Join us on Saturday, April 19th for Communication, Consciousness, and Culture II: An Online Symposium. As the title indicates, this is a continuation of the Communication, Consciousness, and Culture Symposium held in person following the 2024 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.
Communication,
Consciousness,
and Culture II
An Online Symposium
April 19th, 2025
All times listed are Eastern Daylight Savings Time
Greetings and Welcomings 8:45 AM EDT
Lance Strate, Fordham University, USA
Session I Semantic Environments 9:00 AM to 10:15 AM
Chair: Eva Berger, College of Management Academic Studies, Israel
"The 'Celebrities' Successfully Navigating Their Contemporary Media Environments as 'Social Media Influencers' in 2025"
Renee Peterson, RMIT University, Australia
"Convergences of Text, Image, and Number in Generative AI"
Chris Chesher, University of Sydney, Australia
"Dystopic Imagination as Social Critique: A General Semantics Analysis"
Bini Babu Sudha, Nirma University, India
"Verbal Interfaces as Semantic Environments: Rules for Service Design"
Katarzyna Drogowska, SWPS University, Poland
Session II Map and Territory 10:30 AM to 11:45 AM
Chair: Peggy Cassidy, Adelphi University, USA
"Multimodal and Transmedial Construal of American Show Politics in the 21st Century Semantic Environment"
Olena Marina, Kerry Education and Training Board, Ireland, & Igor Korolyov, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine
"Saying Nothingness: General Semantics for Ontoanalysis"
Mauro Ventola, Center for Ontological Transformation, Italy
"The Poem as a Medium: Ailbhe Darcy’s Ekphrastic Encounters"
Daniela Theinová, Charles University, Czech Republic
"This is Not a Diagram: Applying General Semantics to Contemporary Arts Pedagogy"
John Cussans, University of Worcester, UK
Session III Meaning and Demeaning 12:o0 Noon to 1:15 PM
Chair: Dom Heffer, Institute of General Semantics, UK
"Panopticist Effects of Using Satellite Imagery for Supervision in Agriculture"
Desislava Stoeva, St. John’s University, USA
"Broken Humans and Obsolete Culture: Analyzing Two Bluffs of Technophilic Discourse"
Marcelo Capello Martins, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
"The Unconscious Mind in the Classroom: Meaning and the Person"
Leonard Shedletsky, University of Southern Maine, USA
"Unmappable Differences: Analogies Between Culture and Nature"
Fabiola Ballarati Chechetto, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil
Session IV Consciousness of Abstracting 1:30 to 2:45 PM
Chair: Corey Anton, Grand Valley State University, USA
"Maps and Territories: General Semantics as a Framework for Understanding Political Rhetoric"
Svetlana V. Grushina, Dartmouth College, USA
"Using Korzybski to Understand AI Framing : An Analysis of Cultural Discourse"
Tiffany Petricini, Pennsylvania State University, Erie, USA
"The Model is the Message: The Structural Differential as a Medium"
Ryan McCullough, West Liberty University, USA
"From Structural Differential to Aristotelian Wisdom: Exploring Perception and the Process of Knowing"
Laura Trujillo Liñán, Universidad Panamericana, Mexico
Session V The Genes of Culture 3:o0 to 4:15 PM
Chair: Thom Gencarelli, Manhattan College, USA
"Pointing at the Moon: Using Multiple Languages to Reflect on Reality"
Robert T. Ackland, State University of New York College at Plattsburgh, USA
"The Problem of Knowledge as a Sign in the 17th Century"
Elsa Sánchez, Universidad Panamericana, Mexico
"Beyond the Abstract: Connecting Linguistic Assumptions to Global Competence"
Yong Yu, State University of New York at Plattsburgh, USA
“Zoom: An Atypical Electronic Medium”
Christtian J. Travieso, St. Thomas University, USA
Session VI Mind and Nature 4:30 Noon to 5:45 PM
Chair: Nora Bateson, International Bateson Institute, Sweden
"Reading Shannon and Weaver’s Model of Communication Backward: Three Scholarly Misconceptions"
Zachary Sapienza, Grand Canyon University, USA,
Aaron Veenstra, Florida Atlantic University, USA, and
Delaware Arif, University of North Alabama, USA
"Hope, With and Without Progress"
Jaqueline McLeod Rogers, University of Winnipeg, Canada
"Recursive Dialogues: Bridging Minds of the Past with AI of the Present"
Paul Guzzardo, Independent Scholar, Argentina
"Robert Anton Wilson: The Generalist Semanticist"
Gabriel Kennedy (aka Prop Anon), Independent Scholar, USA
Concluding Remarks 6:00 PM
Lance Strate, Fordham University, USA
About the Participants
Robert T. Ackland received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago. 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/La 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 the State University of New York Plattsburgh, he is translating portions of Condillac’s 18th century philosophy.
