(last updated March 2009):

PER AAGE BRANDT, Dr. Phil
Editor-in-chief (2007-)

PROFILE:
Born 1944 Buenos Aires, Danish citizen. Trained in Romance Philology, Linguistics, Semiotics, Comparative Literature, Philosophy, and Music. Specialized in structural and cognitive linguistics and semantics, later in cognitive semiotics and poetics. PhD. 1971, University of Copenhagen. Dr. Phil. 1987 (Doctorat d’État, Sémio-linguistique, Sorbonne). Associate Professor at the University of Roskilde 1972. Served at the University of Aarhus 1975-2005. Director of the Center for Semiotics since 1992. Research Professor 1993 through a 5 years contract and grant by the Danish National Research Foundation for the program in General and Dynamic Semiotics. Founder of the Center for Semiotics at the University of Aarhus. Co-editor of the European Semiotics Series, Peter Lang Verlag . 1998 Professor of Semiotics.

2001-2002 Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford.

2005 Appointed Emile B. de Sauzé Professor of Modern Languages and Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.

Received the ‘Grand prix de philosophie 2002′ de l’Académie Française. Made ‘Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres’, 2002, by the French Ministry of Culture. In 2004 attributed the Cross of the Order of Dannebrog by Her Majesty the Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, to honour service to the Nation.

Author of a dozen of academic books and some two hundred fifty published articles in semiotics, semantics, linguistics, poetics, literary criticism, aesthetics, musicology, and philosophy. He has translated classical and modern literature and philosophy (espec. French, Spanish). Has published many volumes of poetry, co-founded the journal of poetry Banana Split and co-founded (1987) the School of Writers, Copenhagen. Latest poetry: Negationer, 2007. Latest acad. book: Spaces, Domains, and Meaning, 2004.

Current research interests:

- Cognitive musicology, poetics, and aesthetics in general
- Semio-cognitive philosophy (of mind, consciousness, meaning)
- General grammar (incl. stemmatics and its computational implementation)
- Cognitive semantics (dynamic schemas, categories, properties)
- Enunciation
- Modality
- Narrativity
- Semiotics networks of mental space integration and meaning production
- Semantic domain theory
- General and social semiotics

TODD OAKLEY, MA, PhD.
Editor-in-chief, Anglophonic editor (2007-)

PROFILE:
Todd Oakley is associate professor of English and Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. His principal areas of scholarship and teaching are in cognitive science, rhetoric, and linguistics. He has published several articles in Cognitive Linguistics, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Written Communication, Language and Literature, and Almen Semiotik, as well as chapters in books published by Cambridge University Press, John Benjamins, Mouton de Gruyter, and Praeger Press. He has also co-authored several articles and co-edited a special issue of Cognitive Linguistics (2000) on Conceptual Blending with Seana Coulson as well as another second special issue on Blending for the Journal of Pragmatics (2005). He has just co-edited with Anders Hougaard the collection Mental Spaces in Discourse and Interaction (2008) from the John Benjamins Publishing, and his book From Attention to Meaning: Explorations in Semiotics, Linguistics, and Rhetoric will appear as volume 8 of the European Semiotics Series from Peter Lang Verlag in September, 2008.

ANA MARGARIDA ABRANTES, MA, PhD.
Co-editor (2007-)

PROFILE
Ana Margarida Marcelino Abrantes studied German and English Studies at the Universities of Aveiro, Essen and Innsbruck. She obtained her Masters Degree in Cognitive Linguistics from the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Braga in 2001 with a thesis on the cognitive foundations and strategies of euphemism. From 1997 until early 2006 she taught German Language and Linguistics and Didactics at the Department of German Studies of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Viseu. In 2003 she started her PhD project in the field German Language and Literature: Meaning and Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Peter Weiss’ Prose Work. She received a grant from the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian to develop her research at the Center for Semiotics of the University of Aarhus, from February until November 2006, and a doctoral grant from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia to conclude her dissertation at the Department of Cognitive Science of the Case Western Reserve University, in the United States. She submitted her dissertation at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa in September 2007. As a prospective PhD she obtained a research grant from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia to develop a two year post-doc project on Cognitive Linguistics at the Case Western Reserve University and the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, planned to start in March 2008.

Her research interests encompass German Studies, Cognitive Linguistics, Cognitive Poetics and Culture and Cognition Studies.

TIM ADAMSON, MA, PhD.
Co-editor (2008-)

PROFILE:
Tim Adamson is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Iowa Wesleyan College in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. For four years, he has also been teaching in the Religious Studies Department at the University of Iowa. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy under Mark Johnson at the University of Oregon. He has an M.A. in Philosophical Theology from Wesley Theological Seminary and a B.A. in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago.

