Alan Cienki

Alan Cienki is a Full Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Netherlands) in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, holding the chair in Language Use & Cognition and English Linguistics. He concurrently serves as Personnel Manager for the English Academic Language Programme and has a part-time appointment (currently on hold) at Moscow State Linguistic University’s Multimodal Communication and Cognition Lab. His research focuses on cognitive linguistics, gesture studies, multimodal communication, and metaphor analysis. Cienki earned a PhD in 1988 from Brown University, preceded by a Master’s in Slavic Languages (Brown University, 1983) and a Bachelor’s in Russian Studies (Hamilton College, 1982).

• Grants & Fellowships: NIAS Fellowship (2009-10, 2024), Russia Science Foundation grants (2014–2021), Netherlands Science Foundation (NWO), DAAD (2006).
• Teaching: Courses include Multimodal Communication, Spoken Language and Gesture, and Master’s thesis supervision in Communication Studies.
• Research Contributions: Authored/co-edited works like The Cambridge Handbook of Gesture Studies (2024) and pioneered the Amsterdam Gesture Center and PoliMod Lab in Moscow.

His work bridges cognitive linguistics and gesture analysis, emphasizing dynamicity and multimodality in language use. Key projects explore gesture in interpreting, metaphor embodiment, and cross-linguistic communication dynamics.