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• Discourse, Dialogue, and Democracy II Symposium

  • When
    25 Apr 2026
  •  
    8:45 AM - 6:30 PM

  Register

  Join us on Saturday, April 25th for Discourse, Dialogue, and Democracy II: An Online Symposium. As the title indicates, this is a continuation of the in-person Discourse, Democracy, and Dialogue Symposium held in conjunction with the 2025 Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture in New York City. 

  
  

  Our online symposium is free and open to members and non-members alike, but registration is required. The symposium will be held via Zoom, with the information for signing on to be distributed in advance of the event. Please note that sessions will be recorded for later distribution online.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Discourse,

  Dialogue,

  and Democracy II

  An Online Symposium

  April 25th, 2026

   

  All times listed are Eastern Daylight Savings Time

  Greetings and Welcomings     8:45 AM to 9 AM

    Lance Strate, Fordham University, USA

  
  

  Session I  New Semantic Environments  9:00 AM to 10:15 AM

    Chair: Eva Berger, College of Management Academic Studies, Israel

   

  “From Screen Celebrity to Social Media Influencer: The Future of Celebrities as Social Media Influencers as AI Challenges Their Roles in Contemporary and Commercial Media Environments in 2026”

    Renee Peterson, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia

   

  “Movement, Vision and Feedback in AI Robotics”

    Chris Chesher, University of Sydney, Australia

   

  “Time-Binding Democratic Sensibilities Through Literature: Exploring the Potential of Parrhesia, Dissent/Resistance and Creatical Interventions”

    Bini Babu Sudha, Nirma University, India

   

  “Reading of Discourse as Semantic Reactions: A Working Paper”

    Pratiksha N. Chavada, Shri M. P. Shah Arts & Science College, India

  
  

  Session II  Words in Thought & Action  10:30 AM to 11:45 AM

    Chair: Dom Heffer, Institute of General Semantics, United Kingdom

  
  

  “The Never Ending Question: Converting the Being-Question into the Event-Question”

    Mauro Ventola, Center for Ontological Transformation, Italy

   

  “Discourse, Dialogue, Deliberation and Defending Democracy”

    Olek Netzer, Independent Scholar, Israel

   

  “The Dialect as a Cognitive Map: (Re)interpreting ‘Home’ through the Lens of ‘Thinking in Language’”

    Oleksandr Bohomolets-Barash, National Academy of Sciences, Ukraine

   

  "Semiotic Tensions and Perspectives in Intermediality"

  Eleni Timplalexi, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

  
  

  Session III    People in Quandaries    12:00 Noon to 1:15 PM

  Chair: Susan Drucker, Hofstra University

   

  “AI, Deepfakes and Democracy: Symbols, Environments, Modes”

  Olena Marina, Munster Technological University, Ireland, and

  Igor Korolyov, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine

   

  “Rethinking Minority Language Acquisition in the Digital Age”

  Grace Foley, Trinity University, Ireland

   

  “Linking Condillac’s Abstractions to Korzybski’s Structural Differential”

  Robert T. Ackland, State University of New York College at Plattsburgh, USA

   

  “The Dawn of a New Order: Rebirth Through the ‘Impossible’”

  Pedro Gil González, Universidad Panamericana, Mexico

  
  

  Session IV   Language in Human Affairs   1:30 PM to 2:45 PM

    Chair: Corey Anton, Grand Valley State University, USA

   

  “Teaching General Semantics Through Make-Believe”

    Martin H. Levinson, Institute of General Semantics, USA

   

  “On the Necessity of an Ethics of Speech: Cultivating Dialogue in Philosophy Classes in Times of Discursive Violence”

    Marcelo Capello Martins, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio, Brazil

   

  General Semantics, Rhetoric, and Education: Possibilities for a Democratic Counter-Environment

    Ryan P. McCullough, West Liberty University, USA

   

  “When Discourse Is Generated: Artificial Intelligence as the Silent Architect of Public Discourse”

    Laura Trujillo Liñán, Universidad Panamericana, Mexico

   

  Session V   The Map is Not the Territory   3:00 PM to 4:15 PM

    Chair: Peggy Cassidy, Adelphi University, USA

   

  “Margaret Mee's Moon Flower: Map, Instant and Territory”

    Fabiola Ballarati Chechetto, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paul, Brazil

   

  “Maps, Manifestations, and #MagicResistance: Occult Symbolism for Political Action”

    Christina M. Knopf, State University of New York College at Cortland, USA

   

  “Margins of Interpretation: Towards an Analogical Model of Hermeneutics”

    Elsa G. Sánchez Huerta Villalba, Universidad Panamericana, Mexico

   

  “Living an Environmental Catastrophe in a Supposed Democracy: Semantics, Dialectics, Soil and Water”

