Dr. Shigeru Miyagawa

Dr. Miyagawa is a Professor Emeritus of linguistics at MIT and Kochi Prefecture-John Manjiro Professor of Japanese Language and
Culture. He obtained his PhD from the University of Arizona in 1980 and joined the faculty of the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy of MIT in 1991. The short biography, below, is available on his website.  

Short biography

Miyagawa has been involved with many aspects of digital learning at MIT. He was Senior Associate Dean for Open Learning, 2018 - 2021. He served on the original MIT committee that proposed OpenCourseWare, and was the Chair of the MIT OpenCourseWare Faculty Advisory Committee, 2010 - 2013. He is also 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. He is also the 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). During 2014 - 2019, he served as Project Professor and Director of Online Education for the University of Tokyo as a joint appointment with MIT. Since 2019, he has served as an external board member for Cyber University of the SoftBank Group.

As a linguist, he has published several books, including three recent ones from MIT Press, and over sixty articles. He has recently developed a theory of language evolution that hypothesizes that human language arose from the integration of two pre-existing systems in nature, one seen in birdsong, the other in primate alarm calls. His ideas are developed in jointly authored articles (Frontiers in Psychology, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2019). The Integration Hypothesis 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 (2022-2025) for his work in language and evolution. 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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