Corey Anton 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), 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). 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), and co-editor, along with Robert K. Logan and Lance Strate, of the collection, Taking Up McLuhan’s Cause (2017, Intellect Publishing). 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.
Delaware Arif received his Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and is an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Digital Media Production and Student Media Adviser in the Department of Communication at the University of North Alabama. His research focuses on social media, new media, international journalism, political communication, media ethics, and race and media. His recent co-edited book on representation of refugees in the media was published by Palgrave McMillan.
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.
Nora Bateson is an award-winning filmmaker, research designer, writer, educator, international lecturer, as well as President of the International Bateson Institute based in Sweden, an Associate of The Taos Institute, and a Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics. She is the creator of the Warm Data theory and practices. Nora’s work brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of the patterns in ecology of living systems. She wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her father Gregory Bateson. Her first book, Small Arcs of Larger Circles, released by Triarchy Press, UK, 2016 is a revolutionary personal approach to the study of systems and complexity. In her latest book Combining, she invites us into an ecology of communication where nothing stands alone, and every action sets off a chain of incalculable consequences. She challenges conventional fixes for our problems, highlighting the need to tackle issues at multiple levels, understand interdependence, and embrace ambiguity. She is the recipient of the Sustainable Thompkins Ecology Award and the Media Ecology Association's 2019 Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.
Eva Berger is a Professor of Media Studies at the College of Management Academic Studies in Israel. She serves as Secretary of the Institute of General Semantics. Dr. Berger is the author of, Context Blindness: Digital Technology and the Next Stage of Human Evolution (2022, Peter Lang), and co-author of The Communication Panacea: Pediatrics and General Semantics (2014, IGS). She holds a Ph.D. in Media Ecology from New York University.
Marcelo Capello is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Philosophy at the PUC-Rio (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro). His research is an attempt to categorize and criticize technophile discourse in our age, having Jacques Ellul as the main reference, but also bringing to the discussion works of different fields of knowledge, and seeking interdisciplinarity. Marcelo was a member-at-large of the Media Ecology Association Board from March 2022 until December 2023 and is currently a member of the study group EMAPS (Ethics and Algorithmic Mediation of Social Processes). Marcelo is currently a High School philosophy teacher in Brazil. He is interested in the following research fields: philosophy of technology, media ecology, contemporary philosophy, political philosophy and philosophy of the environmental catastrophe.
Margaret Cassidy is Professor of Communication at Adelphi University, and a Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics. 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 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.
Fabiola Ballarati Chechetto earned her PhD in Communication and Semiotics from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PPGCOS/PUC-SP). She is a member of the Space-Visuality/Communication-Culture Research Group (ESPACC) coordinated by Prof. Lucrécia D'Alessio Ferrara (PUC-SP). She completed her undergraduate studies in Italian language and culture for foreigners at the University of Pisa, and psychology from São Marcos University. Her research explores the Epistemology of Communication, with an emphasis on Communication Theories, in the following fields/issues: semiotics and pragmaticism, interculturality, difference and otherness, translation and reality, media ecology and mediatisation, information, creativity and inventiveness, theatre and fictions, the city, space and spatiality. She currently works on research into ecologies of mind, medium and media, teaching Italian, translating books and papers, and writing poetry and essays.