    W. Thomas Duncanson, Green Citizen Diplomacy Project, USA

   

   

  Session VI     Mind and Nature     4:30 PM to 5:45 PM

    Chair: Thom Gencarelli, Manhattan University, USA

   

  “From Agency to Semantic Responsibility: General Semantics, Communication Ethics, and the Moral Imperative of Meaning in the Age of AI”

    Tiffany Petricini, Pennsylvania State University, Erie, USA

   

  “How Digital Maps Still Aren’t the Territory”

    Jaqueline McLeod Rogers, University of Winnipeg, Canada

   

  “A New Language of History”

    Jessie Lydia Henshaw, Independent Scholar, USA

   

  “What Only Persons Can Give: AI, Moral Hollowing, and the Recovery of Dialogue”

    Laura Meneses Trujillo, Universidad Panamericana, Mexico

   

  Concluding Remarks 5:45 PM to 6:00 PM

    Lance Strate, Fordham University, USA

  
  

  About the Participants:

  
  

  Robert T. Ackland earned his PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and is Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York College at Plattsburgh. His most recent publication uses works of art to highlight five key aspects of doing research (the depiction, the view, the frame, the researched, and the researcher): “Magritte’s Tree through Condillac’s Window” (2024) in ETC, 81(3). He describes his concept of the idiolecte dynamique (an individual’s linguistic ID) in “The Night is a Strawberry: The Joys of Being Multilingual While Reading Louise Penny’s Québec Mysteries” (2020) in the Journal of Eastern Townships Studies /Revue d’études des Cantons-de-l’Est, (48). He co-authored “Beyond the Lorax: Examining Children’s Books on Climate Change” (2016) in The Reading Teacher. Now retired from Literacy and Teacher Education at SUNY Plattsburgh, he is translating portions of Condillac’;s 18th century philosophy.

   

  Corey Anton received his PhD from Purdue University in 1998, and is Professor of Communication Studies at Grand Valley State University and a Fellow of the International Communicology Institute. He is author of Selfhood and Authenticity (2001, SUNY Press), Sources of Significance: Worldly Rejuvenation and Neo-Stoic Heroism (2010, Purdue University Press), Communication Uncovered: General Semantics and Media Ecology (2010, IGS Press), How Non-being Haunts Being: On Possibilities, Morality, and Death Acceptance (2020, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press), and A.EYE CANDY: A Museum of Imaginary Robots and Other Digital Delights (2023, IGS Press). He is the editor of Valuation and Media Ecology: Ethics, Morals, and Laws (2010, Hampton Press), and the co-editor, along with Lance Strate, of the collection Korzybski And… (2012, IGS Press), co-editor, along with Robert K. Logan and Lance Strate, of the collection, Taking Up McLuhan’s Cause (2017, Intellect Publishing), and co-editor, with Thom Gencarelli, of General Semantics and Politics (2025, IGS press). Past Editor of the journal Explorations in Media Ecology and Past President of the Media Ecology Association, Anton currently serves as Vice-President of the Institute of General Semantics, and on the editorial boards of The Atlantic Journal of Communication, ETC, New Explorations, and Explorations in Media Ecology.

   

  Bini Babu Sudha is Assistant Professor of English in the Department of Humanities and Commerce, at the Institute of Law, Nirma University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, and a former associate of the Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences in Baroda, Gujarat, India. She is the author of Life Worlds of Cancer: Narratives that Resist and Heal, a monograph published by the University of Kerala. Her articles, poems, and translations have appeared in journals and anthologies. She was part of an Oxford University Press translation project titled An Anthology of Modern Malayalam Literature, which came out as a multivolume publication in 2017. She is the recipient of the 2016 J. Talbot Winchell Award from the Institute of General Semantics, New York. Her Ph.D. from The University of Kerala was a Foucauldian analysis of the narrativity of history.

   

  Eva Berger teaches media studies at the COMAS College in Israel where she has also served as Dean. She is the Secretary and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute of General Semantics. She is the author of multiple articles and books. Her latest is Context Blindness: Digital Technology and the Next Stage of Human Evolution for which she received The Erving Goffman Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Social Interaction from the Media Ecology Association in 2023. She is also the 2024 recipient of the J. Talbot Winchell Award for Indispensable Contributions, Accomplishments and Timebinding Efforts in Service to the Field of General Semantics.

   

  Oleksandr Bohomolets-Barash holds a PhD in Philology. He works as a Junior Research Fellow in the Department of Dialectology at the Institute for Ukrainian Language, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine). His academic interests lie within cognitive linguistics, semantics, and dialectology. He is the author of The Concept of Europe in the Ukrainians’ Linguistic Picture of the World of the XVIII–XVIII centuries (2025). Beyond academic reading, he enjoys science fiction and fantasy; his favorite author is Roger Zelazny. 

