shigeru miyagawa

Professor Emeritus of Linguistics &

Kochi-Manjiro Professor of Japanese Language & Culture

| MIT |

miyagawa@mit.edu

Visiting Professor in Biosciences, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (from September 2022). Awarded the São Paulo Excellence Chair.

Executive Advisor and Visiting Professor, Research Center for Society 5.0, Seikei University, Tokyo, Japan (from April 2022)

Project Professor and Director of Online Education, University of Tokyo (cross-appointment with MIT), 2014 - 2019.

External Board Member, Cyber University, Softbank Group (from 2019).

Shigeru Miyagawa is a linguist and an expert on online education. He has published widely in linguistics, including three books from the MIT Press. Recently, he developed the Integration Hypothesis for human language evolution, which proposes that human language arose from the combination of simpler systems including those that are associated with birdsong and also primate alarm calls. The idea was featured in a BBC Radio4 program, What the songbird said. For this work, he was awarded the São Paulo Excellence Chair. Along with his home institution, MIT, he has held positions at the University of Tokyo (Director of Online Education, 2013-2018), University of São Paulo (Visiting Professor of Biosciences, 2021-), and Seikei University (Senior Advisor, 2022 - ).

ONLINE EDUCATION

Senior Associate Dean for Open Learning, 2018 - 2021.

Served on the original MIT committee that proposed OpenCourseWare.

Chair of the MIT OpenCourseWare Faculty Advisory Committee, 2010 - 2013.

Co-director of Visualizing Cultures (visualizingcultures.mit.edu) with the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, John W. Dower.

With John Dower, Andrew Gordon of Harvard, and Gennifer Weisenfeld of Duke, he created Visualizing Japan, a Harvard-MIT MOOC offered by edX that has attracted over 20,000 learners world-wide. Visualizing Japan was a Finalist for the prestigious Japan Prize in 2015.

Producer of the multimedia program, StarFestival, which stars George Takei as the voice of the main character. StarFestival was awarded the Distinguished Award at the Multimedia Grandprix 2000 (Japan).

LINGUISTICS

Published several books, including three recent ones from MIT Press, and over sixty articles.

His Integration Hypothesis for language evolution is developed in jointly authored articles (Frontiers in Psychology, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2019). it received mention in the journal Science and its news website (http://news.sciencemag.org/plants-animals/2013/02/tweet-screech-hey).

BBC produced a 30-minute special inspired by his Integration Hypothesis of human language evolution. It aired in May 2015 on Radio 4, which has a multi-million listener base (What the Songbird Said). It won the 2015 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award for radio reporting.

He was awarded the São Paulo Excellence Chair (2022-2026) for his work in language and evolution, and holds Visiting Professorship of Bioscience at USP.

The British composer, Peter Wyer, under a commission from Arts Brookfield of the New York World Financial Center, composed the orchestral and choir piece in part inspired by Shigeru Miyagawa’s Integration Hypothesis. "We must say goodbye." Link to the song. WNYC interview with Pete Wyer and John Schaefer. Song of the Human Premiere 10/12/2016. Announcement

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