CALL FOR FIVE (5) CONFERENCE GRANTS To attend the symposium “Preserving Meaning"
Are you a PhD student or a postdoctoral researcher in the fields of religious studies, semiotics, communication sciences, or related disciplines?
Are you interested in exploring the intersection of new technologies, language, religion, and processes of conservation/transformation?
If so, we invite you to apply for a unique opportunity to participate in an innovative symposium that delves into the fascinating domain where technology, language studies, and the study of religion converge.
Symposium Abstract
“Preserving meaning” defines a fundamental operation of culture. It encloses time in a form, extends memory through transmission, and shapes continuity through vigilance.
Echoing the depth of the Latin verb servo, “to preserve” emerges as a gesture of safeguarding, supporting, reserving, and transmitting.
Preserving meaning is always an act of creation—an aesthetic and ethical performance that generates both durability and intelligibility.
The symposium “Preserving Meaning / Il senso serbato”, which will be held from December 16–19, 2025 at the Center for Religious Studies, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, invites reflection on preserving meaning across the domains of ritual, media, ecology, and technology.
To preserve meaning is not to immobilize it, but to modulate temporality. It appears as transformation within continuity, survival through metamorphosis, and visibility through transmission.
Rituals preserve meaning by reshaping patterns of repetition.
Images preserve meaning by radiating visibility across generations.
Archives preserve meaning by establishing orders of memory and projecting conditions for future readability.
Preserving meaning is the very foundation of cultural endurance.
Religion articulates this dynamic with particular intensity. Sacred texts, rituals, and traditions exemplify preserving meaning as vigilance, as ethical care that maintains the ultimate orientation of existence.
Faith itself unfolds as an act of preserving meaning: safeguarding significance from dispersion, sustaining memory as a promise, linking finitude to transcendence.
Environmental conservation extends this same principle on a planetary scale. Geological strata preserve meaning as temporal archives, ecosystems as living codes of biodiversity, glaciers as crystalline witnesses of climate.
Here, preserving meaning becomes both ecological and ethical: a responsibility for the survival of the signs inscribed in matter and life.
Artificial intelligence amplifies the stakes of preserving meaning. Algorithms store, filter, recombine—constructing mechanical regimes of retention that reshape memory, knowledge, and imagination.
Preserving meaning within algorithmic architectures entails new forms of care, new selection logics, and new responsibilities for interpretation.
Today, preserving meaning requires a truly multidisciplinary vision.
Semiotics, religious studies, aesthetics, media theory, philosophy of technology, environmental sciences, and ethics converge to ask how meaning endures, how it transforms, how it survives.
Symposium Overview
- Theme: Preserving Meaning
- Duration: Four days
- Location: Trento, Fondazione Bruno Kessler
- Dates: December 16–19, 2025
- Language: Italian
The symposium organizers are offering Conference Grants of up to €300 to each selected participant to reimburse eligible participation costs (e.g., travel and accommodation).
Grantees will also have access to the coffee breaks and lunches indicated in the official program.
Five (5) conference grants are available. Selected candidates will be chosen based on the quality and relevance of their research and contributions to the symposium theme.
Applications will be evaluated by an internal committee of the FBK-ISR Center.
Eligibility Criteria
Applicants must be PhD students or postdoctoral researchers in religious studies, semiotics, communication sciences, or related fields.
They must also demonstrate a clear interest in interdisciplinary research in religious studies.
How to Apply
Interested candidates must submit their application by November 15, 2025.
The application package should include the following documents:
- A curriculum vitae (in EU format), highlighting academic and professional background.
- A brief letter of intent (max 2000 characters) outlining research interests and explaining motivation for attending the symposium.
- An abstract (max 300 words) of a paper or presentation intended to be shared at the symposium. Please highlight how your contribution relates to immersive reality and religion.
- Names and contact information of at least two academic or professional referees who can speak to your qualifications and potential contribution to the symposium.
Applications must be submitted as a single PDF file via email to [email protected] with the subject line: “Symposium Grant Application – [Last Name]”.
Key Dates
- Application Deadline: November 15, 2025, at 11:59 PM (CET)
- Notification of Acceptance: November 25, 2025, at 8:00 AM (CET)
PERSONAL DATA PROCESSING NOTICE
In accordance with Art. 13 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR), please be informed that any personal data provided will be processed by the Foundation – as the Data Controller – using manual, computerized, and telematic tools suitable to ensure the security and confidentiality of the data, solely for the purposes related to this Call for Conference Grants.
Providing this data is required in order to submit your application. Each applicant has the right to access, rectify, delete, restrict, or object to the processing of their data for legitimate reasons, as well as the right to data portability and to lodge a complaint with the relevant supervisory authority, as outlined in Chapter III of the GDPR.
The complete privacy notice is available at the following link
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