   

  Peggy Cassidy is Professor of Communication at Adelphi University. Her research and teaching focus primarily on the history of media in the lives and education of children and adolescents. She is the author of BookEnds: The Changing Media Environment of American Classrooms (Hampton Press, 2003) and Children, Media, and American History: Printed Poison, Pernicious Stuff, and Other Terrible Temptations (Routledge, 2017). She is a Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics, President of the New York Society for General Semantics, and has served as President of the Media Ecology Association and the New York State Communication Association. She is also the editor of Explorations in Media Ecology.

  
  

  Pratiksha N. Chavada is an assistant professor of English at Shri M. P. Shah Arts and Science College, Surendranagar, Gujarat, India. She completed her higher education at Saurashtra University, Rajkot. For her Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy degrees, she worked in the area of general semantics theory. She has presented papers in numerous national and international seminars and conferences as well as authored numerous research articles in reputed national and international journals. She has also served as an expert speaker for the General Semantics workshop organized by Balvant Parekh Centre of General Semantics and Other Human Sciences, Baroda, Gujarat. Her areas of interest include novels, plays, emerging genres, literary criticism, and general semantics.

  
  

  Fabiola Ballarati Chechetto is an Italian Brazilian poet and apprentice sorceress to an Ecology of Mind, Meaning, and Media, living in São Paulo, Brazil. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication and Semiotics from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), and currently runs experimental workshops combining nature and the arts, maps, and territories.

   

  Chris Chesher is an Associate Professor in Digital Cultures in the Discipline of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on the intersection of technology, culture, and society, currently researching transformations of service work with robots, the cultural aspects of social robots and multimodal AI. He was guest editor of a special issue of the International Journal of Social Robotics on ’beyond anthropomorphism’. His recent book Invocational Media: Reconceptualising the Computer offers a provocative original analysis of the genesis of digital technologies as mediators of invocations.

   

  Susan J. Drucker is a Distinguished Professor of Journalism in the Department of Journalism/Media Studies, School of Communication, Hofstra University, and a Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics. She is an attorney, and treasurer of the Urban Communication Foundation. She is the author and editor of 13 books and over 150 articles and book chapters including two volumes of the Urban Communication Reader, Regulating Convergence (Peter Lang, 2010), Voices in the Street: Gender, Media and Public Space, two editions of Real Law @ Virtual Space: The Regulation of Cyberspace (1999, 2005), and Regulating Social Media: Legal and Ethical Considerations (2013) with Gary Gumpert. She co-edited Urban Communication Regulations: Communication Freedoms and Limits (Lang, 2018). Her latest book is Fake News: Real Issues in Modern Communication with Russell Chun (Peter Lang, 2020). She received the Walter J. Ong Award for Career Achievement in Scholarship from the Media Ecology Association in 2018. Her work examines the relationship between media technology and human factors, particularly as viewed from a legal perspective.

   

  W. Thomas Duncanson has for decades written about communication ethics and especially the speech thought of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. In recent years Tom has returned to one of his first concerns, environmental communication. In 2020 he resigned as Professor of Communication at Millikin University and launched the Green Citizen Diplomacy Project, dedicated to research and public information concerning the UN climate change meetings. He lives in Champaign, Illinois.

   

  Grace Foley is a PhD candidate in the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences at Trinity College Dublin. Her doctoral research investigates multilingualism, with a particular focus on the Irish language and communicative practices in contemporary contexts. She holds a Master of Arts in Journalism and Digital Content Creation from Munster Technological University (Cork), a Master of Arts in Public Media with a specialization in Strategic Communication from Fordham University, and a Bachelor of Arts in TV/Radio and New Media from Munster Technological University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of language, media, and communication, with particular expertise in strategic communication, media studies, and language development.

  
  

  Thom Gencarelli earned his PhD from New York University and is Professor and founding Chair of the former Communication Department at Manhattan University in Riverdale, New York. He is Treasurer of the Institute of General Semantics and Editor of the IGS’ official journal ETC: A Review of General Semantics, as well as Past President of the Media Ecology Association, the New York State Communication Association, and the New Jersey Communication Association (twice). He researches and writes about media ecology, media education, new media, and popular media and culture with an emphasis on popular music, and is co-editor (with Corey Anton) of General Semantics and Politics (Institute of General Semantics, 2025) and (with Brian Cogan), Baby Boomers and Popular Culture: An Inquiry into America’s Most Powerful Generation. His authored book, from Searching for the Right Notes: Essays on Media, Meaning, and Music is due out Peter Lang in 2026. Thom is the recipient of multiple awards including the Eastern Communication Association’s Distinguished Teaching Fellows Award, the Media Ecology Association’s Louis Forsdale Award for Outstanding Educator in the Field of Media Ecology, the John F. Wilson Fellowship Award for Scholarship and Service from the New York State Communication Association, the Media Ecology Association’s Christine L. Nystrom Award for Outstanding Career Achievement in Service to the Field of Media Ecology, and, in 2023, the J. Talbott Winchell Award for Outstanding Contributions and Service to the Cause of General Semantics from the Institute of General Semantics. Thom is also a songwriter, musician, and producer who has released four album-length works with his ensemble bluerace: World is Ready (2009), Beautiful Sky (2013), Mistral (2019), and INDYeGO (2024). The group is presently at work on their as-yet-untitled fifth album.

