Pavla Novakova

Pavla Novakova is a PhD candidate and Associate Tutor at the University of East Anglia, holding positions in both the School of Psychology and the Faculties of Medicine & Health Sciences and Social Sciences. Her ESRC-funded research investigates how cross-linguistic differences in motion event encoding affect attention and memory during eyewitness testimony. She employs experimental methods to analyze how speakers of different languages (e.g., English, Czech, German) perceive, describe, and recall complex events involving movement and object placement.

Education

• PhD Candidate in Psychology, University of East Anglia (Current)
• MRes in Social Science Research Methods (Linguistics), University of East Anglia, 2022
• MA in Global Intercultural Communication, University of East Anglia, 2020
• BA in Linguistics, Charles University, 2017

Research Focus

Novakova's work bridges linguistics and cognitive psychology, focusing on:

• Motion event typology (path/manner encoding)
• Language-driven attention allocation
• Memory reconstruction in eyewitness scenarios
• Cross-linguistic comparisons (Slavic vs. Germanic languages)
• Naturalistic stimulus design for cognitive experiments

Awards and Funding

• Vilem Mathesius Foundation Award (2017)
• ESRC SeNSS PhD Studentship

Academic Roles

As an Associate Tutor, she teaches across multiple faculties. Her doctoral supervision team includes Prof. Kenny Coventry (spatial cognition) and Dr. Paul Engelhardt (psycholinguistics). No student advising is currently reported.