NEWS
November 2024: New post-doc opportunity in the lab!
We have an exciting new project starting, funded by the Dutch Science Foundation, NWO)! The project investigates the interplay of visual bodily signals, linguistic and prosodic structures in face-to-face conversation, using both corpus analyses and experimental methods. As the post-doc, you'd be joining a fantastic team of senior researchers (Dr Judith Holler [PI]; Dr Kobin Kendrick, York University; Prof Martine Grice, Cologne University; Prof Marc Swerts, Tilburg University; Dr David Peeters, Tilburg University, Dr. Linda Drijvers, Radboud University), as well as research and student assistants, and a PhD student (positions which we will also soon advertise - watch this space!). Application deadline 8th December!
To apply, follow this link: postdoc-position-multimodal-signalling-in-face-to-face-communication-at-the-donders-centre-for-cognition
July 2024: Marlijn's PhD thesis
Marlijn's PhD thesis has been submitted and approved by the reading committee! Congratulations!!
The PhD defines will take place on Friday, March 21st 2025, 12.30-14.00 at the Aula at Radboud University. We hope to see you there to celebrate this special day with Marlijn! Joining it by live stream is also possible. https://www.ru.nl/over-ons/de-campus/gebouwen-en-ruimtes/aula
February & September 2024: National Geographic
We have made it into the magazine from
National Geographic (NL and Germany versions)!
The feature shows our research and makes
the point that underlying our unique
language ability lies a foundation of
visual bodily communication, fulfilling core functions such as adding information not contained in speech, signalling understanding and non-understanding. Plus, it includes this really cool picture of Alex' EEG study (with Lina as acting participant).
Make sure to check out the printed
magazines!
February 2024: Marlijn on the radio
Marlijn made her radio debut this week! In her
interview she talked all about her research
on hand gestures and prediction.
Listen and learn here: https://www.bnr.nl/
podcast/wetenschap-vandaag/10540686/
hoe-onze-handgebaren-voorspellen-wat-we-
gaan-zeggen!
December 2023: Naomi has become a doctor!
Congratulations to Naomi for
successfully defending her PhD thesis
"Talking faces: The contribution of
conversational facial signals in
language use and processing".
She immediately got everyone's
attention by putting a mask on,
making it abundantly clear just how
important facial signals are.
Well done! 🙂
December 2023: Media attention for Naomi's research
Turn that frown upside down, because
Naomi's PhD work got some well-
deserved attention!
Listen to her interviews with BNR:
https://www.bnr.nl/podcast/wetenschap
-vandaag/10533095/zo-belangrijk-zijn-
fronsende-wenkbrauwen-als-we-met-
elkaar-communiceren
With Omroep Gelderland [from 10:04]:
https://www.gld.nl/tv/aflevering/gld-nieuws/242836
Or read all about it here: https://www.ru.nl/en/research/research-news/the-power-of-the-frown-how-eyebrows-can-help-us-understand-each-other
And on Scientias: https://scientias.nl/die-harige-bogen-boven-je-ogen-zijn-belangrijker-dan-je-denkt-met-wenkbrauwen-communiceer-je-beter/
April 2023: MPI TalkLing blog on gesture prediction by Marlijn
Marlijn's got a great new blog out:
"The future is in your hands: Can we
predict what someone will say next
based on their hand gestures?"
Read more here!: https://www.mpi-
March 2023: CoSI goes virtual at the InScience Festival!
Thanks to Naomi, Alina and Elena for
featuring some of the CoSI - VR work
at the InScience Festival in Nijmegen,
making people tinder with avatars! 😉
March 2023: Congratulations Naomi and James!
Two of the CoSI members have landed
fantastic new jobs to follow on from
their contracts in the lab:
Congratulations to Naomi to getting
a post-doc position at Edinburgh
University, and congrats to James on
landing a job as Assistant Professor at
the University of Amsterdam! We're so
happy for you (but you'll be very much
missed!).
