-2014:

  • Michael Pendlebury (Philosophy, NC State): “A Reconstructed Kantian Approach to Animal and Human Minds”
  • Doug Long (Philosophy, UNC-Chapel Hill): “Agents, Mechanisms, and Other Minds – Revisited”
  • Paul Pietroski (Philosophy & Linguistics, Maryland): “Framing Event Variables”
  • Dean Pettit (Philosophy, UNC-Chapel Hill): “Affective Semantics: Speaking Objectively about Emotion”
  • Elisabeth Camp (Philosophy, Rutgers): “Rationality and Representations”

AY 2012-2013:

  • Misha Becker (Linguistics, UNC-Chapel Hill): “Inanimate Subjects and the Discovery of Sentence Structure”
  • Geoffrey Pullum (Linguistics, University of Edinburgh): “The Grammar and Meaning of Anaphoric ‘One’: Multidisciplinary Implications”
  • Garrett Mitchener (Mathematics, College of Charleston): “Why is Language Complicated? And What Can Evolutionary Theory Say about It?”
  • Gary Varner (Philosophy, Texas A&M): “A Two-Level Utilitarian Perspective on Humans and Animals”
  • Daniel Weiskopf (Philosophy, Georgia State University): “Evolution and the Vehicles of Thought”
  • Craige Roberts (Linguistics, Ohio State University): “Questions in Discourse: Alternatives and Guiding Intentions”

AY 2011-2012:

  • Dean Pettit (Philosophy, UNC-Chapel Hill): “Semantics Without Reference”
  • Brady Clark (Linguistics, Northwestern): “The Evolution of Displaced Reference”
  • Paul Roberge (Linguistics, UNC-Chapel Hill): “Proto-Language: What is it, who had it, and how did it develop into full modern language?”
  • Anne Bezuidenhout (Philosophy, University of South Carolina): “Language and Normativity: Locating Norms Outside of Language”
  • Karen Neander (Philosophy, Duke University): “Sensory-Perceptual Contents”
  • Lisa Parr (Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University): “15-Year Retrospective on Face Processing Studies in Nonhuman Primates”


The ECOM Speaker Series from Fall 2011 – Spring 2014 were made possible with support from the UNC-CH Institute for the Arts and Humanities.