Ways of World Knowing: Local Knowledge, Coastal Communities, and Equitable Ocean Governance Abstract. This collection of cross-disciplinary chapters by philosophers, legal scholars, and marine scientists explore the epistemic value of varieties of

Our co-edited volume with @abbeaberdeen.bsky.social and Marcel Jaspars is out: academic.oup.com/book/62270#l... (hardback to follow). Our ch 2 is OA academic.oup.com/book/62270/c.... We discuss how to better integrate local knowledge into ocean governance esp #BBNJ implementation.

David Ludwig awarded NWO Vici Grant on doing science differently Science philosopher David Ludwig has been awarded a prestigious NWO Vici grant for his project Doing Science Differently? A Philosophy of Transgressive Science.

Very excited to have received a Vici grant for the project "Doing Science Differently? A Philosophy of Transgressive Science". The project will address methodological & institutional challenges of transgressing "business as usual" in academia. www.wur.nl/en/news/davi...

Theory What is a cognitive scientific theory?

some resources for cognitive scientists — especially for junior scholars who ask me wonderful questions and want to learn more — on theorising and metatheorising olivia.science/theory/ (not 100% finished & more to come, but all my work is freely available here: olivia.science#publications as usual)

ACL terminology:
"Paper" = anything with lots of tables with numbers.
"Position paper" = anything critical or just deeper.

I propose:
"Paper" = intellectual contribution.
"Engineering paper" = anything purely technocratic.

"Today, difference is embodied for me most powerfully in the concept of the pluriverse, a world where many words fit, as the Zapatista put it with stunning clarity." Pluriversality "is about an ethical and political practice of alterity that involves a deep concern for social justic, the radical equality of all beings, and nonhierarchy." "It's about the difference that all marginalized and subaltern groups have to live with day in and day out, and that only privileged groups can afford to overlook as they act as if the entire world were, or should be, as they see it." — Escobar, A. (2018) Designs for the Pluriverse.

"A world where many worlds fit" — @samiraibnelkaid.bsky.social interweaves Arturo Escobar, convivialism and interdependence in a new post on the Futures of Language site markdingemanse.net/futures/news...

Part of a new series in which we introduce ideas & scholars that inform & inspire us!

Pro tip for scholars: make sure you have a homepage that is not acdemia.edu,researchgate, or google scholar, and has your correct affiliation and contact information. This is doubly true if you are in a less mainstream institution, between jobs, or other unusual setting.

the hegemony of English is fairly recent, so anyone who wants to dig into foundational issues must work multilingually. E.g. these two paragraphs in my 2018 review of the history of ideophone research cite work in German, Sanskrit, English, Latin, Portuguese and French doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.444

I'm a cognitive scientist with an interest in epistemic vigilance, and this essay that's been going around gave me pause.

I don't think it's straightforward to apply the concept of epistemic vigilance to interactions with LLMs, as this essay does.

🧵/

sbgeoaiphd.github.io/rotating_the...

Is one of your goals for 2026 to write more? One question I get all the time is, "How do you make time to write?" So, here is my unsolicited writing advice for the new year:

An LLM-backed "socratic tutor" to replace reading responses Blog about fatherhood, langauge, developmental psychology, and cognitive science.

New blogpost about a teaching experiment I'm doing this quarter: a "socratic tutor" bot to help students gain understanding of specific reading assignments.

babieslearninglanguage.blogspot.com/2026/02/an-l...

DNA or parents’ reading: what predicts #dyslexia risk?

🧬 Polygenic score → 6%
🎓 Each parent’s education → 6%
📚 Parents' reading ability → 21%

PGS are informative, not diagnostic. Family phenotypes predict at least as much as DNA

Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...
21%: doi.org/10.1080/1088...

Matching sounds to shapes: Evidence of the bouba-kiki effect in naïve baby chicks Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords “kiki” and “bouba” with spiky and round shapes, respectively, a phenomenon named the bouba-kiki effect. To explore the origin of t...

“Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords kiki & bouba with spiky & round shapes, respectively...We tested the bouba-kiki effect in baby chickens. Similar to humans, they spontaneously chose a spiky shape when hearing a kiki sound & a round shape when hearing a bouba.”😲🧪

Children around the world process gaze in similar ways Large cross-cultural study finds common 'processing signature' of gaze following despite differences in accuracy and development

Children around the world process #gaze in similar ways. Large cross-cultural study led by @elmanubohn.bsky.social & @dbmhaun.bsky.social finds common 'processing signature' of gaze following. @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social @leuphana.bsky.social tinyurl.com/278wxka3 & academic.oup.com/chidev/advan...

Are you a junior faculty member interested in spending 2-4 weeks at Princeton Psych? Please apply for our Microsabbatical program! It’s a fully funded visit for professional development and creating long-term collaborations.
psych.princeton.edu/diversity/mi...

Critical AI On this page are some resources for Critical AI Literacy (CAIL) from my perspective.

100% and please, people, consider signing "Open Letter: Stop the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia." olivia.science/ai/#activism

direct link to sign: openletter.earth/open-letter-...

Photograph of a page from Charles Darwin’s 1837 Notebook B showing the “Tree of Life” sketch, which gives a glimpse of his early insights into how a set of multiple related species might originate by divergence from a single starting point. The bottom shows a common root with various branches and twigs emerging from different nodes, with labels from A to D. There is a handwritten annotation at the top, reading “I think”. Further handwritten annotations on the right-hand side of the image are thought to state the following. “Case must be that one generation then should be as many living as now. To do this and to have many species in same genus (as is) requires extinction.”

