Profile
Abstract
Prof. Dr. Daniel Haun is currently directing the Department for Comparative Cultural Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. He is also the Director of the Leipzig Research Center for Early Child Development and Honorary Professor for Comparative Cultural Psychology at Leipzig University.
He studies how human cognitive development is adapted to cultural diversity and how it contributes to it. This requires a combination of developmental, cross-cultural and comparative studies, providing an integrative account of uniquely human cultural diversity and its universal cognitive roots.
With this aim in mind, he compares early cognitive developmental in human and non-human great apes and conducts ethnographically informed cross-cultural cognitive development across human societies.
Professional career
- since 07/2019
Director of the Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology,Max Plancke Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology - since 07/2015
Director or the Leipzig Research Center for Early Child Development,Leipzig University - 07/2019 - 07/2020
Interim Professor (20%) for Early Child Development and Culture,Leipzig University - since 07/2019
Professor for Comparative Cultural Psychology,Leipzig University - 07/2015 - 07/2019
Professor for Early Child Development and Culture,Leipzig University - 07/2014 - 07/2015
Professor for Developmental Psychology,University of Jena - 07/2013 - 07/2016
Guest Scientist, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Leipzig - 07/2008 - 07/2013
Research Group leader, Comparative Cognitive AnthropologyMax Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology & MPI for Psycholinguistics - 07/2008 - 07/2014
Honorary Lecturer, Developmental PsychologyUniversity of Portsmouth - 07/2007 - 07/2008
Lecturer for Developmental PsychologyUniversity of Portsmouth - 07/2006 - 07/2007
Post Doc, Comparative and Developmental Psychology,Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology - 07/2001 - 07/2002
Research Assistant, Developmental PsychologyUniversity of South Carolina
Education
- 07/2002 - 02/2006
PhD student, Language and Cognition Group,Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics - 07/2002 - 07/2007
Doktorat, PsychologieMPI Psycholinguistik & Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging - 07/2001 - 07/2002
Master of Arts in Psychology,University of South Carolina - 10/1997 - 10/2000
First diploma (B.A.) in Psychology,University of Trier
Humans show extraordinary behavioral and cognitive variability across populations. At the heart of uniquely human cultural diversity lies the unique nature of the human developmental process. Hence, my central question is: How is human cognitive development adapted to cultural diversity and how does it contribute to it? This question is critical, because cultural diversity does not only entail our predominant mode of adaptation to local ecologies, but is also key to the construction of our cognitive architecture. An encompassing theory of human cognition must therefore consider the ways in which it adapts to, and shapes, social and ecological contexts, as well as the universal foundations that enable this reciprocal interaction. This requires a combination of developmental, cross-cultural and comparative studies, providing an integrative account of uniquely human cultural diversity and its universal cognitive roots. Hence I pursue two lines of inquiry: (1) Comparative developmental studies of cognition in human and non-human great apes and (2) ethnographically informed cross-cultural comparisons of cognition in both human and non-human great apes.