Keynote speakers

Please scroll down for the full list of speakers.

• Marcel Danesi, Director of the Program in Semiotics and Communication Theory and Professor of Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Toronto, Canada

Marcel Danesi also holds an appointment at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education as professor and researcher in bilingual education. He is the author of many books, including: From Flappers to Rappers.The Origins, Evolution, and Demise of Youth Culture (2018); The Semiotics of Emoji: The Rise of Visual Language in the Age of the Internet (2016); Popular Culture: Introductory Perspectives (2015); Encyclopedia of Media and Communication (2013); The History of the Kiss: The Birth of Popular Culture (2013); Linguistic Anthropology. A Brief Introduction (2012); X-Rated! The Power of Mythic Symbolism in Popular Culture (2009); Language, Society, and Culture. Introducing Anthropological Linguistics (2008); Of Cigarettes, High Heels, and Other Interesting Things (2008); Messages, Signs, and Meaning. A Basic Textbook in Semiotics and Communication Theory (2004); The Puzzle Instinct (Indiana University Press, 2002); Vico, Metaphor, and the Origin of Language (1993), etc. He has also authored and coauthored numerous language manuals for the study of Italian and Spanish, including Adesso: A Functional Introduction to Italian (1992; 2nd ed. 1996); Con fantasia: Reviewing and Expanding Functional Italian Skills (1995; 2nd ed. 2004; with M. Lettieri and S. Bancheri); and Learn Italian the Fast and Fun Way (1985). He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1998, founded a research center (Center for Communication and Information Sciences), and is the Editor in Chief of Semiotica, the official journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS-AIS). Danesi has been a visiting professor at Rutgers University (1972), the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, the Catholic University of Milan, and has given lectures throughout the academic world. He has also held the chair of language and media studies at the University of Lugano. Danesi's work has been featured in the New York Times, Toronto Star, and Psychology Today, among other print publications, and he has been a guest on broadcast outlets such as National Public Radio. A guest on several broadcast outlets, including National Public Radio; Danesi writes 1950s-inspired music and plays the piano for his rock ’n roll band, The Semiotones.

• Augusto Ponzio, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Theory of Languages at University of Bari “Aldo Moro”, is a renown Italian semiotician and philosopher.
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He has made a significant contribution as editor and translator to the dissemination of the ideas of Peter of Spain, Mikhail Bakhtin, Emmanuel Lévinas, Karl Marx,  Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, Adam Schaff and Thomas Albert Sebeok, in Italy and abroad. Augusto Ponzio has authored the first monographs ever on a worldwide level on of Emmanuel Lévinas, Mikhail Bakhtin and Adam Schaff. Each of these monographs has been translated and reworked over the years and presented in new enlarged editions.

He has promoted the Italian translation of numerous works by Mikhail Bakhtin and members of the Bakhtin Circle, including Valentin N. Voloshinov and Pavel N. Medvedev, and others. Augusto Ponzio has also contributed to Karl Marx studies in Italy and in 1975 published the Italian edition of his Mathematical Manuscripts.

Among his numerous publications he has authored over a hundred monographs. The most recent include: The Dialogic Nature of Sign, Ottawa, Legas, 2006; The I Questioned: Emmanuel Levinas and the critique of Occidental reason , Subject Matters, special edition, vol. 3, 1, 2006; Fundamentos da Filosofia da linguagem, with Susan Petrilli, Petrópolis (Brasil), Vozes, 2007; Semiotics Today. From Global Semiotics to Semioethics, with Susan Petrilli, Ottawa, Legas, 2007; Scrittura, dialogo e alterità. Tra Bachtin e Lévinas, Bari, Palomar, 2008; Lineamenti di Semiotica e di filosofia del linguaggio, with Susan Petrilli, Bari, Graphi, 2008; Emmanuel Levinas, Globalisation, and Preventive Peace, Ottawa, Legas, 2009; Da dove verso dove. La parola altra nella comunicazione globale, Perugia, Edizioni Guerra, 2009; L’Ècoute de l’autre, Parigi L’Harmattan, 2009; Rencontre de parole, Paris, Baudry et Cie, 2010; In altre parole, 2011. Fuori luogo. L’esorbitante nella riproduzione dell’identico, Milan, Mimesis, 2012. With Susan Petrilli he has introduced the concept of Semioethics, now the title of an Italian  monograph  of 2003, Semioetica (English translation forthcoming) and of an essay commissioned by Paul Cobley for The Routledge Companion to Semiotics, 2010.

• Susan Petrilli is Professor of Philosophy and Theory of Languages at the Department of Lettere, LingueArti – Italianistica e Culture Comparate (Letters, Languages, Arts – Italian Studies and Comparative Cultures), University of Bari “Aldo Moro”, Bari, Italy, Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Psychology, the University of Adelaide, South Australia, and Vice President of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS- AIS). In 2008, she was nominated 7th Thomas A. Sebeok Fellow of the Semiotic Society of America.

