PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Shiri Lev-Ari

I started my journey at the Interdisciplinary Program for Outstanding Students at Tel-Aviv University, where I discovered that I love studying, and even more so, studying language from a cognitive perspective. So after a few false starts (Maths, African Studies), I graduated with a MA summa cum laude in Cognitive Studies of Language Use under the supervision of always wonderful and supportive Rachel Giora, and was set to start my world journey: A PhD in Psychology at The University of Chicago under the supervision of Boaz Keysar, a post-doc at the Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique in Paris with Sharon Peperkamp, and a staff scientist position at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. In 2017 I moved to Royal Holloway University of London. I am currently a Reader (~Associate Professor) at the department.

My main interest has always been to understand how the social environment shapes individuals’ linguistic skills and representations and how social structure shapes language evolution. Check the other tabs to know more about what I learned so far.

Contact: Shiri.Lev-Ari@rhul.ac.uk

POST-DOC

Anna Petrova

Anna Petrova received a Master’s degree in clinical psychology and neuroscience from Moscow State University (Russia), and a PhD in psychological science from the University of Padua (Italy) in collaboration with Rice University (Houston, USA).  She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hong Kong, went on to do a research project at the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology of University of Glasgow supported by a Glasgow/HKU fellowship, and then worked at the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, HSE, Moscow, and the University of Reading. Her primary research interests are psycholinguistics, language processing, the cognitive and neural architecture of bilingualism and multilingualism.

RESEARCH ASSISTANTS

 Tate Winter

I am currently a third-year undergraduate Psychology student at Royal Holloway, University of London. I have always been fascinated by how our social environment shapes the way we think, feel, and interact — driving my interwoven interests in communication and social psychology. My curiosity often spills over into a wide range of psychological fields, as I enjoy exploring the many ways in which social dynamics influence human behaviour. As an aspiring psychological researcher, I am thrilled to be part of Dr. Lev-Ari’s lab as a research assistant. It represents an exciting opportunity to learn more about how social structures shape individuals’ linguistic tendencies, representations, and even the evolution of language itself, on the cutting edge of research in the field.

Olivia Shaw

I am an undergraduate student of psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London. My academic interests lie in linguistics, psycholinguistics and cognitive science, driven by a strong curiosity about the nuances of everyday social interaction. I am particularly fascinated by how language shapes and is shaped by our cognitive and social processes. I also have an interest in comparative psychology, which was the field of my final year project.
I aspire to pursue a career in psychological research, with a focus on the psychology of language. As part of this goal, I am thrilled to be working as a research assistant in Dr. Lev-Ari’s Language and Social Networks Lab. Currently we are working on a project focused on the balance between speaker and listener needs through researching homonym usage in larger and smaller groups.