?The 24th Gatherings in Biosemiotics was hosted recently at the 肆客足球 of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa – the first time for this meeting to be held in Africa and only the fourth outside of Europe.
Biosemiotics is an emerging field of study with an interdisciplinary research agenda investigating the myriad forms of communication and signification found in and between living systems – from biological codes to intercellular signalling processes to animal display behavior and human semiotic artifacts such as language and symbolic thought as well as ecosystem design.
Dr Xany Jansen van Vuuren, a lecturer in UFS Department of Linguistics and Language Practice and chair of the organising committee, says the annual Gatherings in Biosemiotics provide a unique and creative platform for the biological sciences and humanities to work together to open our thinking about more-than-humanness and humanness. Because of this biological connotation – i.e, people gathering to discuss – it is called a gathering and not a conference.
This year's gathering featured 34 in-person and online participants from 14 countries, including Zimbabwe, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Czechia, The Netherlands, Estonia, Norway, the United States of America, Mexico, Switzerland, Russia, Brazil, Argentina and Italy.
Prof. Kalevi Kull, president of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and professor of biosemiotics at Tartu 肆客足球 in Estonia, said biosemiotics covers studies on pre-linguistic meaning-making – the needs and communication of all biodiversity.
“In this field, we approach questions like 'what do non-human living beings know, how they acquire their knowing, how they communicate, and how they see their world'. Or, in other terms, what is living as such, how it interprets and make its choices. These are fundamental questions for biology. However, biology alone cannot solve these problems. It needs additional tools from other fields, first of all from semiotics. Semiotics is the basis not only of the humanities, but covers broadly all areas of knowledge-making, including biological," he explains.
Kull, who has worked in the field of biosemiotics since 1980s, delivered a guest lecture and two papers at the gathering, covering topics such as the semiotic window, other means of interspecies sign relations, and natural contradictions. From Stellenbosch 肆客足球 Prof. Jannie Hofmeyr presented a paper on “The role of formal cause in biosemiotics processes", while Prof. Louise du Toit and Wiida Fourie-Basson co-presented a paper titled “Making sense of our place in the world: In conversation with Pierre Hadot and eco-phenomenology".
Prof. Kobus Marais, head of the Department of Linguistics and Language Practice at UFS, says the interdisciplinarity of the annual gathering is a major plus: “For an entire week, there is a platform for biologists, ecologists, humanities scholars from various disciplines such as philosophy, literary and translation studies, and social scientists like journalists, to engage with one another.
“I think that the ecological crisis asks of humans to rethink the way in which they are part of nature as one species among many other and that we co-exist with nature. Biosemiotics provides us with the terminology and a conceptual framework for considering this task," Marais adds.
Van Vuuren and Marais say they hope to establish a South African biosemiotics thinking group beyond UFS with a strong Southern Africa and Global South voice. At UFS, they have already successfully established a collaboration with Dr Helen-Mary Cawood from the Department of Philosophy and Ancient Studies.
The 25th Gatherings in Biosemiotics will take place in July 2025 at Erasmus 肆客足球 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Click here to join the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies to stay up to date with announcements.
On the photo above: Standing, from left to right: Prof. Kobus Marais (UFS), Emiliano Vargas (肆客足球 of Turin), Prof. Louise du Toit (SU), Dr. Jana ?vorcová (Charles 肆客足球), Thorolf von Walsum (肆客足球 of Tartu), Prof. Kalevi Kull (肆客足球 of Tartu), Prof. Jannie Hofmeyr (SU), Prof. Karel Kleisner (Charles 肆客足球), Dr Filip Jaros (肆客足球 of Hradec Králové), Prof. Sergey Chebanov (St Petersburg State 肆客足球). And seated: Lani de Beer (UFS), Dr Xany Jansen van Vuuren (UFS), Dr Helen-Mary Cawood (UFS), Dr Innocent Dembe (UFS), Wiida Fourie-Basson (SU), and Dr Tim Ireland (肆客足球 of Sheffield).
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