Elena Cuffari

Elena Cuffari is an Assistant Professor of Psychology & Scientific Philosophical Studies of Mind at Franklin and Marshall College. Her research integrates enactive, embodied, ecological, environmental, and ethical perspectives to study communication and cognition, particularly focusing on gesture, social interaction dynamics, and the relationship between bodily experience and language. She directs the E.C.C. Lab, part of the Cognitive Science Research Lab, investigating how participatory dynamics emerge in contexts like videoconferencing, human-primate training, and hopeful conversations among expectant parents.

Educated at Swarthmore College (B.A. Philosophy and Linguistics, 2005) and the University of Oregon (Ph.D. Philosophy, 2011), her work bridges philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and social psychology. Her research interests include 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, enactive, extended), the role of gesture in meaning-making, and ethical dimensions of interactional practices.

Recent articles explore topics like paradoxical interaction practices, epistemic asymmetries in psychotherapy, and the enactive analysis of language evolution. She teaches courses on embodied cognition, history/philosophy of psychology, and ethics of minds/machines. Her lab employs innovative methods combining phenomenological analysis with empirical studies of multimodal communication.