Cristóbal Pagán, researcher of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS)will spend the months of July and August 2014 at the department of English at the University of Heidelberg (Germany).

During the stay the researcher of the project 'Public discourse' is working with Beatrix Busse, Professor of the department English and Vice President of teaching of the University of Heidelberg (Germany). "Prof. Busse is organizing an interdisciplinary initiative on the notion of 'patron saint' in the sciences and in letters; this is a project closely related to my research", explains Cristobal, whose project of research SCHEMOTIME (Schematic Conceptual Integrations for Time and Emotion in Language, Literature, and Gesture) analyzes the relationship between 'patterns' and creativity at speech.

"Their interdisciplinary initiative is very ambitious and tries to connect with people from all Schools; the first preparatory meetings have already taken place," says the philologist. The purpose of the stay is goal to see the points in common between the two projects of research and to study the possibility of designing common strategies. "We want to see exactly what subject of dialogue we are interested in - explains Cristóbal - and see if we can compare results from our project with the reflection they are doing on how the notion of 'patron saint' works in general".

Double goal of the stay

In addition to visiting the department of English at the University of Heidelberg, Cristóbal Pagán was also invited to visit the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics. This high school has as purpose to study the aesthetic experience. "They seek to understand the cognitive and neural processes behind the appreciation of aesthetic goals, of what makes us recognize something as poetic, musical or aesthetic," says Cristóbal.

Cristóbal Pagán is researcher of project 'Public discourse' of Institute for Culture and Society. He holds a PhD in Philology Classical and graduate in Philology English from the University of Murcia. In 2009 he obtained a scholarship Marie Curie that allowed him to research on cognitive patterns in poetry, at Case Western Reserve University (USA), the University of California San Diego (USA) and the University of Oxford (UK), among others.