From 11 to 13 September 2025, Prof. Sotaro Kita visited Leipzig for a series of academic exchanges and collaborative discussions.
After arriving on Thursday, Prof. Kita gave a stimulating talk on the “Psychological Foundations of Language” at the Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI EVA). The lecture, organized by the Human Biology & Primate Cognition group at Leipzig University, attracted around 30–35 scholars. Later that day, Prof. Kita met individually with several PhD students from MPI EVA to discuss their ongoing research, followed by a joint dinner in the evening.
On Friday, Prof. Kita visited the Wolfgang Köhler Primate Research Center at the Leipzig Zoo, accompanied by Katja Liebal, Federica Amici, and two visiting colleagues from Indonesia. Following a tour through the ape house, the group discussed the current progress of the ViCom project on compositional structures in chimpanzee gestural communication and explored new ideas for future collaborations. In the afternoon, Prof. Kita continued his meetings with several doctoral researchers, offering feedback and exchanging ideas about their projects.