   

  Pedro Gil González is a Mexican Lawyer from the University of Guadalajara with a Master’s Degree in Public Administration at the Anáhuac Yucatán University. He is also a Philosophy student at Universidad Panamericana in Mexico City. He has served as an advisor to the government of Tabasco, Mexico. Currently he is the Coordinator of a Diploma Degree at Universidad Panamericana for the inclusion of people with disabilities focused on ethics, organizational strategy and public policies.

   

  Dom Heffer is an artist, based in the UK, known for his vibrant, large-scale paintings that reflect upon technology, consciousness, and the interplay between digital and natural worlds. His works borrow from such subjects as retro computing, cinema, mass production and often feature humanoid characters referred to as “stooges” that seem to be acting out aimless functions or escaping the confines of the canvas. Underpinning all of this is a fascination with painting as a tool for thought, exploration and play. Dom has worked with arts organizations nationally and internationally–he is a founder member of Feral Art School, and his current show “Delay-a-grams” runs at 2021 Visual Arts Centre in the UK until November 2025. =To find out more about Dom’s work, see: <ideasinthevoid.com> or on @domhe Instagram.

   

  Jessie Lydia Henshaw has established a distinguished career as both a New York architect and a groundbreaking research scientist with HDS Natural Systems Design Science, where she has contributed her expertise since 1977. Since 2009, she has worked full-time, professionally engaging with others on the great problem we all face on earth, of our natural systems increasingly misbehaving due to human interference. Her success stems from recognizing the working relationships of emerging systems. Natural systems generally have separate internal and external designs, much like organisms do, as well as human organizations, cultures, and economies, all of which have environmental system relationships and lifecycles. What’s unique about them is that they all generally form their designs as they grow.  Her work is shared in reports and papers, at professional meetings, in consultations and correspondence, and in online discussions, such as within the ISSS community, at the UN, on LinkedIn, with NGO’s, diverse other scientists and organizations, and in Who’s Who, advancing the discussion of unusual escalating confusion on earth about what we all should do, as we seem to have done something wrong to bring nearly the whole world to a crescendo of chaos. Ms. Henshaw's career journey began in with a physics degree in the late ‘60s, followed by a degree in architectural and landscape design at Penn in 1974. Her online portfolio of NYC design projects is at Archt.htm@synapse9.com, where all her subsequent work is collected, too, at: synapse9.com/signals.

  
  

  Christina M. Knopf is a Professor in the Communication and Media Studies Department at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Cortland. She is the author of Politics in the Gutters: American Politicians and Elections in Comic Book Media (2021) and The Comic Art of War: A Critical Study of Military Cartoons, 1805-2014 (2015), along with dozens of critical essays on pop culture and politics. She is a series co-editor for the Routledge Advances in Comics Studies series. She holds a PhD from the University at Albany in sociology/communication.

   

  Igor Korolyov is a Doctor of Science in Philology and Professor of General Linguistics, Head of the Centre for Baltic Studies, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine. He is Scientific Supervisor of the research project “Ecolinguistic Modes of Ukrainian Discursive Space in the European Multicultural Continuum” supported by the National Research Foundation of Ukraine.

   

  Martin H. Levinson received his PhD from New York University, is a past president of the Institute of General Semantics, book editor for ETC: A Review of General Semantics, and a contributing editor to The Satirist, A Critical Online Journal. He has published 14 books and scores of articles on topics ranging from GS self-help fairy tales to social and historical analyses. He is currently a faculty member with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Stony Brook University, a teacher for the United Federation of Teachers’ Si Beagle Learning Program, which is located in New York City, and a lecturer on contemporary and historical topics for schools and public libraries.

   

  Olena Marina is a Doctor of Science in Philology and Professor of General Linguistics, Munster Technological University, Ireland. Her research interests include multimodal studies, cognitive linguistics, transmediality studies, media ecology, and general semantics.

