Sotaro Kita

Sotaro Kita (喜多 壮太郎) is a professor in the Department of Psychology at The University of Warwick. Kita's work focuses on the psycholinguistic properties of gestures accompanying speech, relations between spatial language and cognition, language development, and sound symbolism.

Biography
Kita received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1993, working in the lab of David McNeill. His dissertation focused on spontaneous gestures and Japanese mimetics. From 1993-2003 Kita led the Gesture Project at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, one of the research foci of the MPI.

From 2017-2023, Kita has served as the editor of GESTURE (published by John Benjamins). Kita was president of the International Society for Gesture Studies from 2012–2014, and vice-president from 2010-2012.

Kita's research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, and other agencies.

Appointments

 * 1993-2003 Led the Gesture Project at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
 * 1993-1994 Postdoctoral Researcher at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
 * 1994-2003 Senior Researcher at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
 * 2003-2006 Senior Lecturer at the Dept. of Experimental Psychology in the University of Bristol
 * 2006-2013 Reader at the School of Psychology in the University of Birmingham
 * 2013–present Professor of Psychology of Language at University of Warwick

Books

 * Kita, S. (2002). Jesuchaa: kangaeru karada [Gesture: the body that thinks]. Kaneko Shobo.
 * Kita, S. (Ed.) (2003). Pointing: Where language, culture, and cognition meet. Psychology Press