April 2022: Media attention for our new paper
James’ new study came out in Royal
Society Open today and got lots of
attention from the press including
The Guardian, Okdiario, La Dépêche
du Midi, RTL news, and more. Check it
out to see what the media (and us too
of course ;)) got so excited about:
Trujillo, J. P., Levinson, S. C., & Holler, J.
(2022). A multi-scale investigation of
the human communication system’s
response to visual disruption. Royal
Society Open Science, 9(4): 211489. doi:10.1098/rsos.211489.
March 2022: Congratulations to Naomi!
Naomi has won the Poster prize for the
Language & Communication theme at
the Donders Poster Session! The poster
presents the second study of her thesis,
a supercool, big corpus study on the
association between social actions
and visual bodily signals. Congrats, well
done!!
February 2022: Alexandra has become a doctor!
Alex has successfully defended her PhD
thesis, which she completed with the
BAND lab and the MBIC Brain and
Language group in Maastricht (under
the supervision of S. Kotz, B. Jansma, M.
Bonte): “Electrophysiological correlates
of phonological and temporal
regularities in speech processing.”
Great performance, congratulations! The CoSI lab is very proud of you 🙂
Autumn 2021: Two new members in the CoAct team!
Michelle Kühn and Alexandra
Emmendorfer have joined our ERC
project team as research assistant
and post-doc – welcome to both of
you, we’re every happy to have you
on board! 🙂
May 2021: Louise successfully defended her thesis:
“Effects of aging and cognitive abilities
on multimodal language production
and comprehension in context” On May
17th, Louise travelled back to Nijmegen
all the way from Berlin and wowed us
with a wonderful defense performance
– Congratulations, Dr. Schubotz!! So
happy that at least a small number of
us were allowed to be there in person during these pandemic times.
June 2020: Thank you, George! 😉
_
March/April/May 2020: Lockdown
Working from home, trying to advance
with coding video remotely and
continuing to write. Well done everyone
for adjusting so well and hanging in
there! Hopefully we’ll be able to see
each other face-to-face in the not too
distant future. Special respect to all the
student interns joining the group afresh
since the lockdown even: A very warm
welcome to Guido, Pim and Austin!
At the same time, we have to say goodbye to Mojenn who had to go back to Germany due to the pandemic and thus terminate her internship with us early. Thank you for all the hard (and precise!) work, Mojenn!
February 2020: Tiziana joins the CoSI lab!
We’re very happy to have a new
member to the team: Tiziana Vercillo
has joined us from the well-known
Cognitive Neurophysiology Lab at URMC
on a prestigious Radboud Excellence
Initiative Fellowship. We’re looking
forward to working with you for the
next two years!
October 2019: Welcoming new members to the CoAct project!
The CoAct team just got bigger: a
warm welcome to Marlijn ter Bekke
and Naomi Nota, who will be studying
for their PhDs with us over the next four
years, as well as to James Trujillo, who
just started as post-doc the project.
We’re very happy for you to all be on
board! The CoSI lab has also grown due
to many new interns who’ve joined us
over recent weeks (see ‘people’
section). Welcome to you all!! We’re
very happy to have you!
January 2019: A new CoAct team member
We're thrilled that Linda Drijvers has
joined the CoAct team as post-doc -
welcome, Linda!
September 2018: The Communication in Action project (CoAct) has kicked off!
In this project, funded by the European
Research Council, we investigate how
bodily signals are used in conversation
and how they influence language
understanding. The research group
currently includes Marlijn ter Bekke
(Research Assistant), Josje de Valk (RA),
Mareike Geiger (Student Assistant),
Wieke Harmsen (SA) and Katharina Menn (SA).
Looking forward to starting on this exciting journey together!
November 2017: ERC Consolidator grant awarded to Judith
The grant will fund the “CoAct –
Communication in Action: Towards a
contextualised model of language and
action processing“ project. This exciting
new project will allow us to investigate
the role of visual communicative
signals in situated, face-to-face
language processing, using a
combination of conversational corpus data, kinect, data, experimental data and Virtual Reality. The new project will start on September 1st. Keep an eye out for the job ads!