Affiliation: University of Edinburgh
Keywords: Linguistics, semantics, cognitive science, philosophy of language, semantic typology.
Full profile: Wataru Uegaki is a Reader and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, where he is part of the Department of Linguistics and English Language within the School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences. He earned his PhD in Linguistics from MIT in 2015. Following his doctoral studies, Wataru was a JSPS postdoctoral fellow at Keio University and Institut Jean-Nicod (CNRS/ENS) in 2016 and served as an assistant professor at Leiden University Centre for Linguistics from 2016 to 2019. He then joined the University of Edinburgh as a Lecturer in Semantics.
Wataru’s research focuses on semantics and pragmatics, exploring how humans infer meaning from natural language conversations. His work aims to uncover the systems that govern these inferences using theoretical tools from linguistics, logic, and cognitive science.
Wataru has led multiple research projects funded by organizations such as UK Research & Innovation (UKRI), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the German Research Foundation (DFG) through the UK-German Collaborative Grant, the Netherlands Research Council, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
Passionate about the joys and complexities of language sciences, Wataru is dedicated to higher education teaching and public outreach, striving to share the excitement of his field with a broader audience.