She has contributed significantly to the dissemination of Thomas Sebeok's work in Italy and of his global semiotics in particular. She has translated most of his books and has co-authored with Augusto Ponzio two monographs dedicated to his thought: Sebeok and the Signs of Life, 2001, and I segni e la vita. La semiotic globale di Thomas A. Sebeok, 2002.

She is the author of a number of books, including Sign Studies and Semioethics (De Gruyter Mouton, 2014), Victoria Welby and the Science of Signs (Transaction, 2015), The Global World and Its Manifold Faces (Peter Lang, 2016); nelle edizioni Mimesis: Altrove e altrimenti (2012), Riflessioni sulla teoria del linguaggio e dei segni (2014), Nella vita dei segni (2015); in Mimesis International: Challenges to Living Together. Transculturalism, Migration, Exploitation (2017).

Susan Petrilli is also the co-author, with Augusto Ponzio, of Semiotics Unbounded and author of Signifying Understanding, Sign Crossroads in Global Perspective, Expression and Interpretation in Language, and The Self as a Sign, the World and the Other, among others. Professor Petrilli's research in semiotics includes philosophy of language, semiotics, biosemiotics, bio-ethics, and the work of Lady Victoria Welby.  Professor Petrilli serves as a member on editorial boards of some of the most esteemed journals in the field of semiotics today, namely, Semiotica (Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies), TTR, Traduction, Terminologie, Redaction. Études sur le texte et ses transformations, Journal of Biosemiotics, Russian Journal of Communication, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, and Signs (International Journal of Semiotics). She is also a Co-Director of several book series including the following: (1) Nel segno (with Augusto Ponzio); (2) Gli strumenti (with Augusto Ponzio and Patrizia Calefato); (3) Di-segno-in-segno (with Augusto Ponzio and Cosimo Caputo); and (4) Segni-di-segni (with Augusto Ponzio and Cosimo Caputo). She has been a Fellow of the International Communicology Institute, and an international visiting research scholar in the University of Adelaide, Australia and the Hawke Institute for Sustainable Societies, the University of South Australia.

• Paul Cobley, President of IASS-AIS, International Association for Semiotic Studies, Professor in Language and Media at Middlesex University, London, U.K.

Professor Cobley joined Middlesex University in 2013. Previously, he was Professor of Semiotics and Communications at London Metropolitan University. He is the author of a number of books, including Cultural Implications of Biosemiotics (Springer, 2016), Narrative 2nd (Routledge, 2013) and The American Thriller: Generic Innovation and Social Change in the 1970s (Palgrave, 2000). He is the editor of The Communication Theory Reader (1996), Communication Theories 4 vols. (2006), The Routledge Companion to Semiotics (2009), Realism for the 21st Century: A John Deely Reader (2009), “Semiotics Continues to Astonish”: Thomas A. Sebeok and the Doctrine of Signs (2011), Theories and Models of Communication (Handbooks of Communication Science, Volume 1, with Peter Schulz) (de Gruyter Mouton, 2012), Semiotics and Its Masters Volume 1 (de Gruyter Mouton, 2017, with Kristian Bankov) among other books, co-edits Social Semiotics (with Terry Threadgold, and David Machin, 2004-present), and is associate editor of Cybernetics and Human Knowing (2007-present). Paul Cobley is co-series editor (with Kalevi Kull) of Semiotics, Communication and Cognition (Mouton de Gruyter, 2007 to present) and co-editor (with Peter J. Schulz) of the multi-volume Handbooks of Communication Sciences (de Gruyter Mouton, 2009-present). He was elected President of the International Association for Semiotic Studies in 2014, was made 9th Thomas A. Sebeok Fellow of the Semiotic Society of America in the same year and is secretary of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies.

• Peeter Torop, Professor of cultural semiotics at the Department of Semiotics, head of the Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics of the Faculty of Humanities and Arts (University of Tartu).

