⚘ Board of Institutions

The IEF - Institute for Philosophical Studies is a Research & Development Unit funded by the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., wholly committed to the research into philosophy. Having its headquarters at FLUC - Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, it integrates and welcomes as well members coming from different Portuguese and foreign higher education institutions. Paying particular attention to the phenomena and problems of our age, aiming at offering a sensitive reply to contemporary challenges while instigating and furthering reflection on these, the IEF provides all teachers, students, and those interested with an extended array of different activities. Of all the interdisciplinary crossroads that imply caring for the ways humans think, do, and act, emphasis is placed upon the strata of health, social work, the environment and the prospects of ecology, politics and law, digital society with its many challenges, plus heritage and curatorship, backed up at all times by research involving tradition, as well as by an eye for the contemporary. Central to the mission of the IEF stands the provision of scholarly guidance, the underlying purpose being to foster sustainable and mutual growth for all the parties directly or indirectly related to the IEF training ecosystem.

The Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra is an institution of public trust that aims to foster research, schooling, fair-minded thinking and independent judgment, as well as knowledge transfer. At times when the crisis in the humanities is far too prolonged and arduous to be sustainable, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities is required to resist, and above all to take action to prove its firm resolve to stand at the forefront of affirming the consequence of humanistic understanding in the universities, while opening its doors to the international civil environment and to all people. FLUC is now preparing to embark on a new cycle of outreach and engagement both nationally and abroad, increasing its exposure and consolidating its rank as a premier school in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Its core mission lies in being the leading venue where creativity, performance, and experimentation converge.

The Mansarda Acesa channel, founded by William Passarini, is devoted to three branches of content: Art, particularly disseminating some of the literary classics that have slipped into neglect, as well as providing commentaries pertaining to the performing arts; Philosophy, notably dealing with the perennially relevant Western philosophy from the ancient Greeks to the new postmodern semiotics of John Deely; and Religion, especially producing material addressing the core principles of Buddhism and Christianity. The aim is not to offer a lecturing service, but simply to share, openly and entirely free of charge, some of the fundamental contents regarding the mentioned branches, rendering them more accessible to a general audience worldwide.

The Lyceum Institute provides a digital environment dedicated to fostering the philosophical habit–of questioning the truth of things and the good of life–in all its members, as we collectively pursue the never-ending education of a truly mind-liberating nature. Much of education depends upon the atmosphere in which we immerse ourselves, and, in the twenty-first century, we all inhabit a digital atmosphere. The Lyceum Institute seeks a continual, communal, and thoughtful ennobling of that atmosphere. Education and its opportunities have long been constrained by the practical necessities of our lives. They have been bound by time, location, and the extrinsically-imposed demand that we subjugate ourselves to servile labor in order to earn a paycheck and provide for our material wants and needs. The Lyceum Institute is here to change that: by utilizing the digital technology now always at our fingertips, we are building a community dedicated not only to continual, lifelong learning, but to building better intellectual habits. This is not a program, a course, a certification process, nor simply a place to find content for passive consumption, but rather something to become a part of one’s life: a digital medium that directs one towards the development of perfective human habits. This unique digital environment emerges from the practice of the three parts of the Institute Motto: Inquirere, Ordinare, Memorare — to inquire, to remember, and to order. Read more about the Lyceum Institute’s Mission and Vision.

The Deely Project was formed in early 2019 to assist Brooke Deely with organizing the legacy of John Deely. Joseph DeChicchis called together a group of 10 scholarly friends of John to be Advisors who could provide an independent semiotic voice to help Brooke Deely and Saint Vincent College achieve some practical and scholarly goals. Beyond Saint Vincent College, the Deely Project consults with the Semiotic Society of America, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, and the American Maritain Association. At Saint Vincent College, the Deely Project provides a site where leading figures foster exploration of the semiotic perspective for the coming generations. Faculty and students, undergraduate and graduate, drawn from across the disciplines, engage each other in vigorous, critical and fertile dialogue. The lively interchange in colloquia, seminars and tutorials intrinsically integrates knowledge across methodologies that have perennially taken themselves to be essential.

Founded in 1846 as the first Benedictine college in the United States of America, Saint Vincent College ranks as a first-tier National Liberal Arts College. Saint Vincent College is an educational community rooted in the tradition of the Catholic faith, the heritage of Benedictine monasticism and the love of values inherent in the liberal approach to life and learning. Its mission is to provide quality undergraduate and graduate education for men and women to enable them to integrate their professional aims with the broader purposes of human life. The programs, activities and encounters that make up student life at Saint Vincent College encourage the intellectual gifts, professional aptitudes and personal aspirations of students to mature harmoniously. Learn more about the Benedictine Tradition.