One of my favourite things about this figure (sketched by Charles Darwin in one of his notebooks in 1837) is the “I think” at the top. Beyond an illustration of his evolving thoughts on descent with modification, the image somehow captures the essence of scientific curiosity. #DarwinDay 2026

A research in context panel from the article, which reads: Added value of this study This study combined retrospective data and projections for the near future, up to 2030, across a broader set of countries, especially those most vulnerable to ODA shocks, to fully understand the effects of international cooperation and its potential fluctuations on mortality amidst the ODA funding crisis. Our models forecast an additional 22·6 million deaths across all ages, including 5·4 million deaths in children younger than 5 years, by 2030, under a severe defunding scenario; even under a mild defunding scenario, the projected number of excess deaths by 2030 is 9·4 million across all ages and 2·5 million among children younger than 5 years. Implications of all the available evidence Sudden and severe reductions in ODA funding could have catastrophic consequences, with a potential global death toll comparable to—or even exceeding—that of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even modest defunding that simply extends current downward trends is likely to lead to sharp increases in preventable adult and child mortality, potentially resulting in tens of millions of excess deaths in the coming years.

Published today in The Lancet Global Health: A modelling study on current worldwide trends in humanitarian and developmental assistance finds that cuts up to 2030 are projected to cause up to 22.6m additional deaths, inc. 5.4m children u5. Available Open Access - www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

As I've posted on before, heritability is one of the most commonly confused concepts in public (mis)understanding of genetics. 👇

Hackathon page screenshot

This July, we are holding a virtual hackathon to explore LEVANTE data!

If you're interested in data analysis, development, and cross-cultural variability, please join us!

First week is open, second week is by application with mentorship on group projects.

levante-hackathon-2026.github.io

ECRs in the spotlight: Dorjderem Byambasuren (University of Kaiserslautern-Landau) - MEDAL One of the best parts of the MEDAL summer schools was building friendships and collaborations. I’m a doctoral student in psycholinguistics, and my research focuses on how young Mongolian children acqu...

ECR in the Spotlight: ECRs in the spotlight: Dorjderem Byambasuren (University of Kaiserslautern-Landau)

Dorjderem's PhD focuses on the acquisition of #Mongolian, which helps identify language delays 🇲🇳

Read the interview 👇

medal.ut.ee/news/ecrs-in...

@mpi-nl.bsky.social @dondersinst.bsky.social

What enables human language? A biocultural framework Explaining the origins of language is a key challenge in understanding ourselves as a species. We present an empirical framework that draws on synergies across fields to facilitate robust studies of l...

ICYMI, our recent paper gives a framework for empirical research on language evolution, integrating methods & data across fields + roles of biology & culture.
If you're unable to download full version at Science, there's a link for direct free access on MPI website here:
www.mpi.nl/publications...
🧪

Happy World Linguistics Day! I write about #language in the key of narrative non-fiction; you might find my books interesting! A thread --
#lingsky #langsky #linguistics

You've never truly lived until you've tried explaining to an uninterested colleague why “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo“ is indeed a grammatically correct sentence.

What enables human language? A biocultural framework Explaining the origins of language is a key challenge in understanding ourselves as a species. We present an empirical framework that draws on synergies across fields to facilitate robust studies of l...

Origins of language, one of humanity’s most distinctive traits, may be best explained as a unique convergence of multiple capacities each with its own evolutionary history, involving intertwined roles of biology & culture. This framing can expand research horizons. A 🧵 on our @science.org paper.🧪1/n

Genomic Investigations of Spoken and Written Language Abilities: A Guide to Advances in Approaches, Technologies, and Discovery Purpose: The aim of this tutorial is to show how the rise of molecular technologies and analytical methods in human genetics yields exciting new ...

If you're interested in how advances in human genomics are transforming our understanding of the biology of spoken & written language abilities, please do check out my new peer-reviewed "tutorial" article, just published.
🗣️🧬🧪
[Will also make a Bsky explainer 🧵 on it next week when I get some time🙂.]

This is one of very few long term studies of a brief early intervention to improve mental health in young children. The news is positive - we can make sustained improvements for children early in their lives. Something that early years practitioners know - now there is more research to back it up.

#BUCLD50 Symposium: “Innateness is not a dirty word: Reframing the origins of language development”, by Shanley Allen, Marisa Casillas, Alejandrina Cristia, Michael C. Frank, Caroline Rowland, Leher Singh, and Paul Bloom!

Learn more at:
www.bu.edu/bucld/

#Innateness #LLM #LanguageDevelopment

Good point, but that’s a very Western view of education. In many Asian cultures, learning values guidance and respect for experience. The best way is probably to balance independent thinking with the professor’s direction.

Title and abstract of the paper

How do you measure early language development in languages where you don't have word lists?

New paper: Measuring children’s early vocabulary in low-resource languages using a Swadesh-style word list - led by @kachergis.bsky.social and @alvinwmtan.bsky.social

osf.io/njm7d_v1

#DLDday is coming, so I’m starting a thread over a few days.

DLD (Developmental Language Disorder) is all about spoken language. Words and sentences are tricky for people with DLD. And people don’t grow out of it.
#DevLangDis @radld.bsky.social