A generalist at heart, he works at the edges and intersections of several fields, including cognitive linguistics, phenomenology, embodiment theory, existentialism, narrative theory, ritual studies, Islamic studies, and aesthetics. Currently, his work centers on the complex relationship between forms of abstract cognition and specific patterns of meaning rooted in concrete experience. As cognitive linguistics has shown, abstract cognition seems to take specific, concrete patterns (e.g., image schemas) as its own – even as it reaches for meanings beyond concrete life. Why does abstract cognition require some specific form? Is abstract cognition a merely subconscious repetition of concrete patterns (hence not genuinely abstract), or does it manipulate concrete forms more freely and autonomously (but then, why?)? Is there, perhaps, a kind of a priori necessity to the general form cognition can take, which always “pulls it back” to reside in some concrete form? Why, oh why, do we think in the strange ways we do? These issues are worked out (he said optimistically) through investigations of language, art, myth, and ritual – each of which exhibits the abstract/concrete relationship in distinctive ways.

LINE BRANDT, MA, PhD stud.
Co-editor, Anglophonic editor (2005-)

PROFILE:
Line Brandt has a Master’s degree in Philosophy and English, specializing in cognitive semantics and textual analysis (thesis: “Explosive Blends – from Cognitive Semantics to Literary Analysis”, Roskilde University 2001). She received a Ph.D. stipend in Cognitive Semiotics at the Faculty of the Humanities at the University of Aarhus (2002-2005), and taught seminars at the Center for Semiotics on ‘Cognition and Literary Text’ and ‘Cognitive Semantics’. She is currently finishing a dissertation on enunciation, focusing on the applicability of Conceptual Integration Theory to analysis of expressive meaning – in everyday communication as well as in cognitive-poetic readings of literary texts: “Language and enunciation – a cognitive inquiry with special focus on conceptual integration in semiotic meaning construction”. During the year 1997-1998 she studied Linguistics and Comparative Literature as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Washington, and in 2001-2002 spent a year at the University of California at San Diego as a visiting researcher, working primarily on Conceptual Integration Theory (Department of Cognitive Science, G. Fauconnier, S. Coulson, E. Hutchins et al.) and Cognitive Grammar (Department of Linguistics, R. Langacker). Outside of the scholarly work, Line has worked as an editor and translator of literary and academic texts.

RICCARDO FUSAROLI, MA, PhD stud.
Co-editor (2007-)
Webmaster, Webeditor (2008-)

PROFILE:
Riccardo Fusaroli is a PhD student in Semiotics at Istituto Superiore di Scienze Umane and Università  di Bologna. His research deals with the problems of continuity in semantic models, combining Peircean philosophical insights with cognitive model.

He studied Communication, Semiotics and Cognitive Sciences at the Universities of Bologna and Aarhus. He achieved his Master Degree in Semiotics at the University of Bologna, with a thesis on models of semantic perception, reviewed and developed in a debate with Peirce-inspired semiotics and cognitive sciences (Perceiving meaning. Perceptual practices, semantic perception and Peircean diagrams, 2007). Previously he researched on web browsing performed by blind users.

His studies were supported by a scholarship from Collegio Superiore dell’Università  di Bologna, that included tuition fees, housing, travel grants and additional courses with an interdisciplinary focus.

He has cooperated in didactic, communication and research projects with Punto Europa di Forlì (università  di Bologna, sede di Forlì), Puente a Europa (università  di Bologna, sede di Buenos Aires), Jean Monnet Center (Università  di Trento).

Research interests:
Peirce, general semiotics, structuralism, sensorimotor approaches to perception, semantic perception, cognitive semantics.

Website: www.semioticamente.it

Publications: http://www.semioticamente.it/?q=node/9

JES VANG, MA stud.
Managing Editor (2003-2007)
Co-editor, Coordinator, Webeditor, Graphic Artist/Layouter (2007-)

PROFILE:
Jes Vang is currently completing his MA degree in Cognitive Semiotics at the University of Aarhus with a newly submitted thesis concentrating on dynamic and sensorimotor dependencies between emotions, body and perception in an effort to explain how central aspects of emotional response to music come about. As such his MA-thesis adheres to his overarching research interest, namely the materiality of being (voice, body posture, etc.) in relation to emotions and interpersonal understanding. Other academic work includes the involvement with a brain imaging experiment focusing on reciprocity and selfishness being developed at the Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience (CFIN), University of Aarhus.

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