The ISP - Iranian Society for Phenomenology is a non-profit organization working under the aegis of the IPSA - Iranian Political Science Association. Generally, the purpose of ISP is to stimulate, accelerate, and integrate phenomenological research and to broaden existing knowledge about related philosophical and scientific studies in this field. To achieve this goal, the ISP holds theoretical classes, specialized meetings, reading groups, and scientific workshops, in tandem with the production of audio and video content plus the publication of the IYP - Iranian Yearbook of Phenomenology. Nevertheless, the main focus of ISP is on existing and/or possible political readings of phenomenology. Our Social media accounts: Twitter; Instagram; Youtube Channel; Linkedin.

Founded in 2003, the IPSA - Iranian Political Science Association commenced its activities with the cooperation of 19 outstanding political science scholars constituting the board of directors. With a range of programs and services, IPSA gathered around 350 members from about forty universities, educational institutions, as well as scientific and research centers to expand awareness and understanding of politics. IPSA is the leading professional organization for those teaching, studying and researching in the fields of politics and international relations as well as other professional fields of political study in Iran.

OBJECTIVES AND PERSPECTIVES

IPSA is a non-profit institution that aims to promote and update the scientific knowledge of its members, enhance specialists’ capabilities as well as improve education and research affairs in the field of political sciences and related sub-fields including:

⚘ Conducting scientific and cultural research at national level.

⚘ Cooperating with executive, scientific and research institutions to assess, review and conduct teaching and research plans and programs.

⚘ Encouraging researchers and honoring outstanding scholars.

⚘ Promoting high quality educational and research services.

⚘ Conducting national, regional and international conferences, seminars and gatherings.

⚘ Publishing scholarly books and periodicals within the field of political sciences.

Since the second half of the twentieth century, research on the semiotics of space has developed from several points of view and in several directions. In particular, this research began around the time when, in the 1970s, we had, in Geneva, under the auspices of Professors Martin Krampen and Luis Prieto, held several research seminars inviting foreign colleagues to present their work, including Umberto Eco, and discuss a possible semiotics of architecture.

The International Association Semiotics of Space (IASSp, AISE) was created in 1974, in Urbino, at the invitation of Professor Paioni. Since that date, work has been periodically resumed and discussed in this association by those who have gathered there; at first around Geoffrey Broadbent, Omar Calabrese, Paolo Fabbri, Manar Hammad, Martin Krampen, then around Pierre Boudon, Alexander Ph. Lagopoulos, Albert Levy, Sylvia Ostrowetsky, Josep Muntañola, Pierre Pellegrino, and Irena Sakellaridou. And then also Jacques Fontanille, Ugo Volli, Leonid Tchertov, Dragana Vasilski, Federico Bellentani, and others.

In general, our Association works on the semiotics of space, but it aspire to integrate in its objectives the semiotic of time, by articulating it with that of space, so it bears the title of International Association of Semiotics of Space and Time (IASSp+T, AISE+T).

The IASSp+T, AISE+T is rather an open club, where periodically and variably meetings take place for different researchers who have some significant results to present and share with some of those they consider to be their colleagues are welcome to do so. Time after time, around a small group that evolved, the meetings have gathered different colleagues in scientific meetings oriented to deepen understanding and the discussion of the questions raised by all involved. The IASSp+T meetings were organized for the majors in specific congresses, held successively and alternately under the chairmanship of Gérard Deledalle, Manar Hammad, Martin Krampen, Alexander Lagopoulos, Olga Lavrenova, Josep Muntañola Thornberg, Pino Paioni, Pierre Pellegrino, Alain Rénier, François Tran.

For forty years, the contributions of the researchers of our Association at the various scientific meetings are reflective of the fact that our associates have directly answered meaningful questions by linking them to multiple dimensions of space and time.

Space, mental as well as physical – architectural, urban and regional, … – is a complex semiotic product and is produced by an equally complex set of economic, techno-logical, social, and political processes.

Whether we act in and perceive space as a clue, an instrument or sign, a symptom or a mere trace, its linkage to time is slightly different in each case. Yet the passage of time can always be measured in space. On the human scale, physical time is continuous. Experienced time, which is a semiotic time, is not the same as physical, or cosmic, time. The meaning of being in the world is perceived through time, through duration or through a break in its flow, in an ending or in infinity, and its sage is made manifest in space.

Space and time each have their own dialectic: that of the relation to the other acts in space, while that of the relation to oneself in time. Their crossing produces a primordial articulation of the meaning of existence, as opposed to the other, here now, as opposed to elsewhere, formerly or in the future. This articulation is general, at the base of all semiotics.

​Faced with an era of globalization that may well reinforce the gap between territorial social formations, our Association is focused to reaffirm the universality of artistic and scientific thought. The cognitive and neural sciences should enable semiotics to verify, correct and develop the description and explanation of semiosic processes of sensation, from first intake until the full meaning of intellection, of space and time.

