Diverse Intelligences in Natural, Artificial and Hybrid Systems - A Conversation with Prof. Sheila Macrine and Dr. Jennifer Fugate
We all take lots of different roles in our personal and professional lives, but one of the roles that I find most exciting (and aspire to myself) is being a convener and connector, bringing people together for generative purposes and in ways that don’t always happen in the silos of modern institutions. My guests this week, Professors Sheila L. Macrine and Jennifer M.B. Fugate have been doing just that in the emerging field of diverse intelligences. They are gathering some of the most leading-edge and brilliant researchers working today (which includes them!) on the problems of how to understand agency, cognition and learning in the diverse ways that they are showing up in all kinds of bodyminds — natural, artificial, hybrid and everything in between! It’s an incredibly exciting area of research that is challenging us all, but particularly the legacy systems to loosen the grip on outdated and limiting ideas like IQ.
The two particular places where they have brought these researchers and ideas together are in their two co-edited volumes both with MIT press and both open access:
Movement Matters: How Embodied Cognition Informs Teaching and Learning (MIT Press, 2020), achieved considerable success, including award nominations and recognition as one of the top ten downloaded books through MIT Press’ Direct2Open. Open access here: https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/5306/Movement-MattersHow-Embodied-Cognition-Informs
Embodied Intelligence: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Natural, Artificial, and Hybrid Systems (co-edited also with Arsen Abdulali and Josie Hughes) published in June 2026 by MIT Press. Open access here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262053495/embodied-intelligence/
Professor Sheila Landers Macrine (https://www.umassd.edu/directory/smacrine/ ) is a cognitive psychologist and Professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where she directs the Special Education Program. Holding two PhDs from Temple University, her research in embodied cognition, cognitive development, and alternative assessment has significantly influenced traditional educational paradigms. Dr. Macrine's innovative work includes developing culturally sensitive IQ assessments and pioneering methods for evaluating students with intellectual disabilities. Her recent publications on embodied cognition appear in the International Journal of School and Educational Psychology and the Oxford Research Encyclopedias-Education at Oxford University Press, among others.
LinkedIn; https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheila-macrine-phd-8064162b/
Dr. Jennifer M. B. Fugate (https://www.kansascity.edu/research/faculty-research/faculty-research-kc/jennifer-fugate) studies emotion perception and is trained in the cognitive underpinnings of how people construct emotion through their language (Ph.D., Emory University, 2008). Dr. Fugate directs the ABLE (affective, behavior, learning and embodiment) lab for able mind and body: https://fugatejennifer.wordpress.com/. She has three major lines of research: The Effect of Emotion Words on Varying Levels of Cognitive Processing; Increasing Emotion Word Knowledge and Granularity; Embodied Cognition in the Classroom and Teaching Research Skills: https://embodiedcognitionandlearning.com/.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-fugate-5a2b36b/
