Asifa Majid

Research summary

Humans are one species and yet we speak 7000 different, mutually unintelligible languages each hosted in distinct cultural niches. How does this diversity of language, culture, and experience affect how people think and behave? Research in my lab investigates the relationship between language, culture, and cognition by conducting studies with adults in different cultures and sub-cultures, and by tracing how concepts develop over a child’s lifetime in diverse cultural contexts. The goal is to establish which aspects of cognition are fundamentally shared, and which are language- or culture-specific. This work combines laboratory and field experiments, as well as in-depth linguistic studies and ethnographically-informed description. This coordinated approach has been used to study domains such as space, events, and perception, with a special interest in olfaction.

SELECTED HONOURS

Humboldt Research Award (2026)

International Vigdís Prize (2024) 

Jeffrey L. Elman Prize for Scientific Achievement and Community Building (2024)

Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (2024)

Fellow of British Academy (2024)

Media & Interviews

Asifa Majid: Current Biology

BBC Radio 4 - One to One, Changing Language: Cindy Yu meets Asifa Majid

BBC Radio 4 - Word of Mouth, Smell

Many Minds: The scents of language

Why can’t English speakers say what they smell? | The Guardian

How your language reflects the senses you use - BBC Future

How Much Does Our Language Shape Our Thinking? | The New Yorker

Professional service

President Experimental Psychology Society (2026-2028)

President of the Cognitive Science Society (2019-2020)

Board of Reviewing Editors Science (2020-2025)

Co-Editor-in-Chief Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (2023-now)

Senior Editorial Board Topics in Cognitive Science (2021-now)