Welcome!
I'm a cognitive scientist, writer, teacher, and podcaster. My work explores the intersections of language, culture, body, and mind. I’ve written about finger names, Darwin’s metaphors, pointing gestures, time concepts in New Guinea, the history of measurement, and the evolution of language, among other topics. I also produce and host the podcast Many Minds, which examines the varieties of mind and intelligence within and beyond our species.
News
October 2024 – Read our forthcoming chapter on gesture in New Guinea, part of a new volume on Papuan Languages. We cover pointing, emblems, time gestures, body count systems, and facial expressions.
July 2024 – I was in St Andrews, Scotland again for the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI). This was my 6th consecutive DISI!
June 2024 – Read my new review article, with Lauren Gawne, on highly conventionalized gestures (aka “emblems”), like the thumbs up, the peace sign, and the middle finger.
May 2024 – Check out my new preprint about how pointing gestures—in all their diversity—share the same fundamental design.
April 2024 – I have a brief essay—‘Human Uniqueness and Human Uniquals’—in Interspecies Future: A Primer, published by LAS Art Foundation. In it I explain the goofy (but useful?) coinage “human uniqual.”
January 2024 – Read my new essay for Many Minds on the origins of one of our most ubiquitous and universal expressions: the smile.
September 2023 – Now published: My long-in-the-works essay on the different facets of pointing, ‘Fifteen ways of looking at a pointing gesture’.
July 2023 – The Many Minds podcast has passed 100,000 listens!
June 2023 – I was in St Andrews, Scotland for the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) and Diverse Intelligences Summit.
Selected popular writing
April 2022. Handy mnemonics: The five-fingered memory machine. The Public Domain Review.
November 2021. Even rainbows have a dark side. Atlas Obscura.
July 2020. If language began in the hands, why did it ever leave? Aeon.
January 2020. Where do finger names come from? JSTOR Daily.
January 2019. What happens to cognitive diversity when everyone is more WEIRD? Aeon.
November 2016. How we make sense of time. Scientific American Mind. (w/ Rafael Núñez)
Selected academic writing
Cooperrider, Kensy (2023). Fifteen ways of looking at a pointing gesture. Public Journal of Semiotics, 10(2), 40-84. DOI: 10.37693/pjos.2023.10.25120. [link]
Cooperrider, Kensy, James Slotta, and Rafael Núñez (2022). The ups and downs of space and time: Topography in Yupno language, culture, and cognition. Language and Cognition, 14(1), 131-159. DOI:10.1017/langcog.2021.25. [link]
Cooperrider, Kensy and Dedre Gentner (2019). The career of measurement. Cognition, 191, 103942. [link]
Cooperrider, Kensy, Natasha Abner, and Susan Goldin-Meadow (2018). The palm-up puzzle: Meanings and origins of a widespread form in gesture and sign. Frontiers in Communication, 3(23). doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2018.00023. [link]
Cooperrider, Kensy, Tyler Marghetis, and Rafael Núñez (2017). Where does the ordered line come from? Evidence from a culture of Papua New Guinea. Psychological Science, 28(5), 599-608. [link]
For more info, browse the rest of this site, check out my Google Scholar page or (likely out-of-date) CV, send me an email (kensycoop at gmail.com), or find me on Bluesky: @kensycoop.bsky.social