People | Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione

Email:

laura.sparaci@istc.cnr.it

Telephone:

+ 39 06 44161541

Fax:

+ 39 06 44161513

Address:

Via Nomentana 56 - 00161 Rome - Italy

Resume:

cv_december_2024.pdf

Group membership:

Language and Communication Across Modalities Laboratory

Additional details

Profile

Position:

Research Director

Laura Sparaci is currently Associate Researcher at CNR’s Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies within the LaCAM Lab. After graduating in Philosophy cum laude at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ she completed a MA in Philosophy of Cognitive Science with distinction at the University of Sussex and a PhD in Cognitive Sciences at the University of Siena. She has also obtained a Graduate Certificate in Cognitive Sciences at the University of Central Florida where she spent one year on a Fulbright Scholarship. She then worked for three years as Post-doc at the Department of Neuroscience of the University of Parma, one year as Research Assistant at the Children’s Hospital ‘Bambino Gesù’ in Rome and four years as Researcher fixed term within the LaCAM Lab acting as PI in the MIUR FIRB TOUM Project and as Experienced Researcher in the EC FP7 GEST_LAN_D Project coordinated by Dr Olga Capirci. She has recently completed a second Fulbright Scholarship to act as PI in the FRATER Project and has recently obtained a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship to conducte the FORGE Project at University College London (UCL).

Tags:

Research

Laura’s research is mainly focused on embodied enactive approaches to human communication and aims at disentangling how motor repertoires and interactions with objects contribute to gesture and language development in both typical and atypical populations. She has had more than eight years of international and interdisciplinary postgraduate research experience working in academic, laboratory and clinical environments, recently obtaining her second Fulbright scholarship and a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship at University College London (UCL) to carry out a project entitled FORGE. The FORGE project is dedicated to investigating the role of motor skills and functional tool use towards emergence of representational gestures and vocabulary acquisition in children. The project will rely on both behavioral observations and use of motion sensors to measure motoric characteristics of tool use and gestural skills exploited by children’s during word learning.

Projects