   

  Marcelo Capello Martins has a master’s degree in philosophy at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Rio. and is currently a PhD student at the department of Philosophy at the same university. His research is an attempt to discuss and criticize technophile discourse, i.e., the discourse that blindly describes technological benefits, but doesn’t take into account its problematic side and the potential dangers of the current “technological obesity”. Having Jacques Ellul as the main reference, his research also brings to the discussion works of different fields of knowledge, seeking interdisciplinarity. Marcelo was a Member At-Large of the Media Ecology Association from March 2022 until December 2023. He is currently a member of the EMAPS study and research group (Ethics and Algorithmic Mediation of Social Processes). He is interested in the following research fields: Philosophy of Technology, Media Ecology, Contemporary Philosophy, Political Philosophy and Philosophy of the Environmental Catastrophe.

   

  Ryan P. McCullough earned his PhD at Duquesne University, and is a professor and chair of the Department of Media and Visual Arts at West Liberty University, a small public institution located in West Liberty, West Virginia. He teaches courses in media theory, media law and ethics, social media, public relations, and public speaking. His research has been published in Explorations in Media Ecology and ETC: A Review of General Semantics. He currently serves as the Media Ecology Association’s liaison to the Eastern Communication Association.

   

  Jaqueline McLeod Rogers (Ph.D.) is a Professor in the Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communication at the University of Winnipeg (Canada). She teaches courses about urban culture and place, professional and scholarly writing and rhetoric, and nonfiction narrative. She publishes widely on McLuhan, recontextualizing his work. She recently published Crises Then as Now: McLuhan with Urbanist Jaqueline Tyrwhitt and Artist Gyorgy Kepes (Peter Lang, 2025 in the Media Ecology Series). Before that, she published McLuhan’s Techno-Sensorium City: Coming to our Senses in a Programmed Environment (2021), a book that considered McLuhan as an activist and speculative urbanist and received the Lewis Mumford Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Ecology of Technics (Media Ecology Association, 2021). She is currently working on editing the Palgrave MacMillan Companion Volume to McLuhan, with publication anticipated in 2027. Researching in other areas, she recently co-edited a collection of essays examining technologies in domestic space, Mothering/Internet/Kids (2022) and =is co-writing a text (forthcoming) about changing cross-disciplinary writing practices, Write to Engage. She is looking forward to hosting the 27th Annual Media Ecology Association Conference at the University of Winnipeg (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada), June 25-28, 2026.

   

  Laura Meneses Trujillo is a philosopher and learning and development designer. She has taught philosophy and ethics since 2014, including the past five years at Universidad Panamericana. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy and an M.A. in Human Resources Management from Universidad Panamericana. Her research and speaking focus on C.S. Lewis, ethics, technology, and transhumanism, and she has presented at conferences in Belfast and México.

   

  Olek Netzer holds a PhD in applied behavioral science from Union Institute University in the US, and is the author of three books published in English by LIT Verlag. He was born in 1937 in Warsaw, Poland, and survived the Holocaust in the care of a Polish family, and has lived in Israel since 1949. He is a dissident and activist, having adopted the Direct Causation Approach to war and conflict in contrast to mainstream Political Science.

   

  Renee Peterson earned her PhD in the School of Media and Communication at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Melbourne. Her PhD is a creative practice-based research project examining celebrities adapting and navigating their contemporary media ecology into social media influencers. This research is featured in her podcast series, From Screen Celebrity to Social Media Influencer, and is central to her dissertation. With over 20 years of experience in the Australian and international media industry, Renee is a radio and television presenter, podcaster, executive producer, and writer. She is the founder, director, and CEO of Renee Peterson Presents Pty Ltd. Her diverse career has seen her contribute to various facets of the media landscape, from on-air roles to behind-the-scenes production and content creation. Renee is a sessional academic lecturer/tutor at The University of Melbourne, RMIT University, and Victoria University. Renee teaches Bachelor of Screen Media courses, including Radio Production, Introduction to Screen Media, and Cross Media Practice. Renee integrates her extensive professional media industry experience into the classroom, collaborating with academic curricula to engage and inspire her students.

   

  Tiffany Petricini is an Associate Teaching Professor in Communication at Pennsylvania State University Erie. She is co-chair of Penn State’s Joint Standing Committee on Responsible and Effective Use of Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education. She also leads the Penn State Artificial Intelligence Community of Practice (AICoP) and the Humanities Institute’s Phenomenology Collaborative Colloquia. Her publications have reflected interests in phenomenology, interpersonal communication, technology, philosophy, ethics, and media ecology, including her work “Friendship and Technology,” available through Routledge. Tiffany has been an invited speaker on "Spark" on CBC Radio One and the SUNY Plattsburgh at the Ethics Institute. She also serves as the social media expert for NBC affiliate WFMJ 21 News.

