Center for Cognition, Culture, and Language

The Center for Cognition, Culture, and Language (CCCL) investigates how language, culture and cognition influence each other. Two questions are key within this field: how are cognitive abilities formed and what roles do convention, involvement and perspective play in the interpretation of language?

Highlights

NWO funds research into emotional language processing, charred papyri, the molecularisation of biology and consciousness in AI

01 July 2026 News item

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) will fund research by four talented aspiring academics as part of their PhD's in the Humanities programme.

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Neurodiversity in organisations

Masterclass

Neurodiversity (such as autism, ADHD or ADD) helps you understand where these differences come from, without immediately seeing them as a ‘problem’. We explore what neurodiversity means for teams, leadership and professional development.

Research themes

Cognition and sociality
What is the nature of folk-psychology? And can we view culture as a precondition for—rather than merely a product of—human cognition?
Convention, commitment and perspective
Can linguistic utterances be understood in terms of convention and commitment? And how is perspective represented in language?
Philosophy of the human sciences
What is the nature of explanation in social and political science, psychiatry and cognitive neuroscience?

Interdisciplinary approach

Researchers at CCCL combine insights from fields such as psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, neuroscience and biology with philosophy. And they look outward to professional practices, such as psychiatry. Through this interdisciplinary approach, the CCCL contributes to the formation of philosophical theory in both philosophy of mind and of language.

This interdisciplinary approach takes shape, among other things, through the organisation of monthly meetings in the Foundations of Cognition Colloquium Series, the ‘Philosophy for the translation of neuroscience to society’ programme and the Radboud Interfaculty Complexity Science Hub (RICH). It works closely with partners including the University of British Columbia, the Donders Institute, the VU University Medical Center Amsterdam and the Dimence Group.