Summer Symposium 2025 | IDEOLOGIES OF CONSERVATION AND TRANSFORMATION
2025 ISR-FBK Summer Symposium will bring together scholars from diverse fields to discuss the semiotic ideologies underlying processes of conservation and transformation.
At the core of the symposium is a critical engagement with the ways meaning is preserved, adapted, or radically reconfigured across different domains—religion, politics, digital communication, and cultural heritage.
Building on contemporary debates in religious studies, semiotics, linguistic anthropology, and philosophy, the event invites participants to explore how belief systems, traditions, and ethical frameworks mediate the shifting landscapes of meaning-making.
What ideological forces shape our understanding of continuity and rupture? How do religious traditions and their ethics provide foundational paradigms for structuring change? What are the semiotic infrastructures through which transformation occurs, and how do they constrain or enable novel forms of signification?
This symposium will examine these questions by focusing on three intersecting themes:
• Semiotic ideologies of conservation and change: The role of beliefs about semiosis in structuring the transmission and transformation of meaning.
• Religious traditions as semiotic reservoirs: The persistence of ethical and doctrinal frameworks as infrastructures for stability and innovation.
• Digital mediation and the transformation of meaning: The challenges posed by algorithmic environments, deepfakes, and digitalized identities to historical paradigms of representation.
Through interrogating these dynamics, the symposium will illuminate how meaning is never static but continuously reshaped by historical, technological, and ideological forces. It will offer a platform for dialogue between semioticians, anthropologists, philosophers, and religious studies scholars, fostering a transdisciplinary conversation on the ethics and politics of signification in a time of accelerated change.
Speakers
Diana G. APOSTICA | Annalisa BUTTICCI | Paul COBLEY | Lorenzo CORTESI | Maria Giulia DONDERO | Aurora DONZELLI | Valeria FABRETTI | Lucia GALVAGNI | Accursio GRAFFEO | Remo GRAMIGNA | Webb KEANE | Sung Do KIM | Kalevi KULL | Ľudmila LACKOVÁ | Nataša LACKOVIC | Massimo LEONE | Graziano LINGUA | Gabriele MARINO | Constantine NAKASSIS | Claudio PAOLUCCI | Jamin PELKEY | Jenny PONZO | Tommaso ROPELATO | Rebecca SABATINI | Antonio SANTANGELO | Simona STANO | Frederik STJERNFELT | Debora TONELLI | Stephanie WALSH | MATTHEWS | Jordan ZLATEV
Programme
Monday, 23 June 2025
Introductory Session
Chair: Simona STANO, University of Turin
9:00 | Comparing Semiosis
Webb KEANE, University of Michigan
Constantine NAKASSIS, University of Chicago
Massimo LEONE, FBK- Center of Religious Studies
10:30 | Discussion
11:00 | Coffee break
Session 1
Chair: Jenny PONZO, University of Turin
11:30 | Semiotic Clashes. Psilocybe Cubensis between. Sacralization and Medicalization
Annalisa BUTTICCI, Georgetown University
12:00 | Pouring New Wine into Old Skins: Translation and Semiotic Ideologies of Religious Conversion in the Sulawesi Highlands of Indonesia
Aurora DONZELLI, University of Bologna
12:30 | Bodily Semiotic Origins of Religious Ideology and Spiritual Ecstasy
Jamin PELKEY, Toronto Metropolitan University
13:00 | Discussion
13:30 | Lunch
Session 2
Chair: Gabriele MARINO, University of Turin
15:30 | Stereotypes and Ideologies in Generative Artificial Intelligence
Maria Giulia DONDERO, F.R.S.-FNRS
Université de Liège
16:00 | Superstitions, Rumors, AI: Oh My! Semiotic Fittedness for Today
Stéphanie WALSH MATTHEWS, Toronto
Metropolitan University
16:30 | Fundamentals of meaning-making: Semiotics in theoretical biology today
Kalevi KULL, University of Tartu
17:00 | The Representation of Disability. A Cognitive Semiotics’ Point of View on Inclusion and Ideologies
Claudio PAOLUCCI, University of Bologna
17:30 | Discussion
18:00 | Coffee break
Session 3
Chair: Graziano LINGUA, University of Turin
18:30 | Roundtable
Georgiana Diana APOSTICA, FBK- Center of Religious Studies / University of Turin
Lorenzo CORTESI, FBK- Center of Religious Studies
Valeria FABRETTI, FBK- Center of Religious Studies
Lucia GALVAGNI, FBK- Center of Religious Studies
Accursio GRAFFEO, FBK- Center of Religious Studies / University of Turin / University of Zurich
Tommaso ROPELATO, FBK- Center of Religious Studies / University of Turin
Rebecca SABATINI, FBK- Center of Religious Studies / University of Turin
Debora TONELLI, FBK- Center of Religious Studies
19:30 | Conclusions
20:00 | Dinner
Tuesday, 24 June 2025
Session 4
Chair: Remo GRAMIGNA, University of Turin
9:00 | Peirce as a philosopher Philosopher of AI
Frederik STJERNFELT, Aalborg University Copenhagen
9:30 | AI: A New Religion in Higher Education
Nataša LACKOVIC, University of Lancaster
10:00 | Gender Ideologies and Algorithmic Bias: A (Bio)semiotic Perspective
Ľudmila LACKOVÁ, Charles University of Prague
10:30 | Discussion
11:00 | Coffee break
Session 5
Chair: Antonio SANTANGELO, University of Turin
11:30 | Conserving Interpretation: Technology and Ideology in the Reading Process
Paul COBLEY, Middlesex University
12:00 | Landscape as Ideology : Prolegomena to a Comparative Semiotics of Landscape and Garden
Sung Do KIM | Korea University
12:30 | Cognitive Semiotics is a Humanism
Jordan ZLATEV | Lund University
13:00 | Discussion
The initiative was also realized thanks to the contribution of "Direzione generale Educazione, ricerca e istituti culturali" of the Ministry of Culture.