Professor Robert Turner
Department of Neurophysics, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science, Leipzig, Germany

His primary research consists of the development of magnetic resonance methods for greater scientific understanding of the human brain. Professor Turner has used functional imaging to study bilingualism, interpersonal synchrony, music, song, speech and mathematics. The title of his keynote address will be “How Might Ritual Symbols Work? Insights from Imaging Neuroscience”.

Professor Bradd Shore
Department of Anthropology, Emory University, Director of Marial Center

Early on, his research interest was one of ethnopsychology in an attempt to distinguish the models underlying beliefs and practices as well as notions of person and self as cultural constructs. More recently, he has turned to the very notion of cultural models itself as a significant way to reconceptualize the concept of culture in anthropology. In his 1996 monograph Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture and the Problem of Meaning , he outlines a theory of culture that links the anthropologist’s concern with social action and institutions with the psychologist’s concept of mental models. This view of culture as models has been developed largely in cognitive anthropology, but in his recent work has been repositioned to respond to many of the recent critiques of traditional notions of culture and reformulate in a powerful way a conception of culture that will bridge anthropology and cognitive science.