Chris Chesher is a Senior Lecturer 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.
John Cussans is an artist, arts educator and writer working across the fields of contemporary art, cultural history and art theory. He has an expanded arts practice that combines drawing, video, performance and public pedagogy. He has exhibited work at many international galleries and events including Cabinet (London), ICA (London), Ghetto Biennale (Port-au-Prince), IMT (London), South London Gallery, V&A (London), documenta fifteen (Kassel) and RISING festival (Melbourne). He has a PhD in Cultural History from the Royal College of Art and an MA in Art History and Theory from the University of Essex. He has taughtand lectured in contextual studies, art history and fine art studio practice at many national and international educational institutions including: Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Duke University, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Goldsmiths College, Ruskin School of Art, Slade School of Art, Royal Academy Schools and the Royal College of Art. His scholarly research explores the legacies of colonialism, psychoanalysis and surrealism in art, cinema and popular culture from ethnographic, psychological and science fictional perspectives. His book Undead Uprising: Haiti, Horror and the Zombie Complex (2017) explores the uses of Haiti as a locus for Euro-American fears about African culture, spirituality and revolutionary excess in the Americas and their sublimation into popular horror tropes. He is a member of DRG (Diagram Research Group) with David Burrows, Dean Kenning and Mary Yacoob. Their co-authored book Drawing Analogies: Diagrams in Art, Theory and Practice was published by Bloomsbury in 2025. He is the course leader for BA Fine Art and BA Fine Art with Psychology and leader of the Arts and Health Research Group at the University of Worcester. He is the course leader for BA Fine Art and BA Fine Art with Psychology and leader of the Arts and Health Research Group at the University of Worcester.
Katarzyna Drogowska holds a Ph.D. from the University of Warsaw, specializes in communication ecosystems and heads the postgraduate program in Human-Machine Interaction at SWPS University (Szkoła Wyższa Psychologii Społecznej) in Warsaw, Poland, where she also lectures on general semantics. Her research explores the impact of media on information flow and the intersections of technology, society, and meaning. Currently, she is preparing the first Polish translation of Alfred Korzybski’s Science and Sanity for publication.
Thom Gencarelli is Professor and founding Chair of the Communication Department at Manhattan University in Riverdale, New York, where he also serves as advisor to the school’s student-run newspaper. He is a Past President of the Media Ecology Association, the New York State Communication Association, the New Jersey Communication Association (twice), and current Treasurer and member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute of General Semantics, and Editor of the IGS’s official journal, ETC: A Review of General Semantics. He researches and writes about media ecology, media education/media literacy, new media, and popular media and culture with an emphasis on popular music. He is co-editor (with Brian Cogan) of Baby Boomers and Popular Culture: An Inquiry into America’s Most Powerful Generation (ABC-Clio/ Praeger, 2014), and has two books due out soon: Searching for the Right Notes: Essays on Media, Music, and Meaning (Peter Lang) and, with Corey Anton, General Semantics and Politics (IGS). Thom is the recipient of multiple awards including the Eastern Communication Association’s Distinguished Teaching Fellows Award and the Media Ecology Association’s Louis Forsdale Award for Outstanding Educator in the Field of Media Ecology in 2019, the John F. Wilson Fellowship Award for Scholarship and Service from the New York State Communication Association in 2016, and the Media Ecology Association’s Christine L. Nystrom Award for Outstanding Career Achievement in Service to the Field of Media Ecology in 2013, and in 2023, the J. Talbott Winchell Award for Outstanding Contributions and Service to the Cause of General Semantics from the IGS. He is also a songwriter, musician, and producer and has released four album-length works with his ensemble bluerace: World is Ready (2009), Beautiful Sky (2013), and Mistral (2019), and INDYeGO (2024).