   

  Elsa G. Sánchez Huerta Villalba is a professional with an academic and career background spanning diverse fields such as Political Science, Philosophy, and Education. She has experience as a professor at all educational levels and as a speaker committed to topics related to women, epistemology, education, and culture. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in the History of Thought, further strengthening her interdisciplinary approach. Her fluency in English and proficiency in French have enabled her to participate in international programs. Elsa holds a degree in Philosophy with the thesis "The Nature of Women from an Aristotelian Realistic Perspective" with honorable mention. She has participated as a speaker at international interdisciplinary conferences in México, Athens, Greece and New York City. She just published her manuscript in ETC: A Review of General Semantics, Volume 82, Number 1: “Generational Gap, is it an Opportunity or an Obstacle?” She was also part of the Media Ecology Association’s Convention Organizing cCmmittee for their 26th annual meeting held in Mexico City.

   

  Lance Strate is a Trustee and President of the Institute of General Semantics, a Past President of the New York Society for General Semantics, the New York State Communication, Association and the Media Ecology Association, and President for Academic Affairs of the Global Listening Centre. He is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, held the 2015 Harron Family Chair in Communication at Villanova University, and received an honorary appointment as Chair Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Henan University in Kaifeng, China, in 2016. He is the author of Echoes and Reflections: On Media Ecology as a Field of Study (2006), On the Binding Biases of Time and Other Essays on General Semantics and Media Ecology (2011), Amazing Ourselves to Death: Neil Postman's Brave New World Revisited (2014), Thunder at Darwin Station (2015), 麦克卢汉与媒介生态学 [McLuhan and Media Ecology, an original collection of essays published in Mandarin translation, 2016], Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition (2017), Introdução à Ecologia das Midías [Introduction to Media Ecology, co-authored by Adriana Braga and Paul Levinson, original contributions published in Portuguese translation, 2019), Diatribal Writes of Passage in a World of Wintertextuality: Poems on Language, Media, and Life (2020), Concerning Communication: Epic Quests and Lyric Excursions in the Human Life World (2022, IGS), First Letter of My Alphabet (2023, NeoPoiesis), and Not A, Not Be, &c (2024, IGS). He is co-editor of two editions of Communication and Cyberspace: Social Interaction in an Electronic Environment (1996, 2003), Critical Studies in Media Commercialism (2000), The Legacy of McLuhan (2005), Korzybski and... (2012), The Medium is the Muse: Channeling Marshall McLuhan (2015), La Comprensión de los Medios en la Era Digital: Un Nuevo Análisis de la Obra de Marshall McLuhan (2016), and Taking Up McLuhan's Cause: Perspectives on Media and Formal Causality (2017). He has served as editor of the Speech Communication Annual, General Semantics Bulletin, and Explorations in Media Ecology, a journal he founded and edited for 9 years (2002-2007, 2017-2019). He delivered the 2018 Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture for the Institute of General Semantics and received their 2024 Sanford Berman Teaching Award and their 2022 J. Talbot Winchell Award for Service, received the Media Ecology Association's 2018 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book and their 2013 Walter J. Ong Award for Career Achievement in Scholarship, the Eastern Communication Association's 2019 Distinguished Research Fellow Award, the New York State Communication Association's 2019 Neil Postman Mentor Award and their 1998 John F. Wilson Fellow Award for exceptional scholarship, leadership, and dedication to the field of communication, the Global Listening Centre’s 2020 and 2025 Outstanding Research Award.

   

  Eleni Timplalexi teaches Performance, Digital Media and Intermediality at the Department of Communication and Media Studies, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She was post-doctorate researcher (2021) and member of an expert panel (2025~) at the Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies, Linnaeus University, in Sweden. She was awarded by the Hellenic State Scholarship Foundation (I.K.Y.) with a PhD scholarship and with an IKY Fellowship of Excellence for postgraduate studies in the Greece-Siemens Program for her postdoctoral research. She received the Media Ecology Association’s Walter Benjamin Award for Outstanding Article in the Field of Media Ecology in 2025. Also, she was the Alexander C. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation Scholar in Theatre Practice (2005-07).

