About
My research explores how culture shapes the way we think. I’m particularly interested in how our understanding of the human mind changes when we look beyond the narrow range of populations traditionally studied in psychology. By examining diverse ways of thinking and speaking about the world, I aim to uncover what this variability reveals about the nature of human cognition.
Originally from Turkey, I received my Bachelor's degree in Psychology and Philosophy from Koç University in Istanbul. I then moved to the United States to pursue my PhD in Psychology at the University of Chicago, where I worked under the supervision of Daniel Casasanto and Susan Goldin-Meadow. My doctoral research focused on the question of why people gesture when they speak, exploring the cognitive and communicative functions of co-speech gestures.
Since the summer of 2022, I have been a postdoctoral researcher in the Comparative Cultural Psychology department at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. I am currently a Humboldt Research Fellow at this department, investigating how culture shapes spatial thinking.
Publications
CV
Contact
Email: yagmur_deniz_kisa@eva.mpg.de
Affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Department: Comparative Cultural Psychology
Location: Leipzig, Germany