Peeter Torop, PhD, professor of cultural semiotics at the Department of Semiotics, head of the Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics of the Faculty of Humanities and Arts (University of Tartu). Co-editor of „Sign Systems Studies“, „Tartu Semiotics Library“ and „New Perspectives in Reading 19th Century Russian Literature“. Academic activity: semiotics of translation and methodology of translation studies, intersemiosis and intersemiotical processes in culture, transmedia studies, semiotics of Tartu-Moscow School, semiospherical understanding of culture and methodology of semiotics of culture, theory of culture, history of Russian literature and Dostoevsky studies. Some publications: Torop, P. Cultural Semiotics. Sharifian, Farzad (Toim.). The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture. London, New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2015, 170-180; Ojamaa, M.; Torop, P. Transmediality of cultural autocommunication. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2015, 18(1), 61 – 78; Ibrus, I.; Torop, P. Remembering and reinventing Juri Lotman for the digital age. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2015, 18 (1), 3 – 9; Torop, P. Semiotics and the Possibilities of Cultural Analysis: Experience of Tartu- Moscow School. Chinese Semiotic Studies, 2014, 10(1), 109 – 117; Kroó, K, Torop, P.(eds.) Text witin Text – Culture within Culture. Russian Literature (19th century) in Contexts of Cultural Dynamics. New Perspectives in Reading 19th Century Russian Literature. Budapest, Tartu: L´Harmattan, 2014; Parent, R.; Torop, P. La sémiotique postmoderne dans la pédagogie et la recherche interculturelles. - International Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue internationale d’études canadiennes, 2012, 45-46: 353 – 379; Torop, P. Tõlge ja kultuur (=Translation and culture). Tartu: Tartu UP, 2011.

• Julieta Haidar is Full Professor at National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH) – Division of Postgraduate Education –, Director of the permanent seminar and the research line in discourse analysis and semiotics of culture at ENAH, Mexico City, Mexico.

Professor - researcher full-time at the National School of Anthropology and History, Mexico, from 1981 to date. Coordinator of the Academic Body, Permanent Seminar and the Research Line for Discourse Analysis and Semiotics of Culture, at the Postgraduate Degree in Social Anthropology. Member of the Latin American Association for Discourse Studies (ALED), Member of the International Association of Semiotic Studies (IASS), Founding member of the Mexican Rhetoric Association and Member of the Editorial Committee of the Journal Discourse & Society, of Spain. Belongs to the National System of Researchers (SNI) Level I. She is one of the pioneers and representative in Latin America of the studies on Yuri M. Lotman and the Semiotics of Culture, and of the Epistemology of Complexity / and Transdisciplinarity. She has published several books, chapters and articles at national and international level on Discourse Analysis, Semiotics of Culture, Visual Semiotics, Argumentation, Epistemology of Complexity and Transdisciplinarity.

Profesora- Investigadora de Tiempo Completo en la Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México, desde 1981 hasta la fecha. Coordinadora del Cuerpo Académico, Seminario Permanente y la Línea de Investigación de Análisis del Discurso y Semiótica de la Cultura, en el Posgrado de Antropología Social. Es Miembro fundador de la Asociación Latinoamericana de Estudios del Discurso (ALED), Miembro de la Asociación Internacional de Estudios Semióticos (IASS), Miembro fundador de la Asociación Mexicana de Retórica y Miembro del Comité de Redacción de la Revista Discurso & Sociedad de España. Pertenece al Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (SNI) Nivel I. Es una de las pioneras y representante en América Latina de los estudios sobre Iuri Lotman y la Semiótica de la Cultura, y de la Epistemología de la Complejidad /y la Transdisciplina. Ha publicado diversos libros, capítulos y artículos a nivel nacional e internacional, sobre el Análisis del Discurso, la Semiótica de la Cultura, la Semiótica Visual, la Argumentación, la Epistemología de la Complejidad y de la Transdisciplinariedad.

• Massimo Leone is Full Tenured Professor ("ProfessoreOrdinario") of Semiotics, Cultural Semiotics, and Visual Semiotics at the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences, University of Turin, Italy and Permanent Part-Time Visiting Full Professor of Semiotics in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, University of Shanghai, China.

He is a 2018 ERC Consolidator Grant recipient, the most important and competitive research grant in Europe. He graduated in Communication Studies from the University of Siena, and holds a DEA in History and Semiotics of Texts and Documents from Paris VII, an MPhil in Word and Image Studies from Trinity College Dublin, a PhD in Religious Studies from the Sorbonne, and a PhD in Art History from the University of Fribourg (CH). He was visiting scholar at the CNRS in Paris, at the CSIC in Madrid, Fulbright Research Visiting Professor at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, Endeavour Research Award Visiting Professor at the School of English, Performance, and Communication Studies at Monash University, Melbourne, Faculty Research Grant Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto, “Mairie de Paris” Visiting Professor at the Sorbonne, DAAD Visiting Professor at the University of Potsdam, Visiting Professor at the École Normale Supérieure of Lyon (Collegium de Lyon), Visiting Professor at the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Munich, Visiting Professor at the University of Kyoto, Visiting Professor at the Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University, Visiting Professor at The Research Institute of the University of Bucharest, Eadington Fellow at the Center for Gaming Research, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Fellow of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg „Dynamics in the History of Religions Between Asia and Europe“ (Bochum, Germany), Visiting Senior Professor at the InternationalesForschungszentrumKulturwissenschaften, Vienna, High-End Foreign Expert and Visiting Professor at the University of Shanghai, China, Visiting Senior Professor at the Centre for Advanced Studies, South Eastern Europe (Croatia), and Visiting Senior Professor at the Polish Institute of Advanced Studies, Warsaw (PIAST).

