16 March 2023

Showcasing women in scientific research

A researcher in my class

Female researchers associated with the NCCR Evolving Language have invited themselves in a few classrooms in Geneva through the “A researcher in my class” project! With students between 15 and 20 years old, they talked about neurosciences, language evolution, human behaviour, as well as what it is to be a researcher, especially as a woman.

Why it is important to us

Gender stereotypes still exist in our society and affect the way we perceive the world and ourselves. For instance, do you know that, in Swiss universities, women represent 86,5 % of applied linguistics’ students while only 13,5% are in engineering and IT? (Source: Federal statistic office, 2022). Aware of this societal bias, the NCCR Evolving language is involved in the new initiative of the #NCCRWomen campaign “A researcher in my class”. For this matter, female researchers from our NCCR discuss their journey and their work in Swiss secondary schools to empower and encourage teenage girls into scientific careers.

Why it is important to our researchers

Women have their place in research

“I participated with great pleasure and enthusiasm in the “A researcher in my class” project. I think it is very important for young adults to be in contact with female researchers, so they realize that academics are not exclusively masculine and that women have their place in research, in all types of positions.”

Marjolaine Cohen

PhD in logopedics

Psycholinguistics and logopedics department, University of Geneva

Discussing the daily life of a female researcher

“To me, it’s important to discuss the daily life of a female researcher with students, including the different tasks and activities we are involved in and the different periods that exist during the thesis and during the following contracts.”

Marjolaine Cohen

PhD in logopedics

Psycholinguistics and logopedics department, University of Geneva

Equality in career pursuits

“Women are still too few in science, especially in my field, neurosciences. The “A researcher in my class” initiative will prove to young women that they can be confident and choose, if they want to, a scientific career and be successful. It is also crucial that young boys, for their part, become aware of the existence of these gender stereotypes, which also influence their decisions for the future.”

Coralie Debracque

PhD and Outreach Knowledge & Technology Transfer officer at the NCCR Evolving Language

Discovering research in psychology

“For me, this project represented an opportunity to introduce research in psychology to students who will soon have to make study choices and who are probably not aware of the extent of what is done in this field. It also seemed important to me to promote the place of women in research and more globally in a scientific field.”

Garance Selosse

PhD student in Psychology, University of Geneva

Showing it's not "Rocket Science"

“I’m passionate about science communication and popularization. We often think of scientists as wacky people who do incomprehensible things. It’s important for me to show that ‘it’s not rocket science’ and that anyone can understand science and be interested in it.”

Marion Bouffier

PhD in Psychology

Going beyond the stereotypes

“This project is close to my heart because of its ‘feminine’ aspect. The academic world is too often perceived as eminently male. It’s important to me to convey to young people that it’s possible, as a woman, to pursue a research career, beyond the prejudices that are sometimes instilled in us by society.”

Marion Bouffier

PhD in Psychology

Meet our researchers

Erica Van de Waal

I am interested in the evolution of primate social behaviours with a main focus on cultural transmission and cognition. I am the Director of the Inkawu Vervet Project in South Africa, an experimental field site with a study population of over 200 wild vervet monkeys. For more information on my research, please visit the webpage of my group.

My research is focused on game mechanisms during the learning how to read in children from 7 to 12 years old. In the NCCR Evolving Language, I am participating in the project EduGame, which questions the importance of executive functions in learning how to read. More precisely, the aim of the project is to understand if training using an action video game, specifically developed in our lab, can help children focus better. We hope to strengthen cerebral pathways involved in reading-related skills, and understand the role of focus skills in reading.

Through millions of years of evolution, vocal emotions became primordial to species survival (Homo sapiens included). Enabling the transfer of information in a dense environment (e.g. urban or vegetal jungle) and long distances, vocal production is a preferred channel for emotional communication. With the existence of common neuronal and behavioral mechanisms between species, could we, as humans, recognize the vocal emotions of other species ? Especially those of our closest cousins, the great apes ?

Prosody refers to changes in acoustic parameters that are primarily modulated by the mechanisms of voice production, which are themselves modulated by emotion. The mechanisms underlying cognition in emotional voice perception haven’t been studied thoroughly but research has revealed common mechanisms involved in the production and perception of emotional prosody. My thesis aims to investigate the influence of body vibrations induced by a vibrator placed near the vocal cords on the perception of emotional vocalizations, using behavioral studies as well as neuroimaging.

In my research, I’m interested in the interactions between language and other abilities. For example, during my doctoral thesis, I looked at the links between our memory and language, including multilingualism. As a post-doctoral researcher at Unige, I’m focusing on how our brains process and execute verbal instructions, with particular emphasis on the pathway our brains take to decipher the meaning of the instruction through to the motor implementation of the response.