Call for Papers
Over the past decades, the intersections of semiotics and the interdisciplinary field of performance studies have offered key insights into social communication, interaction and mediation, cultural and media practices, and artistic expression and experimentation. Today, these issues are further complicated by the ubiquity of digital technologies—now largely invisible and seamlessly integrated into everyday life—and by the emergence of post-digital perspectives, which challenge the presumed novelty of the digital while emphasizing continuities with analog, material, ‘imperfect,’ and embodied forms of mediation and signification. The conference aspires to explore the contemporary research venues opened by the ‘performative turn’ of semiotics toward the study of verbal, bodily, and multimodal social, political, cultural, and artistic practices in ways that prioritize agency, setting, temporality, embodiment, negotiation, and mediation over texts, structures, and codes. In this sense, the focus shifts to the study of ‘meaning in motion’, highlighting action, practice, and enactment rather than static representation, and addressing the complex dynamics and pragmatics through which meaning is continuously produced and negotiated. By addressing the epistemological challenges posed by the performative turn the conference seeks to critically elucidate the concept of performance (and/or performance studies), to examine the possibilities and limitations of semiotic reasoning and practice, and to contribute to the development of theoretical frameworks of performance as contribution to semiotic theory building.
We invite proposals for the upcoming “International Conference on Semiotics of Performance in Post-Digital Cultures” which will take place at the University of Thessaly in Volos from 20 to 22 of November 2026. We welcome individual contributions (papers and lecture performances) as well as proposal for sessions based on any semiotic tradition as well as critical and post-semiotic approaches. The conference seeks to bring together scholars, artists, and practitioners from diverse disciplines to explore the semiotic modalities specific to the performativity of meaning-making in analog, digital, and hybrid communication practices and environments.
Suggested themes include, but are not limited to:
- Performing Arts: Theatricality, Cinema, Choreography, Embodiment, Live Recording
- “Performance Art”: Emerging Genealogies and Epistemologies
- Sound versus Music, Sonic Embodiment, , Listening as Performance, Aural Cultures
- Voice, Narrative and Performance, Literature and/as Performance, Performative Poetry
- Politics of Memory, Trauma, and Archives
- Language as Action, Translanguaging, Image Acts, and Performance as Enunciation
- Semiotic Aspects of Education, Mnemotechnics, Learning as Ritual
- Space and Place, Semiotic Landscapes and Assemblages
- Post-digital Aesthetics and Digital Dramaturgies: Materiality, Analog-digital Hybrids, and the Digital/Post-digital Condition
- Platform Vernaculars, Affective Registers, and Online/Offline Community Practices (Glitch Aesthetics, Memes as Paralinguistics, Hybridity)
- Gamification: Performative Interfaces in Gaming, Extended/Virtual Reality (AR/VR), and Immersivity
- Performing the (Post)human: Bodies, Cyborgs, Networks, AI
Submission Guidelines
We welcome proposals for individual papers, sessions (thematic panels), and roundtables.
Individual paper proposals should consist of an abstract of up to 300 words for a 15-20 minute presentation.
Session (thematic panel) proposals should include a coherent set of 3–5 individual papers. Each session proposal must include a session title and brief description, and individual abstracts (up to 300 words each) for all papers included in the session, together with the contributors’ names and paper titles.
Roundtable proposals should be addressed directly to the Scientific Committee by email (semio2026@uth.gr) and include the topic, format, and names of participants.
The official languages of the conference will be Greek and English.
Selected papers may be considered for publication in an edited volume or special journal issue.