Category: Academia

Job: “Valence Asymmetries” (Barcelona, Spain)

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

The Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain, is hiring two postdocs to work on the research project “Valence Asymmetries.”

Applications are possible until May 29, 2026. The job announcement reads:

There is an open call for applications, with a deadline set at 29 May 2026, for two postdoctoral researchers.

The successful candidates will conduct tasks that are transversal to the different work packages of the project. Their research will seek to understand how emotion and affect impact and underlie cognitive processes such as belief formation, decision making, conceptual representation, as well as language production and interpretation. They will work in very close collaboration with Prof. Isidora Stojanovic (project PI) and the entire team.

This is a full-time research position, without any teaching requirements, with a gross annual salary of 31.196,40 €, in a dynamic interdisciplinary team, funded by Prof. Stojanovic’s ERC Advanced grant VALENCE ASYMMETRIES GA N. 101142133.

For further details and in order to apply, consult this offer through Interfolio. The official call, specifying all legal requirement, in Catalan, can be consulted at the Deparment’s website.

Workshop: “Mental Interpretation & Mental Diversity”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

From May 25 to 26, 2026, the workshop “Mental Interpretation & Mental Diversity” will take place at the University of Granada, Spain.

The announcement reads:

There is a marked tendency in the philosophy of mind to characterize mental interpretation – the understanding of each other and ourselves in terms of mental concepts, folk or sciency – in broadly universalist terms. Whether described as the exercise of psychological capacities whose basic structure is universally shared across the species (a Theory of Mind, described in functionalist-representationalist terms), or as a predictive practice based on fundamental norms of rationality, the underlying commitment remains the same: the downtown of mental interpretation is a set of universal rules, functional or rational, that set fixed boundaries to what can plausibly count as a (healthily) minded creature.

This assumption has been challenged from a number of directions. On the one hand, empirical evidence from fields like anthropology and cultural psychology points to a rich intercultural diversity in the meaning and function of mental concepts. This evidence partly converges with experimental studies on attributions of mental states like belief or intention, which reveal a marked context-dependence in the way mental attributions are used and assessed. In parallel, civil right movements like the Neurodiversity or Mad Pride movements have increasingly demanded greater recognition for intracultural cognitive diversity. This includes both subpersonal differences in sensory and executive processing, for which neurodiversity-informed research provides accumulating evidence, as well as person-level differences in how such differences are interpreted and policed in interpersonal practices.

In sum, this points to the need for a philosophy of mind better suited to accounting for this rich diversity in minds and in the ways we talk and think about them. The present workshop aims to move in this direction by bringing together cutting-edge research on mental interpretation, mental diversity, and the connections between them. The contributions address various important topics in this line of inquiry, including the analysis of consequences of different philosophical theories of mental interpretation for our understanding of mental diversity; the link between mental (self-)interpretation and the constitution of mind and mental health; inter- and intra-cultural variability in mental interpretation; mental diversity and counternormative (e.g., mad, neurodivergent) interpretation practices; epistemic and discursive injustices related to mental interpretation; or the interplay of first-, second-, and third-personal perspectives in self-interpretation.

Workshop: “Epistemologies of Places”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

From June 9 to 10, 2026, the fourth workshop of the Empirical Epistemology Network will be held at the University of Stirling, UK.

The announcement reads:

This event considers how place-knowledge – especially in relation to cities – comes to be formed through sensory engagements, lived experiences, and interactions with environments through physical immersion, memory and imagination, and the role these play in giving rise to place(s). Combining academic papers with interactive activities such as storytelling, mapping, walking and artistic interventions, together we will explore the challenges and opportunities for place-based imagining and to reflect on how ways of knowing shape, and are shaped by, engagements with place.