  
  

  Laura Trujillo Liñán is a Mexican scholar who serves as a Professor and researcher of Humanities, Communication, and Philosophy at the Universidad Panamericana in Mexico City. She is Dean of the Universidad Panamericana’s Open University program. Dr. Trujillo Liñán also holds prominent leadership positions in her field: she is the President of the Media Ecology Association (MEA) and a Board Member (Trustee) of the Institute of General Semantics (IGS) in New York. In these roles, she helps bridge communities of scholars in media ecology and general semantics on an international level. Dr. Trujillo-Liñán earned her MA and BA degrees in Philosophy, and later obtained a PhD in History of Thought from Universidad Panamericana. Her doctoral dissertation explored Aristotelian formal causality in the media theories of Marshall McLuhan, reflecting her interdisciplinary engagement with classical philosophy and contemporary media theory. Building on this foundation, her research interests include the philosophy of technology, media ecology, Aristotelian metaphysics, formal cause in communication theory, and general semantics. She has published numerous scholarly articles and book chapters on topics related to Marshall McLuhan, Aristotle’s thought, metaphysics, ethics, and media, consistently combining insights from ancient philosophical principles with modern communication ecology. Her work exemplifies a scholarly yet accessible approach, aiming to clarify complex ideas about how technology and media shape human understanding. In 2023, she received the Media Ecology Association’s Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book, honoring her work Formal Cause in Marshall McLuhan’s Thinking: An Aristotelian Perspective. (This book, published by the Institute of General Semantics in 2022, is regarded as a landmark study that bridges Aristotelian philosophy with McLuhan’s media ecology.) She has also been honored with a Louis Forsdale Award for Outstanding Educator at an MEA annual convention in 2025. In Mexico, Dr. Trujillo Liñán has the distinction of being recognized as a National Researcher (Sistema Nacional de Investigadores, Level I), a testament to her research leadership and contributions to national scholarship.

   

  Mauro Ventola Ventola is President of the Center for Ontological Transformation and founder of Ontophenomenology as a discipline advancing the critical refoundation of transformation within existential ontology. His work is dedicated to the study of transformational processes in an ontological-existential sense and to the development of ontoanalysis as a method of existential authentication. He is Series Editor of the book series Trasformazione Ontologica [Ontological Transformation] at Armando Editore. The inaugural volume of the series, Antropologia Dell’Homo Creator [Anthropology of the Homo Creator] (Armando Editore, 2025), outlines the anthropological foundations of this approach. He previously served as Director of the Psychosynthesis Center of Naples at the Institute of Psychosynthesis founded by Roberto Assagioli, and as a member of the Institute’s Executive Board (2017–2020), focusing research on Assagioli’s Will Project and on the clarification of Self dynamics and psycho-existential development. He has authored around twenty books, including L’Esperienza Transpersonale [The Transpersonal Experience] (with Sergio Guarino, Integral Transpersonal Institute, 2021), L’Orizzonte di un Mondo Nuovo [The Horizon of a New World] (with Alberto Alberti, L’UOMO, 2020), and Il Coraggio di Volere [The Courage to Will] (Institute of Psychosynthesis, 2019). His research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals and international scholarly venues, including the Integral Transpersonal Journal (ITJ), the Journal of the Italian Institute for the Future (IIF), and the Journal of the Italian Society of Therapeutic Psychosynthesis (SIPT).

  
  

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• Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living: GS Fables to Improve Your Thinking and Communicating Abilities

  • Start
    4 May 2026
  •  
    7:00 PM
  • End
    25 May 2026
  •  
    8:30 PM
  • Location
    Canvas
  • Spaces left
    10

  Register

  Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living:

  General Semantics Fables to Improve

  Your Thinking and Communicating Abilities
  

  An Online Lecture Series Featuring

  Dr. Martin H. Levinson

  May 4-25

  The Institute of General Semantics is pleased to sponsor an online lecture series to be taught by IGS Trustee and Past President Martin H. Levinson, author of 14 books, including the highly popular Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living. The series will consist of 4 sessions, each 90 minutes long, taking place via Zoom.  

  The lectures will focus on effective ways to evaluate people and situations through stories contained in Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living, a personal improvement book based on formulations from general semantics. Registrants for the course will be sent an e-copy of the book before the first session, and there will be ample time for discussion.

  The lecture series is offered free of charge, but registration is required. Registrants will receive the Zoom link in advance of the series.

  About the Instructor: Martin H. Levinson, PhD, New York University, is a past president of the Institute of General Semantics, book editor for ETC: A Review of General Semantics, and a contributing editor to The Satirist—America’s Most Critical Journal. He has published 14 books and scores of articles on topics ranging from self-help fairy tales to social and historical analyses. He is currently a faculty member with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Stony Brook University, a teacher for the United Federation of Teachers’ Si Beagle Learning Program, which is located in New York City, and a lecturer on contemporary and historical topics for schools and public libraries.

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• Meaning in Motion: How Words Become Worlds: General Semantics Seminar

  • Start
    14 Jul 2026
  • End
    17 Jul 2026
  • Location
    Century Club, 61-63 Shaftesbury Ave., London, W1D6LQ, UK
  • Spaces left
    37

  Register

  Meaning in Motion:

  How Words Become Worlds
  

  The 2026

  Institute of General Semantics

  In-Person

  4-Day

  Summer Seminar

  July 14-17

  The Century Club

  London, UK

  
  

  Registration Fee Covers Breakfast and Lunch

  All Course Materials and

  Four Full Days of Instruction

  IGS Members: US$300

  Non-Members: US$350

  A language is like a map; it is not the territory represented, but it may be a good map or a bad map. If the map shows a different structure from the territory represented—for instance, shows the cities in a wrong order, or some places east of others while in the actual territory they are west.,—then the map is worse than useless, as it misinforms and leads astray. One who made use of it could never be certain of reaching his destination.

