This summer, Professor Renee Baillargeon will receive the 2025 Koffka Medal from the Department of Psychology at the University of Giessen in Germany.

Dr. Baillargeon is the Director of the Infant Cognition Lab, an Alumni Distinguished Professor Emerita of the department, and a Center for Advanced Study Professor Emerita at the University. Her research focuses on early causal reasoning in four core domains: physical reasoning, psychological reasoning, biological reasoning, and sociomoral reasoning. She assumes that each domain is equipped with a skeletal explanatory framework that enables infants to reason and learn about events in the domain.

The Kurt-Koffka award honors scientists who have advanced the fields of perception or developmental psychology to an extraordinary extent. The award is in remembrance of Kurt Koffka, who was well-known as a pioneer of Gestalt Psychology, particularly in the fields of perception and child development. Koffka was a professor of psychology in Giessen for 16 years, from 1911 to 1927.

Dr. Baillargeon plans to attend the award ceremony in Germany this July and deliver a talk to those in attendance.