On September 4, Aletta Meinsma (PhD researcher Quantum & Society, Leiden University) started her Network Institute research visit. For the next 3 months, she will be visiting Gudrun Reijnierse (Assistant Professor Language & Communication, VU). To get the visit off to a flying start, Aletta’s group from Leiden University and Gudrun’s group from VU gathered September 8th.

The goal of the meeting was to build an interdisciplinary research community of quantum scientists, communication experts and linguists, introduce Aletta’s previous PhD work, and gather ideas and input on the research study that will be conducted during the visit. The research study that Aletta and Gudrun will carry out as part of the visit aims to investigate whether and how metaphors influence comprehension of the counterintuitive topic of quantum science and technology. The meeting led to a fruitful discussion: many new ideas came up and it was great to see how people could understand each other despite their different backgrounds.

After the meeting, we toasted on the start of the visit in Grand Café Living. This meeting was a first step towards building an interdisciplinary community on quantum, language and communication and will take further shape on November 6, when a research symposium will be held on ‘The role of language in engaging audiences in new (quantum) technology’. If this sounds interesting to you: sign up here! There is more information on this webpage.

For pictures, see below: