Dra. ANDREA TAVERNA
Researcher, CONICET (Argentina Research Council)
Andrea Taverna’s current interest is the study of the acquisition of Wichi as a primary language. Her studies describe the early grammaticalization process in this language of complex morphology, and the socialization context in which this ancestral language emerges. This current work, which constitutes the first psycholinguistic evidence in this native Argentine language, is complemented with her previous studies on how Wichi children represent their native environments. She has used this evidence to develop with the research team a series of illustrated bilingual Wichi-Spanish children’s books in which these native modes of representation are presented. Taverna obtained her PhD at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, and has made several postdoctoral visits at Northwestern University initiating an extensive collaboration with Drs. Sandra Waxman and Douglas Medin. Andrea Taverna has an 8-year-old daughter, Nina, and a one-year-old baby, Vito.
MIGDALIA I. PADILLA COLÓN
PhD Fellow CONICET (Argentina Research Council)
Migdalia I. Padilla works as a fellow at Instituto Rosario de Investigaciones en Ciencias de la Educación (IRICE, CONICET-UNR). She is now a PhD student in Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC). She studied Psychology at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras precinct. Currently, her research focuses on the relation between mind and culture. As a PhD student, Migdalia is interested in Mind Mindedness as a multimodal construct embedded in the mother-infant interactions in the first two years of age. Migdalia is Puerto Rican, in her free time she tries to visit her family in Puerto Rico and receives them in Argentina. She also likes to gather with her friends in the city she lives, Cañada de Gómez.
MATÍAS FERNÁNDEZ RUIZ
PhD Fellow CONICET (Argentina Research Council)
Matías Fernández Ruiz works as fellow at Instituto Rosario de Investigaciones en Ciencias de la Educación (IRICE, CONICET-UNR). Currently is doing his PhD in Anthropology at Universidad de Buenos Aires. He has a Master in Cognitive Psychology from FLACSO & Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education from Universidad de Buenos Aires. His research focuses on how Wichi people represent and reason about causality of their ecosystem. In his spare time his interests are wildlife photography, biking and tropical plants.
AURELIA PÉREZ
Native Educator, Maestra en Modalidad Aborigen (MEMA), Wichi Lako School, Laguna Yema, Formosa.
Aurelia Pérez has worked as a research collaborator since 2010 in the different research projects of the team. Aurelia, has played a fundamental role as a key consultant in the early fieldwork and in the extensive stays that Dr. Taverna made in Laguna Yema. His participation was consolidated while she was involved in ongoing projects, conducting interviews, video recordings, coordinating and supervising transcriptions, and Wichi-Spanish translations. Aurelia joined the PDTS – Technological and Social Development Project- grant: ‘The written language and the representation of natural knowledge in Wichi children. Contribution of scientific studies in psychology and linguistics to community cultural practices and social development ‘, supported by CONICET and CIN, within the framework of the collection of children’s books Hunhat lheley (Inhabitants of the Earth) of which she is the first author. Aurelia is also co-author of articles published and in progress.
ÉLIDA MARÍA PEREZ
Native Educator elementary level, Maestra en Modalidad Aborigen (MEMA), Wichi Lako School, Laguna Yema, Formosa.
Élida María Pérez joined the team as a research collaborator in 2014, participating with data gathering, conducting interviews, and collaborating in the discussion of the research studies’ results. Her experience as an educator at Wichi kindergarten was key in the elaboration of the idea-project that gave rise to the PDTS Project of Technological and Social Development ‘The written language and the representation of natural knowledge in Wichi children. Contribution of scientific studies in psychology and linguistics to community cultural practices and social development’ supported by CONICET and PDTS. Élida is the co-author of Hunhat lhelhey and other published and in-progress work.
MARTINA SALARÍ
Research Assistant
Martina Salarí is currently an undergraduate student of the professorate and the Bachelor of Letters at Universidad Nacional de Rosario (UNR). Martina is also a teacher assistant of the Spanish Language I, a first-year subject of the B.A. Since 2018, she has been performing coding and processing tasks of video recordings of communicative events extracted from the data corpus of the project of acquisition and early socialization of the Wichi.