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Jessica de Villiers is an Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Her research focuses on communication in individuals with autism spectrum disorder, exploring the neurocognitive factors that drive conversational skills and developing methods for clinical discourse analysis. De Villiers analyzes pragmatics from a broad, interdisciplinary perspective and has collaborated with research networks both nationally and internationally. She is currently involved in an international research project titled 'Context Autism Spectrum Disorders', which is funded by the FRS-FNRS National Fund for Scientific Research in Brussels, Belgium. In her work, she aims to understand the relationship between a person's information processing style and their conversation skills, with particular emphasis on monitoring social cognition in autism spectrum disorder. Over the years, she has received various funding grants from organizations such as SSHRC and CIHR, and from UBC's Hampton Research Endowment Fund. De Villiers was recognized as a Peter Wall Early Career Scholar in 2009 and received the Killam Faculty Research Fellowship in 2011.
Offers course-only and thesis routes. Focus areas include philosophy of science, mind, ethics, and Asian philosophy.