Speakers:

  • Pablo Fernandez Velasco (Stirling)
  • Paola Di Giuseppantonio Di Franco (Durham, in-person only)
  • Rebecca Noone (Glasgow)
  • Christina Anderson (UCL)
  • Sofya Shahab (Stirling, in-person only)
  • Quill R. Kukla (Georgetown)

The overarching goal of the network is to build bridges between epistemologists and empirical researchers from various disciplines. Epistemologists will reflect about the practical relevance of their theoretical research on the nature of knowledge, and empirical researchers will consider whether some of the sharp conceptual tools of epistemologists are helpful for their own work. Participants will be drawn to identify the implicit or explicit assumptions of their work and field of research, assess whether those assumptions are warranted, and think about the consequences of challenging those assumptions. Remote participation, where feasible, is welcome. For more details about the network, up to date information about speakers and links to register, please visit https://empiricalepistemology.stir.ac.uk/index.php/events/.

Small travel and child-care bursaries available. Please note that in-person attendance is limited to 30. If you register and then realise you can’t attend, please let us know asap so that we can free the space for someone else. The Empirical Epistemology Network is run by Giacomo Melis (Stilring), Kirsten Blakey (Toronto), Jack Lyons (Glasgow) and Peter Graham (UC Riverside), and is supported by the Future Leaders Fellows Development Network (award PF 024).

The overarching goal of the network is to build bridges between epistemologists and empirical researchers from various disciplines. Epistemologists will reflect about the practical relevance of their theoretical research on the nature of knowledge, and empirical researchers will consider whether some of the sharp conceptual tools of epistemologists are helpful for their own work. Participants will be drawn to identify the implicit or explicit assumptions of their work and field of research, assess whether those assumptions are warranted, and think about the consequences of challenging those assumptions.

For more information please contact: giacomo.melis1@stir.ac.uk

Call: “Translation – Semiotics – Music”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

Anna Rędzioch-Korkuz and Małgorzata Grajter edit a special issue of Studia Semiotyczne on “Translation – Semiotics – Music.”

Submissions are possible until September 30, 2026. The call reads:

Studia Semiotyczne (Semiotic Studies) invites submissions for a special issue of the journal. Papers should be written either in English or in Polish and prepared for blind review.

The field of translation and music has been attracting increased attention recently: this is evident in numerous monographs, research papers, and conferences focused on the complex relationship between words and sounds (see also Bennett, 2025: 1). As Susam-Sarajeva (2008: 189–190) has noted, this relationship appears at best challenging, since translation scholars are “more comfortable dealing with written texts,” and consequently, “end up sliding into a predominantly textual analysis.” Similarly, Desblache (2019: 58) argues that the two fields, which are genuinely interested in that relationship – namely, translation studies and musicology – remain separate because both are practice-oriented disciplines that primarily focus on either verbal translation or music.

Against this backdrop, we would like to bring the two fields together through semiotics-based research on musical texts, believing that this perspective has the potential to create resonance for general translation studies. It has been argued that semiotics is good for translation studies (Stecconi 2007; Marais 2019; Kourdis 2023), which means – at least potentially – that there is a good deal of methodological and theoretical capital that can be utilized. Research on translation and music can definitely espouse a movement away from words, verbal artefacts and textual research towards the understanding of the performative, enacted, embedded and embodied nature of meaning making within translation, i.e. towards a deeper understanding of material processes of cultural practices, which necessitate moving beyond the verbal fixation and concentrating on more semiotically-informed approaches.

In the special issue, we would like to see how the actual go-between of semiotics bridges the fields of translation studies and musicology. We encourage scholars from across the academy to explore and provide their unique insight within the suggested thematic focus of translation, music and semiotics. We welcome both conceptual and empirical research. Possible topics include, but are not limited to the following questions:

  • Can (and if yes, then how can) semiotics contribute to solving the conceptual confusion within translation studies as exemplified by translating musical texts?
  • How can translation and music capitalize theoretically on various theories of semiotics and vice versa?
  • Can we (and if yes, then how can we) apply conceptual frameworks developed by various schools, e.g. the Moscow-Tartu School of Semiotics, Paris School, Eco’s interpretative semiotics, Groupe μ, Peircean semiotics, etc. to the study of translating musical texts?
  • What methodologies can we use to research the synergy of semiotic systems in musical texts?
  • How can the concept of “textuality” be rethought when applied to musical compositions as texts to be translated?
  • How can the study of translating musical texts through semiotics help to challenge the traditional hierarchy between linguistic and non-linguistic forms of meaning-making?
  • How can semiotics challenge the literal and the human in translating musical texts?
  • How can semiotic approaches account for the performative, enacted, embedded and embodied dimensions of musical translation?
  • How can semiotics bridge the disciplinary gap between musicology and translation studies?

