Composition of the structural area
The intra-faculty unit “Cognitive Science” consists of three departments, whose interests are each represented within the structural unit by a department spokesperson and a research spokesperson. At present, Prof. Dr. Audrey Bürki is the spokesperson of the structural unit. This position is taken over by the representatives of the departments every two years on a rotating basis.
Department Sports and Health Sciences
Speaker: Dr. Berno Bahro
The Department of Sport and Health Sciences currently unites seven chairs that deal with different issues of sport and exercise in teaching and research. In the broadest sense, the basic academic principle within the department is the interdisciplinary consideration of research objectives and questions on the topics of sport and health across the life cycle. These include, for example, issues related to junior competitive sport and high-performance sport, the interaction between motor function, cognition, and (mental) health, lifelong plasticity through learning and physical exercise, social topics related to sport and health as well as management, professional services, and sports economics. The degree programs offered at the department introduce the significance and complexity of sport and health to many professional fields of sport, health, and education.
Find an overview of the chairs at the Department of Sport and Health Sciences here:
Department Linguistics
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Audrey Bürki
Department Psychology
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Petra Warschburger
The Department of Psychology at the University of Potsdam was founded in 1992. The twelve professorships that make up the Department cover a wide area of research and teaching: Experimental and Biological Psychology, Biological Psychology and Affective Science, Developmental Psychology, Work and Organizational Psychology, Counseling Psychology, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Cognitive Neuroscience, Educational Psychology, Social Psychology, Personality Psychology and Psychological Assessment, Research Methods, and Cognitive Science.
The Department of Psychology offers a polyvalent Bachelor of Science in Psychology and two Master of Science degree programs: M.Sc. Psychology and M.Sc. Cognitive Science - Embodied Cognition.
Humboldt-Professorship
Prof. Dr. Harald Clahsen
Professor Harald Clahsen studied linguistics, sociology and mathematics at the Universities of Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Wuppertal. He received his doctorate in 1981 and his habilitation in general linguistics in 1987. In 1993, he was appointed Professor of Linguistics at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom, where he served until 2011. In 2011, he was appointed to an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship at the University of Potsdam. He established the Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism (PRIM) there, where he remains active today. He was recently appointed Senior Professor.
Professor Clahsen is concerned with the nature of language ability and use in the individual, in particular with language learning in children and adults, with the mechanisms and strategies of language production and comprehension, with disorders of language ability and acquisition. He is particularly interested in the multilingual individual. How do bilingual and multilingual individuals navigate the use of their different languages? At what age is it best to learn a new language? How can new media promote?
Prof. Clahsen has authored 9 books and over 150 research articles on these topics and has received numerous scientific prizes and awards for his work. He has led several large research projects and is co-editor of the internationally renowned journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.
