Second Year

Image Natalie Emmons
Caption Natalie Emmons

Natalie Emmons

Natalie graduated from the University of Arkansas in 2006 with a BA in Psychology. Her research emphasis was in mate selection within the evolutionary psychology framework, specifically examining the functional mechanism of sexual arousal and the perceptions individuals have about their current partners based on degree and frequency of arousal. Natalie is currently involved in the Explaining Religion project at the ICC. She hopes to pursue research addressing the cognitive universals of religious belief systems.

Phone: +44 (0) 28 9097 3706     Email Natalie

Image Renatas Berniunas
Caption Renatas Berniunas

Renatas Berniunas

Renatas graduated from Vytautas Magnus University in Lithuania and received a master’s degree in social anthropology. He gradually became interested in distributed cognition and ‘cognitive artifacts’. Artifacts are very important representatives of various intentional agencies and, additionally, a good store of information; objects can be personalized and treated as social agents themselves. Given that, Renatas was interested in what role artifacts played in the process of cultural transmission. Now he is also interested in what the tacit cognitive mechanisms of personhood or self are and how these mechanisms are worked out in the context where cultural explicit teaching obscures the self as a real stuff.

   

Phone: +44 (0) 28 9097 1340     Email Renatas

Image Hillary Lenfesty
Caption Hillary Lenfesty

Hillary Lenfesty

Hillary studied sociology at the University of Puget Sound and theology at Princeton Seminary.  Her research at the ICC investigates evangelism and religious conversion in relation to the mind's propensity to essentialise across ontological domains.  She will be examining this process in Northern Ireland and South America, and conducting research in cooperation with the "Explaining Religion" project.

Phone: +44 (0) 28 9097 3706     Email Hillary

Image Annick Sy
Caption Annick Sy

Annick Sy

Annick Sy earned a MS in Sociology from Paris X University, a post graduate diploma in Cultural Anthropology at École des Hautes Études in Paris, and worked at the School of Asian and African Study in London. She has studied the pagan Bambaras ethnical identity, as well as the Madéan griots arts (music and poetry) in West Africa. She intends to re-examine this latter research at the ICC applying the methods of empirical cognitive science. In particular, she would like to explore the evolutionary hypothesis that human beings are endowed with cognitive capacities that link together religious, science, and art.

Phone: +44 (0) 28 9097 1340     Email Annick