In order to submit the paper, one is kindly asked to submit the manuscript by sending it to: annaredzioch@uw.edu.pl, malgra@amuz.lodz.pl and studiasemiotyczne@pts.edu.pl

All submitted papers will be double-blind peer-reviewed.

Call: “Workshop on Intuitions and Experimental Philosophy”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

In March 2027, David Bordonaba-Plou and Martín Capece del Toro will host the 1st “Workshop on Intuitions and Experimental Philosophy” (WIEP) at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.

Abstracts can be submitted until November 1, 2026. The call reads:

Intuitions are a source of evidence that many people use to a greater or lesser extent. We rely on them to investigate a wide variety of issues, for example, moral, mathematical, or religious questions, or to examine other people’s opinions on a host of different topics. Although there is debate about what is an intuition, appealing to intuitions has been one of the most widely used methods in many areas within analytic philosophy. The accepted view (see Goldman, 2007; Weinberg, 2007; Williamson, 2007, p. 2; Baz, 2012, p. 87; Koopman, 2012; Kornblith, 2014) is that intuitions play a fundamental evidential role.

Besides, there has been a dispute within analytic philosophy between three different groups of philosophers during the last decades. First, the “autonomists” (see, e.g., Bealer, 1998; Liao, 2008; Sosa, 2013; Chalmers, 2014; Devitt, 2015) defend that introspection and appeal to intuition can be used to answer many philosophical questions. Second, those who defend that analytic philosophers do not employ intuitions as evidence in philosophical practice. Following Nado (2016, p. 782), we can call them “intuition deniers” (see, e.g., Williamson, 2007; Deustch, 2009; Cappelen, 2012). Third, those who think that analytic philosophers use intuitions as evidence but doubt this method, arguing instead for the need to apply more rigorous methods drawn from scientific disciplines such as psychology, the social sciences, or linguistics; we can call them “experimental philosophers” (see, e.g., Machery et al., 2004; Knobe and Nichols, 2007; Mallon et al., 2009; Alexander et al., 2010).

This workshop aims to include presentations addressing the relationship between intuitions and experimental philosophy. The presentations accepted are expected to develop novel perspectives or adopt novel approaches that shed light on traditional problems associated with intuitions in analytic philosophy. Both experimental and theoretical papers will be accepted, as well as explicit defenses of any of the above positions, papers that point out desiderata that all three should fulfill, or papers dealing with other issues related to intuitions and experimental philosophy.

Some possible topics that presentations may address are:

  • Intuitions and mental experiments.
  • Conflicting intuitions in questionnaires.
  • Intuitions and justification.
  • Calibration of intuitions.
  • Differences in the use of intuitions in different areas of analytic philosophy.
  • Empirical or theoretical analyses of the role of intuition talk in the arguments of analytic. philosophers.
  • Empirical or theoretical analyses of philosophical practices making use of intuitions.

Submission

Please submit an abstract including:

  • Title of the paper.
  • Abstract (400–500 words) clearly presenting the research question, theoretical framework, and main argument (in English or Spanish).
  • Institutional affiliation.

The deadline for submitting abstracts is 1 November 2026. Abstracts must be anonymized (also anonymize self-citations) and must have a section including the bibliographic references (not included in the word count). Abstracts should be sent to the following email: davbordo@ucm.es, specifying the following subject: 1st Workshop on Intuitions and Experimental Philosophy.

For any questions, please write to davbordo@ucm.es.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

  • María José Frápolli Sanz (Universidad de Granada, Spain; Institute of Philosophy. School of Advance Study, University of London, United Kingdom).
  • James Andow (University of Manchester, United Kingdom).

Workshop: “Philosophy – What and How?”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

From May 7 to 8, 2026, the workshop “Philosophy – What and How?” will take place at the University of Vienna, Austria.