These researches were subsequently published in several scientific collections and reference journals, notably by Semiotica, under the direction of Thomas Sebeok, then Marcel Danesi, or, for example, by the journals Cruzeiro Semiótico, Communications, Degrés, Zeitschrift für Semiotik, or the monographic series Approaches to Semiotics (Semiotic Web).

The main books and articles of the IASSp+T members in recent years are:

⚘ Pellegrino, Pierre. Space: Semiotics. In: Keith Brown, (Editor-in-Chief) Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, Second Edition, volume 11, pp. 599-601. Oxford: Elsevier, 2006.

⚘ Pellegrino, Pierre (ed.) L'Architecture du Sens. Sémiotique de l’Espace. Volume 1–3. ELSA+S, 2020. ISBN 978-2-3072-7.

⚘ Lagopoulos, Alexandros Ph. Semiotics, culture and space. Σημειωτκή - Sign Systems Studies 4, 2014. P. 435–486.

⚘ Danesi, Marcel. The Semiotics of Emoji: The Rise of Visual Language in the Age of the Internet. Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.

⚘ Muntañola Thornberg, J. Arquitectura y Modernidad. Suicidio o reactivación. Barcelona: Edicions UPC, 2016.

⚘ Tchertov, Leonid. Form as a Category of Spatial Semiotics. The report at the 13 th IASS-AIS World Congress of Semiotics, Kaunas, Lithuania, 26–30 June 2017 In: CROSS–INTER–MULTI–TRANS– Proceedings of the 13th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS/AIS). Ed. Dario Martinelli. Kaunas, 2018: 217–225.

⚘ Lavrenova, Olga. Spaces and Meanings: Semantics of the Cultural Landscape. – Springer, 2019. – 216 p. ISSN 2510–442X. ISBN 978-3-030-15167-6. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15168-3.

⚘ Bellentani, Federico. The Meanings of the Built Environment: A Semiotic and Geographical Approach to Monuments in the Post-Soviet Era, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110617276.

The Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences (INION, in Russian) of the RAS - Russian Academy of Sciences was established in 1969 as a successor to the Fundamental Library for Social Sciences of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR which was founded in 1918 as the Library of the Socialist Academy. The history of INION is presented on its heritage page. Main fields of INION’s scientific activity are:

⚘ fundamental, exploratory and applied research in the fields of Social Sciences and Humanities, Computer Science, Library Science and Bibliography – both within state assignment for institutions of the RAS and within research with financial support of the Russian Science Foundation, the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, and some other endowments;

⚘ elaboration of information systems in the fields of Social Sciences and Humanities;

⚘ development of INION’s Fundamental Library and its 21 branches and bibliographic services at research institutions, including digital projects;

⚘ editorial and publishing activities, as well as conferences, presentations and other scientific events.

INION’s director is Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Science in Economics, Alexey V. Kuznetsov. INION RAN is famous in the Russian and international scholars’ communities for its publications: monographs and analytical reports, abstract collections, bibliographies, scientific journals and bulletins, as well as for its Fundamental research library and many digital bibliographic resources. In particular it should be mentioned:

⚘ Political Science is a scholar journal included in RSCI database on Web of Science and recommended by the Higher Attestation Commission of the Russian Federation.

⚘ Current Problems of Europe is a scholar journal recommended by the Higher Attestation Commission of the Russian Federation.

⚘ Russia and the Contemporary World is a scholar journal recommended by the Higher Attestation Commission of the Russian Federation.

⚘ Russia and the Moslem World publishes articles, reviews, reports, reference information on relations between Russia and the Islamic World. The bulletin is printed in Russian and in English, four issues in Russian and four issues in English a year.

⚘ Manuscripta Islamica Rossica is a digital database of arabographic collections of manuscripts in Russia.

⚘ Digital database of Russian newspapers from World War I and the Civil War (1914–1922).

The RAS - Russian Academy of Sciences was established upon the order of the Emperor Peter I by the decree of the ruling Senate of January 28 (February 8), 1724. It was reestablished by the Nov. 21, 1991 Decree of the President of the Russian Federation as the higher academic institution in Russia. The RAS is a public scientific academy, a scientific organization that carries out scientific research in the Russian Federation, a legal entity - a non-profit organization established to be an institution under the federal state budgetary authority. In the territory of the Russian Federation, the RAS is the legal successor of the USSR Academy of Sciences, as well as the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences and the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

The SSA - Semiotic Society of America is the leading semiotics organization in North America. We are a transdisciplinary professional organization serving a diverse community of scholars with common interests in the study of signs and sign systems. Founded in 1975/1976, the Society has supported innovative scholarship linking analytical and critical approaches to the transmodern world. Sign theories are relevant to the sciences, social sciences, and humanities alike — applying to disciplines as diverse as anthropology, biology, cognitive science, communication, cybernetics, fine arts, law, literary criticism, linguistics, logic, marketing, media studies, mathematics, pedagogy, philosophy, psychology, religion, sociology, and technology.