His work focuses on the role of religion in modern and contemporary cultures. Massimo Leone has single-authored eight books, _Religious Conversion and Identity: The Semiotic Analysis of Texts_ (London and New York: Routledge, 2004; 242 pp.), _Saints and Signs: A Semiotic Reading of Conversion in Early Modern Catholicism_ (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010; 656 pp.), _Sémiotique de l'âme_, 3 vols (Berlin et al.: Presses Académiques Francophones, 2012), _Annunciazioni: percorsi di semioticadellareligione_, 2 vols (Rome: Aracne, 2014, 1000 pp.), _Spiritualitàdigitale: ilsenso religioso nell'eradellasmaterializzazione_ (Udine: Mimesis, 2014), _Sémiotique du fundamentalisme : messages, rhétorique, force persuasive_ (Paris: l’Harmattan, 2014; translated into Arabic in 2015), and _Signatim: Profili di semioticadellacultura_ (Rome: Aracne, 2015, 800 pp.), and _A Cultural Semiotics of Religion_ (in Chinese) [Series “Semiotics & Media”] (Chengdu, China: University of Sichuan Press, 2018, 210 pp.), edited thirty collective volumes, and published more than four hundred articles in semiotics and religious studies. He has lectured in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas. He is the chief editor of Lexia, the Semiotic Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Communication, University of Turin, Italy, and editor of the book series “I Saggi di Lexia” (Rome: Aracne) and “Semiotics of Religion” (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter). He directed the MA Program in Communication Studies at the University of Turin, Italy (2015-2018) and is currently vice-director for research at the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences, University of Turin, Italy.

• José María Paz Gago is Writer, cultural manager and Full Professor of Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature, specialized inthe relations of Literature with Arts and Technologies. Spectacle, Film and Fashion Semiotic expert.

He has been director of the Master in Theater and Audiovisual Studies at the University of La Coruña (1998-2004), co-director of the Master in Fashion. Design, Production, Communication. University of La Coruña - INDITEX Group (2000-2002) and co-director of the Joint Erasmus Mundus Master in Performigs Arts Studies (2010-2015). Secretary General of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS / AIS. 2004- 2014), is currently President of the Latin American Federation of Semiotics and Vice President of IASS / AIS.

More prominent publications (Individuals Books): La estilística (Madrid, Síntesis, 1993. 2ª ed. Madrid, Síntesis, 2009); Semiótica del Quijote. Teoría y práctica de la ficción narrativa (Amsterdam and Atlanta, Rodopi, 1995); La recepción del poema. Pragmática del texto poético (Kassel, Reichenberger,1999); La máquina maravillosa. Tecnología y arte en el Quijote (Madrid, SIAL, 2006); La revolución espectacular. El teatro de Valle-Inclán en la escena mundial(Madrid and Barcelona, Castalia, 2012); Moda & Seduçâo (Sâo Paulo, Estaçâo das letras e cores, 2016); El Octavo Arte. La moda en la sociedad contemporánea (A Coruña, Hércules Ediciones, 2016).

Contact: Facultade de Filoloxía. Universidade da Coruña. Campus da Zapateira. 15071 A Coruña. jmpaz@udc.es, pazgagochema@gmail.com. - Facebook e Instagram: Chema Paz Gago - WEB: https//litecom.es - Phone: 0034-687490833.

• Kristian Bankov is a professor of semiotics at New Bulgarian University and Department Chair of the Southeast European Center for Semiotic Studies.

His interest in semiotics dates back to the early 90s when, as a student in Bologna he attended the courses of Prof. Ugo Volli and Prof. Umberto Eco. Bankov graduated in 1995 and has since taught semiotics at NBU. In 2000 he defended a doctoral thesis at Helsinki University under the guidance of Prof. Eero Tarasti. In March 2006 he was awarded the academic title “associate professor in semiotics” and in 2011 he became full professor of semiotics. Currently Professor Bankov is the Secretary General of the International Association for Semiotic Studies. The scientific interests of Prof. Bankov were initially in the field of continental philosophy of language, philosophy of Bergson and existential semiotics. He then focused his research on sociosemiotics and issues of identity. Since 2005 he has been exploring consumer culture, while recently his interest has been directed to the new media and digital culture. Kristian Bankov is the author of four books and numerous articles in Bulgarian, English and Italian. Together with Paul Cobley he started the “Semiotics and its Master” series, the first volume of which was published in 2017.