The announcement reads:

Views on what philosophy is and how it should be done vary widely. Is philosophy concerned with reality or with our concepts used for grasping aspects of reality? Does philosophy use a priori or empirical methods? What is the role of intuitions? And of the method of cases? What are philosophers trying to find out? Is Philosophy a descriptive or a normative discipline, or both?

Key information:

Dates: May 7–8, 2026, 09:00–18:00
Venue: Sky Lounge (DG), Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz 1, 1090 Wien, Austria

Here is a list of speakers and titles:

  • Max Kölbel: Philosophy as Conceptual Engagement
  • Yaokun Fu: The Arrovian Impossibility Theorem in Metaphysical Theory Choice
  • Sophie Veigl: Beyond Method? Philosophy of Science Between Analysis and Activities
  • Elijah Chudnoff: Intuition and Philosophical Progress
  • Matti Eklund: The Parochial, the Universal and the Alien
  • Asya Passinsky: Ameliorative Metaphysics
  • Eric Wallace: Idealisation and Overfitting
  • Alice van’t Hoff: Choosing Metalanguages
  • Edouard Machery: Arguments won’t help

Registration and more details:

https://philosophywhatandhow.phl.univie.ac.at/

Registration is required but free of charge, and all are welcome (registration form on the bottom of the page).

This workshop is supported by the PACE (pace.phl.univie.ac.at/) and KiC (www.knowledgeincrisis.com/) projects.

Call: “The New Measurement Heretics”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

Following the “Measurement Heretics Workshop – Being, Meaning, and Measuring Well,” Rebecca Jackson, Michele Luchetti, Morgan Thompson, and Aja Watkins edit a volume on the topic.

Abstracts for contributions can be submitted until June 15, 2026. The call reads:

This edited volume stems from the Measurement Heretics Workshop – Being, Meaning, and Measuring Well, organized by Rebecca Jackson at Durham University on March 11–13, 2026. We warmly welcome proposals from researchers in the philosophy, history, sociology, and anthropology of measurement (broadly construed) who would like to address the themes in the description below.

Once the list of contributions is selected, the volume proposal will be submitted for consideration to Chicago University Press.

Topic description

What we measure, and how we measure, matters deeply. In the human sciences especially, the definition and status of what we call “measurement,” the distinguishing or desirable features of measurement, and whether (and when) we should measure at all, has seen a resurgence of interest and debate. This volume engages with scientific, medical, and social measuring practices of the past and present, inviting contributions that dissect and reform the meaning and desirability of fundamental notions in philosophy of measurement – or as we call them, measurement heresies.

This is not the first time fundamental notions in measurement, or “dogmas,” have been challenged in disparate areas of study. The current wave of philosophically influenced history of measurement owes its roots to works such as Chang’s Inventing Temperature (2004), which troubled the dogma that accurate instruments require a prior foundation of true theories of what is being measured. Prior to this, sociological and historical work had already troubled the separation between the purity of numbers and the messiness of human knowers, showing that the growing emphasis on quantification in the 19th and 20th century was marked by the influence of bureaucracy and social agendas more than it mirrored the practice of physicists (Porter 1995; Collins 1975; Gould 1981). Looking further back, stances that today are well within the orthodoxy were once at the center of heated debates. The Kantian dogma of the non-measurability of psychological properties was challenged by Fechner’s “heretical” psychophysics, which on the one hand initiated a long and influential debate on the quantifiability of sensation and, on the other, inspired Mach’s relational theory of measurement in physics that seeded later developments in measurement theory and philosophical debates on the nature of measurement. Waves of reform and reaction in the 20th century included tension between physicists and psychophysicists (Campbell 1920; Stevens 1946), and theories of measurement as foundational to the project of logical positivism (Reichenbach 1927; Carnap 1966). When psychometric visions and techniques were first beginning to shape theory of measurement in psychology (Cronbach and Meehl 1955; Campbell and Fiske 1959), reformist projects led to the beginning of the representational theory of measurement in the physical sciences (Krantz et al. 1971; Suppes et al. 1989; Luce et al. 1990). Reconciling the two has proven difficult but philosophically productive, as several volumes and special issues have shown (Berglund et al. 2013; Vessonen 2017; Pendrill 2019; Mari et al. 2023; Uher 2025; Basso et al. 2026; Luchetti 2026). More recently, works on patient-centered and health measures have challenged the dogma that measurement can, and should, be carried out from a stance of aperspectival objectivity (Duque et al. 2024; McClimans 2024).

