Dr Claudia Uller

About

My PhD Degree is in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Mass., USA. My work focus is on the origins of knowledge. I am a cognitive scientist interested in concepts, that is, how the mind, human or nonhuman, processes information in terms of concepts. In other words, my main interests lie in the origins of human and nonhuman animal cognitive architecture. My research includes the origins of numerical knowledge, the origins of rudiments of social understandings in infancy, and concepts such as desire and goal attribution, and trust/trustworthiness. In addition, I have dipped my toes in evolutionary considerations on the origins of mind, in particular, language. Part of my background in psycholinguistics includes language processing, sound processing and music. My early research focussed on children's establishment of reference (anaphora) in oral narratives, and I have done work on the origins of sound perception in infancy. My research in comparative cognition draws on the idea that evolution might have shaped cognitive traits across species, and has provided insights into the question of cognitive evolution. This work has attracted considerable media attention. An article published in 2003, and another in 2013, got my work featured in Nature and New Scientist. I have held grants from the NSF in the USA, the British Academy and the Royal Society, as well as been invited to give workshops internationally.

After obtaining my PhD at MIT, I worked in the USA for a number of years before taking a post at the University of Essex. I took a post of Senior Lecturer at Cambridge University before being hired by Kingston University as Head of the Department of Psychology. I am presently PhD Research Director, and Masters Research Dissertation module director for the Department of Psychology.