Jonas Noelle

I am a research scientist in the Multimodal Language Department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. In my research, I use experimental semiotics approaches (including silent gesture, iterated learning and interactive VR games) to study how communication systems evolve culturally in response to cognitive, communicative, and environmental factors. I am also interested in social interaction dynamics, pragmatics, and the integration of multiple communication channels in conversations. 

Before joining the MPI, I investigated how facial expressions integrate with speech in a postdoc at School of Psychology & Neuroscience at Glasgow University. In 2021, I completed my PhD at the Centre for Language Evolution at the University of Edinburgh, where I used experimental semiotics and VR experiments to study how language is shaped by environmental factors. This includes, for instance, how environmental factors can lead to specific systematic markers emerging in a novel gestural communication system (e.g., paper), or how the physical environment can affect spatial referencing strategies (e.g., paper and thesis). I have been associated with the Interacting Minds Centre in Denmark at Aarhus University, where I also obtained my MA in Cognitive Semiotics. 

I founded and am co-organizing MOSAIC, a platform to connect researchers in multimodal social interaction research hosting monthly meetings (get in touch if you'd like to join!) and currently serve as a General Editor for the open-access journal Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press).

My publications can be found on Google Scholar and I sometimes tweet and toot stuff.