There is still much to be done to bring the dogmas of philosophers, inherited from the above mentioned 20th century reformist projects, to face the challenge of measuring in biomedical, clinical, and social contexts. A particular challenge here is to measure that which is unique or highly contextual, such as the lived experience of persons, and to measure moving targets that are more affected by, than reflected by, data meant to capture them (Godman & Marchionni 2022; Runhardt 2025; Zahle 2023). This work has been ongoing in medical humanities, sociological, historical, geographical, anthropological, and literary scholarship, as well as in geophysical and environmental sciences, in ways that have not yet been articulated together. This volume brings the heresies (and the heretics) together, to map the terrain of the current re-evaluation which is taking place in Measurement Studies more broadly.

The purpose of this book is to give space to critical re-evaluations of dogmas regarding fundamental notions about measurement and to invite novel interpretations of formal and informal measurement concepts. We invite contributions focusing on topics including (but not limited to) the following:

  • STANDARDISATION
  • COMPARABILITY
  • QUANTIFICATION, QUANTITIES, and/or MAGNITUDES
  • MEASUREMENT SCALES
  • PRECISION and/or RELIABILITY
  • VALIDITY and/or VALIDATION
  • ACCURACY and/or SENSITIVITY/SPECIFICITY
  • PROXIES

We also invite contributions that are critical of the activity of measurement in general:

  • What are the affective and real-world impacts of measuring and being measured on human and non-human subjects?
  • When is it worse to measure at all, and when is it worth it to measure (even badly) to provide voice to marginalized actors within a system?
  • What would it look like to gather evidence against measurement itself, as being an intervention?

Rather than chapters taking the form of a strictly circumscribed philosophical argument, we invite authors to address one of the above topics from their own disciplinary perspective. We expect chapters to reference a case or cases from past or present measuring practices. The editorial team will explicate the broader philosophical implications in the introductory and concluding chapters.

Confirmed contributors

  • Nicholas Binney (HHU Düsseldorf)
  • Femke Truijens (University of Rotterdam)
  • Riana Betzler (San José State University)

Submission details

Please submit an abstract aimed at an interdisciplinary audience (600–800 words, not including references) to the following email address: measurementheretics@gmail.com

The deadline for abstract submission is June 15th, 2026. Authors of selected contributions will be notified at the end of July. An authors’ workshop will take place online in November 2026, and the final submission of the chapters (6k–8k words) is planned for March 2027.

Summer School: “Advanced Methods in Eye Tracking”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

From June 22 to 23, 2026, the summer school “Advanced Methods in Eye Tracking” will take place at the University of East Anglia, UK.

See the poster for details. The announcement reads:

This interdisciplinary summer school will offer Phd students and other early career researchers from psychology and across the cognitive and social sciences advanced training in all aspects of eye tracking, and a clear interdisciplinary understanding of a range of research questions that can be addressed by eye tracking. It will be conducted over two days, with the first day consisting of research talks and the second day consisting of hands-on lab work and skill building. The first day is being offered as a hybrid event with talks being streamed live, for students wanting to attend online only. The second day is “in person” only.

Call: “New Methods in Semantics of Artefacts”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

From September 15 to 16, 2026, the conference “New Methods in Semantics of Artefacts – Meaning Beyond Linguistic Signs” will take place at the Cité de la Mode et du Design, Paris.

Abstracts can be submitted until May 25, 2026, 12:00 CEST. The call reads:

Conference details

Our organizing committee, with the support of the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE–Paris Sciences Lettres) and the Institut Français de la Mode (IFM), invites submissions to the New Methods in Semantics of Artefacts: Meaning beyond linguistic signs conference, to be held on 15–16 September 2026 at the Cité de la Mode et du Design in Paris.

We are delighted to announce our invited speakers:

Philosophy: Enrico Terrone (University of Genova), Nicola Di Stefano (CNR Italy); Cognitive psychology: Charles Spence (University of Oxford); Linguistics: Philippe Schlenker (École Normale Supérieure / NYU), Pritty Patel-Grosz (University of Oslo); Musicology: Ben Curry (University of Birmingham).

