ManyBabies is having an election to select two new members of the Governing Board. Information about the available positions is available here.
Eligible Voters
For the purpose of this election, MB members are defined as anyone who has appeared as an author on a completed MB project or who is listed as a contributor on a current MB project (as reported by filling out a project’s CRediT self-report form or authorship contribution spreadsheet).
- Members will receive an email with a link to their electronic ballots on May 16.
- Votes must be cast by the end of the voting period (23:59 PT on May 27).
If you are an eligible voter and you did not receive a ballot, email manybabiesconsortium AT gmail.
Election Process
Winners will be selected using proportional ranked choice voting. This system allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference and maximizes the effectiveness of every vote. A detailed description of proportional ranked choice voting, along with an explanation of how votes will be counted, is available here.
Candidates
The slate of candidates was chosen from the pool of nominated individuals by current Governing Board members in consultation with the Executive Director.
Eon-Suk Ko (website)
Associate Professor, Chosun University, South Korea
I have been participating in several projects at MB including MB1 (CDS/ADS), MB-ManyWebcams, MB5 (Novelty/Familiarity), and MB-AtHome (Word Learning). My lab also received the Excellence of Participation award from MB1 for being one of the greatest contributors of data. As someone who is somewhat isolated from the vibrant infant research communities in North America and Europe, participating in MB projects provided me the opportunity to stay in touch with international colleagues and maintain my lab with up-to-date and best research practices. I now hope to further involve myself in MB by joining the Governing Board and contribute to developing and solidifying the goals of MB. My experience in building a lab and conducting infant research in an environment that differs from Western countries may serve to diversify the perspectives in steering the direction of MB.
Jonathan F. Kominsky (website)
Assistant Professor (incoming), Central European University, Austria
I feel I would bring two important things to the ManyBabies Governing Board. First, a theoretical perspective focused on what infant methods can bring to Cognitive Science more broadly, and a strong interest in connecting MB Cognitive Science more broadly, and a strong interest in connecting MB projects to bigger questions about how the mind works that transcend infant research. Second, a strong methodological and technical background, including deep familiarity with many of the software and hardware tools used in infant research (through my work developing PyHab), which is critical for evaluating the feasibility of different approaches and finding practical solutions for obstacles that might arise across different lab environments.
Brianna McMillan (website)
Assistant Professor, Smith College, United States
I am an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Smith College, a liberal-arts women’s college. My training in psychology and education has instilled a deep love for collaborative, interdisciplinary science. With students at Smith’s Little Lab, I use observational, experimental, and secondary data analyses to understand how environments shape children’s language learning. My leading role on the ManyBabies5 stimuli-and-design team has energized me to dive deeper into reproducible, team-based science and to further integrate Open Science practices at Smith. Additionally, as a biracial first-generation college graduate, I am excited by the possibilities that ManyBabies presents for diversifying psychological science.
Francesco Margoni (Google Scholar site)
Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Oslo, Norway
I am an Italian postdoctoral fellow working at the University of Oslo (main research focus is moral development). The list of my publications can be found here. I have contributed to MB4, which seeks to replicate the original finding of Hamlin and colleagues (infants prefer prosocial agents to antisocial ones). I have conducted the first meta-analysis on this same body of work (Margoni & Surian, 2018), and expanded this by finding positive Bayesian evidence that the proclivity to prefer prosociality is not affected by sex (Margoni et al., in revision). I also have an interest in replication, as evidenced by one of my recent publications entitled “Changing the logic of replication” (Margoni & Shepperd, 2020), and by one invited commentary on the work of Byers-Heinlein and colleagues.