About me

I am a full Professor at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior (Faculty of Social Sciences) and affiliated researcher at Center for Languages Studies at Radboud University and Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. I am also the Director of the Multimodal Language Department- members of which are distributed over Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Center for Language Studies and Donders Institute for Cognition at Radboud University.

As a language and cognitive scientist I investigate cognitive and social foundations of human language capacity from a multimodal ( in speech , gesture and sign ) and cross-linguistic perspective .
I am also dedicated bridging the gap between science, technology (AI), society and education and making scientific practices inclusive and available for people with diverse backgrounds and languages as well as for immigrants, women and deaf individuals across the globe and in developing countries.

Short Bio

Born in Turkey and have recieved my BA in Psychology at Bogazici University, Istanbul and joint PhD in Linguistics and Psychology at the University of Chicago

Worked as Assistant Professor at Koc University Istanbul (2000-2003)

Received NWO- VIDI career grant (5-year), ASPASIA Award and ERC Starting Grant (5-year) and hosted three Marie-Curie Individual Postdoctoral Fellowships at Radboud University Linguistics Department (2003-2020)

Since 2010 I am a Professor in Linguistics and Social Sciences at Radboud University

Currently I am the PI of a 5-year NWO-VICI Grant for a research proposal entitled "Giving cognition a hand: Linking spatial cognition to linguistic expression in native and late learners of sign language and bimodal bilinguals"

I am an elected (2019) member of Academia Europea

Other current roles:

Co-PI and a Scientific Board Member of NWO funded Language in Interaction Consortium (until 2023)

Scientific Board member of the Donders Institute and the Speaker of Language and Communication theme (from 2018 onwards)

Programme Committee Member of IMPRS Graduate School (from 2019 onwards)

Steering committee member of Radboud Uni Interfaculty Initiative on Adaptive Language Consortium

With Dr. Judith Holler I coordinate the Nijmegen Gesture Center

Google Scholar H-Index = 36; 10! Index = 89; Times cited- 7100+

Also see :

https://www.mpi.nl/department/multimodal-language-and-cognition/17

and

http://www.ru.nl/mlc/