Topic of the conference

Objects such as perfumes, works of art, and creations in design, gastronomy, or entertainment often give rise to mental representations that go beyond the objects themselves. Through perception and interaction, individuals attribute meanings, associations, and symbolic values to such objects, even when these meanings are not explicitly expressed in language. Understanding how such meanings emerge is a shared challenge for philosophy, linguistics, and the cognitive sciences, and this conference aims to put these complementary approaches into dialogue.

The philosophical tradition has long sought to ground what one would ordinarily call the meaning of objects in a general theory of signs – an approach exemplified, within contemporary naturalized philosophy, by Millikan’s work (Beyond concepts, 2017), as well as by more targeted theories addressing the meanings of particular kinds of objects. Pursuing the formalization of such a general theory of signs, the super-linguistics program (Schlenker, Patel-Grosz, among others) holds that formal linguistic theory can be productively extended across various domains of non-linguistic signs, drawing on notions such as the constituency (or grouping) principle central to syntax, the use of logical variables for object tracking, and the variety of inference types investigated in semantics and pragmatics. Finally, several theoretical frameworks in psychology may help address the origins of artefact meaning: in addition to the cognitive foundations of such meaning – cross-modal associations, conceptual representations, affordances, technical reasoning, and intention-based accounts – psychology can illuminate the transmission and cultural learning of the meanings that objects come to bear.

We aim to take stock of the experimental methods and conceptual tools used to study the semantics of objects, and to foster epistemological transfers from the semantics of one domain to another – music, design objects, fragrances, images, food, dance, and so forth – with particular attention to the plurality of sensory modalities through which these objects are perceived.

Submission guidelines

Each selected contributor will be invited to give a 45-minute presentation, including Q&A.

We welcome contributions that place particular emphasis on:

  • the choice and clarification of the semantic concepts employed; and/or
  • attempts at formalization; and/or
  • the originality of the empirical methods applied.

Contributions will be selected from submitted abstracts. Abstracts should be between 400 and 500 words in length, including footnotes but excluding references, and must be suitable for blind review.

The submission deadline is 25 May 2026, 12:00 noon (Paris time).

All abstracts should be submitted to: semanticsofartefacts.conference@gmail.com.

Authors will be notified of acceptance by 18 June 2026.

If your abstract is accepted for presentation, we will cover coffee breaks and lunches during the two-day conference. At present, our funding does not allow us to reimburse travel and accommodation expenses.

Call: “Law Observed”

Posted on by Alexander Max Bauer

Marco Mazzocca and Miriam Ferraro organize a workshop on “Law Observed – Sociological Methods and Empirical Research on Law,” which will take place at the IVR World Congress in Istanbul from June 28 to July 3, 2026.

Abstracts can be submitted until May 30, 2026. The call reads:

We invite abstracts for the Special Workshop SW42 “Law Observed: Sociological Methods and Empirical Research on Law,” to be held at the IVR World Congress 2026 in Istanbul.

The workshop addresses the relationship between legal theory and empirical inquiry, with particular attention to the methodological and epistemological implications of studying law as a socially embedded practice. It seeks to foster dialogue between legal philosophy, socio-legal studies, and empirical legal research.

Key questions include how empirical approaches to law can inform, challenge, or complement conceptual and normative accounts of legal systems, authority, and decision-making. Rather than presupposing a strict separation between normative and empirical perspectives, the workshop explores their points of interaction and tension.

We welcome abstracts engaging with, among others:

  • methodological and epistemological issues in socio-legal research
  • the concept of law as a social practice
  • legal reasoning, decision-making, and institutional practice
  • law, inequality, migration, and citizenship
  • biolaw and sociology of health
  • technology, AI, and the transformation of legal practices

Abstracts (300–400 words), together with affiliation and short bio, should be sent to miriam.ferraro@unife.it by 30 May 2026.

Selected contributors will be invited to present their work at the workshop. Contributions may be considered for publication in a collective volume or special issue.

Further information: https://coin-project.org