The SSA is responsible for the publication of The American Journal of Semiotics and hosts an Annual Meeting featuring the latest research in the field of semiotics. Proceedings from the SSA Annual Meeting are published in the SSA Yearbook series. Additionally, the SSA features two awards, the Sebeok Fellow Award for outstanding contributions to the field of semiotics and the Roberta Kevelson Award for best student paper submitted at the SSA Annual Meeting.

Founded in 1977, the AMA - American Maritain Association has been an intellectual home for generations of Catholic philosophers and theologians. Carrying forward the Thomistic tradition along the lines which inspired the work of the 20th-century philosopher Jacques Maritain, the Association has held yearly conferences for over forty years and continues to publish texts gathering together the best of the papers dedicated to each year’s particular theme.

⚘ For more information on membership, click here.

⚘ For more information on our annual publications, click here.

⚘ To make a donation to help us in our service to the academic life of the Church and the academy, click here.

The International Association for Semiotic Studies is a learned society alternatively identified as AIS, for Association Internationale de Semiotique. This organization, was created on 21–22 January 1969, by a group of like-minded individuals convened in Paris at the initiative of Emile Benveniste of the College de France. Since its foundation, the Association proclaimed and has endeavoured to adhere to three principal aims: to promote semiotic researches in a scientific spirit; to advance global cooperation in this field; and to promote collaboration with local organizations worldwide. Emile Benveniste was elected as the first President in 1969, holding that office until his death in 1976. He was succeeded by Cesare Segre (Italy), Jerzy Pelc (Poland), Roland Posner (Germany), Eero Tarasti (Finland) and Paul Cobley (UK). The first Secretary General was Julia Kristeva (France), succeeded upon her resignation by Umberto Eco (Italy); this position is currently held by Kristian Bankov (Bulgaria). The First World Congress, convened by Umberto Eco in Milan, was held in 1974, followed by others in Vienna (1979), Palermo (1984), Barcelona/Perpignan (1989), Berkeley (1994), Guadalajara (1997), Dresden (1999), Lyon (2004), Helsinki (2007), La Coruna (2009), Sofia (2014), Kaunas (2017), Buenos Aires (2019) and Thessaloniki (2022). The journal of the IASS, Semiotica, was established in 1969, and now publishes in excess of 2000 pages annually.

The ISBS - International Society for Biosemiotic Studies is an academic society for the researchers in semiotic biology. The Society was established in 2005. Its official journal is Biosemiotics, published by Springer and launched in 2008. The purpose of the ISBS is to constitute an organizational framework for the collaboration among scholars dedicated to biosemiotic studies, including the interdisciplinary research of sign processes in living systems, organic codes, and biocommunication. The ISBS attempts to develop the qualitative research methods in biology. Among the central focuses is also theoretical semiotics as a basis for theoretical biology. The ISBS assures the organization of regular meetings on research into the semiotics of nature, as well as promotes publication of scholarly work on the semiotics of life processes. The ISBS organizes the annual international conferences (Gatherings in Biosemiotics) that were started by Copenhagen and Tartu biosemioticians and have taken place regularly already since 2001. The first President of the ISBS was Jesper Hoffmeyer (University of Copenhagen), the second President (since 2015) is Kalevi Kull (University of Tartu).

Founded in 2019, the International Center for Semiotics and Intercultural Dialogue is a research lab based at the State Academic University for the Humanities. The priorities of the Center include: organizing conferences, lectures and seminars involving international cooperation to address current topics such as the study of semiotics and intercultural dialogue or semiotics and history; publishing works on semiotics understood to be the science of signs, communication systems, and the emergence of meaning; translation of the works of contemporary European semioticians into Russian.

GAUGN - State Academic University for the Humanities offers a broad range of courses at undergraduate and graduate levels — from international relations, political science, economics, to psychology, business management, and culturology. All programmes are regularly taught in Russian; however, our increasingly international academic staff offers lectures and seminars in English, as well as a number of language courses given by native speakers.

GAUGN continues to remake itself. In the last five years, the University has fully integrated into the Bologna system, adhering to the strict standards for European higher learning institutions spelled out in the original accords. GAUGN is one of Russia’s best-known and most prestigious secondary and tertiary education institutions specialising in the broader field of humanities. GAUGN’s schools and educational programmes stretch from business management to archaeology, from Chinese philosophy to practical psychology, as a rule representing those scientific schools where Russian academics retain leading positions in the world.