Pierre R. Dasen

Pierre R. Dasen is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology of Education and Cross-cultural Psychology at the Faculty of Psychology and Education of the University of Geneva.

He studied developmental psychology in Geneva, was an assistnt to J. Piaget, and received a PhD from the Australian National University. He studied the cognitive development of Aboriginal children in Australia, Inuit in Canada, Baoulé in Côte d’Ivoire, and Kikuyu in Kenya; he has also contributed to research in cognitive anthropology among the Yupno of Papua-New-Guinea, and in Bali. His research topics have included visual perception, the development of sensori-motor intelligence, the causes and effects of malnutrition, the development of concrete operations as a function of eco-cultural variables and daily activities, defi nitions of intelligence, number systems, and spatial orientation. He has also been concerned with intercultural education, and in particular with the access of illegal migrant adolescents to professional training. His main interests are in everyday cognition, informal education, and parental ethnotheories, and his current research in India, Nepal, and Indonesia is on spatial language and cognitive development.