We just obtained notice that Universities Australia and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) will fund our collaboration with Tamara Watson at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. The grant supports travel costs in both directions. Tamara will join our lab in Berlin during her sabbatical in the spring of 2016. Martin will have funds to travel to Sydney in return. The grant also includes extended mutual research visits for PhD students from both labs.

Together, we will work on a project entitled Steady vision: the role of discontinuity and disruption. Thus far, both labs, in their individual research, approached the same research questions from opposed theoretical positions. Tamara has employed a representationalist position while Martin’s approach has been anchored in direct perception. We believe that this difference in the underlying philosophical approach of the two groups is a major strength of this project. That is, by openly acknowledging these opposing approaches and working together to overcome conflicting assumptions, we will derive a number of  experiments that help us understand trans-saccadic perception beyond positions entertained in traditional research silos.

That should be fun!