  —Alfred Korzybski

  Korzybski’s study of language, perception, and consciousness provides us with some of the most essential and least recognized theories and methods to make sense of this era in which communication has become polarizing, and media is stirring the storm of confusion.

  General semantics is the name of the tradition of inquiry into language, thought, and abstracting that Korzybski founded. Join the Institute of General Semantics (based in New York City) in London, UK, for four days of theory and practical application, story and experiential learning, via an in-person seminar on general semantics and related non-aristotelian systems. The 4-day intensive course will include lecture, discussion, and exercises designed to provide participants with a thorough grounding in the discipline and its applications.

  For those unfamiliar with general semantics, the seminar will provide a comprehensive introduction to the tradition and its 21st century evolution. For those already familiar with the non-aristotelian approach, the course will provide reinforcement, enrichment, and an updating and expansion of the discipline. And for those interested in and/or involved in teaching, the seminar will provide useful guidance on pedagogy related to topics such as language, symbolic communication, thought and behavior, and epistemology and evaluation.

  During the seminar, we will explore how unexamined language behaviors perpetuate misperceptions of past and present controversies in professional and personal spaces. And we will determine which language and listening behaviors respect the infinite worth of each person in the interaction.

  The seminar leaders will include six trustees of the Institute of General Semantics: 

  Mary P. Lahman, Professor Emerita of Communication Studies at Manchester University and author of Awareness and Action

  Lance Strate, IGS President, Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, and author of Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition, and Concerning Communication: Epic Quests and Lyric Excursions Within the Human Lifeworld. 

  Nora Bateson, President of the International Bateson Institute, Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics, Creator of Warm Data and the Warm Data labs, complexity/systems teacher, filmmaker, artist, and author of Small Arcs of Larger Circles, and Combining.

  Dom Heffer, East Yorkshire-based artist, Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics, Art Editor of the journal ETC: A Review of General Semantics, founding member of Feral Art School, and previously associated with The Estate of Francis Bacon, 2021 Visual Arts Centre, Ferens Art Gallery, Cultural Olympiad 2012, and UK City of Culture 2017.

  Peggy Cassidy, Professor of Communication at Adelphi University, President of the New York Society for General Semantics, editor of Explorations in Media Ecology, and author of Bookends: The Changing Media Environment of American Classrooms and Children, Media, and American History: Printed Poison, Pernicious Stuff, and Other Terrible Temptations.

  Thom Gencarelli, Professor of Communication at Manhattan University, Treasurer of the Institute of General Semantics, and editor of ETC: A Review of General Semantics.

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• 2026 AKML & Symposium

  • Start
    2 Oct 2026
  • End
    4 Oct 2026
  • Location
    The Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park S, New York, NY 10003

  
  

  Registration is Not Yet Open

  and will be for 

  In-Person Attendance ONLY

  All IGS Members in Good Standing Will Receive Instructions on How to Livestream the Event Online Prior to the AKML

  
  

  The 74th Annual 

  Alfred Korzybski

  Memorial Lecture

  and the Symposium on

  Language,

  Listening,

  Literacy,

  and Algorithms

  October 2nd-4th, 2026

  A Call for Papers and Proposals

  Will Be Issued at a Later Date

  Co-Sponsored by the

  New York Society for General Semantics

  the International Bateson Institute

  the Media Ecology Association

  the Tomkins Institute

  and the 404 Festival of Art and Technology

  featuring

  Ted Chiang

  Ted Chiang is an American science fiction writer. His work has won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, six Locus awards, and the PEN Malamud  Award. His novella “Story of Your Life” was the basis of the film Arrival (2016). His most recent short story collection, Exhalation (Knopf, 2019), was listed as one of the Top Ten Books of 2019 by The New York Times, and included in President Barack Obama’s 2019 reading list. In 2023, he was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in AI.

  The lecture, dinner, and symposium are being held at the historic Players Club in Gramercy Park, Manhattan. 
  

  Registration is free for IGS members and their guests, but all attendees must be registered in advance in order to gain admittance to the club. More information regarding the dinner and symposium schedule will be made available at a later date.

  Please note that as an historic 19th century landmark, the site is not handicap accessible. Dress code is business casual and is strictly enforced, including no sneakers, shorts, ripped jeans, t-shirts).

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