Paul Guzzardo is the creative developer of The Player on the Quantum Stage (PQS), a performance-led research project that confronts the approach of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) as both a cultural event and a civilizational threshold. The project stages a final act—a kind of testimonial drama—in which players, witnesses, and archives collide. PQS is part performance, part epistemological audit. It asks: Who were we before the code eclipsed us? What did we forget? And why were we so unprepared? PQS is the logical and creative culmination of a body of work developed over decades, all rooted in a practice he calls Recursive Urbanism—a hybrid design, legal, and storytelling praxis that treats the city as a feedback system. In this model, the street is a cognitive and performative space where archive, interface, and civic memory intertwine. Recursive Urbanism is the deep structure from which PQS emerges. Prior to PQS, he developed The Algorithm That Ate the Street, a critical urban cartography that visualized how digital forces—algorithms, surveillance, AI precursors—were overtaking public space. The project used videos, storyboards, and performance-lectures to dramatize the loss of analog civic memory and the rise of machinic cognition. The street became a contested zone where language, law, and code competed for control. Prior to Algorithm, The Septic Turn in the Space of Appearance examined the degradation of civic space, approached through the perspectives of media saturation, legal distortion, and symbolic violence. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “space of appearance,” the project interrogated how surveillance and spectacle corrode the conditions necessary for authentic civic encounter. But this was more than critique—it was praxis. The work unfolded over years of targeted litigation, treating the courtroom as a performative site where public interest law could expose the structural failures that left society unprepared for the coming of AGI. Legal interventions functioned as both investigative tools and symbolic acts. Septic Turn revealed how foundational civic protections had been hollowed out—long before AI took the stage. Preceding Septic Turn, The Cartographer’s Dilemma offered a mixed-media inquiry into mapping in the digital age. Here, he explored how traditional tools of orientation—maps, diagrams, wayfinding systems—were being destabilized by algorithmic overlays and recursive feedback loops. The work questioned how meaning is constructed in spaces defined by shifting digital topographies. In the three-year Secret Baker Cycle, (2004-2007) he reanimated the archives of Josephine Baker, J. Edgar Hoover, and Walter Winchell to stage a media morality play. Using FBI files as dramaturgical material, he confronted the mechanisms of surveillance and spectacle—particularly as they relate to race, performance, and the archive. All of these projects were shaped by two early interventions: the Street Media Lab (1999–2002) and the Club Cabool Internet Night Club (1996–1998)—experimental spaces that turned the street into a platform for media, law, and civic performance. From these emerged the framework of Recursive Urbanism, which now finds its most urgent and evolved expression in The Player on the Quantum Stage.
Dom Heffer is a Trustee of the Institute of General Semantics, and an artist based in Hull, East Yorkshire. He is known for making large scale paintings exploring technological and communications environments, often with an anarchic flavor. He has worked with numerous arts and research organizations nationally and internationally, such as The Estate of Francis Bacon, 2021 Visual Arts Centre, Ferens Art Gallery and is a founding member of Feral Art School. For further info see: <ideasinthevoid.com>.
Gabriel Kennedy aka Prop Anon is a multi-media artist concentrating on the written word, visual art, and music. His work has appeared in BoingBoing.net, Mondo2000.com. Thetonearm.com, and on his own websites Chapelperilous.us and Prop-anon.com. He first interviewed Robert Anton Wilson in 2003 and was an original member of Wilson’s online learning website, the Maybe Logic Academy. Chapel Perilous: The Life & Thought Crimes of Robert Anton Wilson is his first book.
Igor Korolyov is a Doctor of Science in Philology and Professor of General Linguistics and Head of the Centre for Baltic Studies at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in Ukraine. He is also the 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.
Olena Marina is a Doctor of Science in Philology and Professor at the Kerry Education and Training Board, Ireland. Her research interests include multimodal studies, cognitive linguistics, transmediality studies, media ecology, and general semantics.
Ryan McCullough received his PhD from 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 Executive Council Representative for the Kenneth Burke Interest Group at the Eastern Communication Association and the Media Ecology Association’s liaison to ECA.
Jaqueline McLeod Rogers is a Professor in the Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communication at the University of Winnipeg in Canada. She teaches courses about urban culture and place, professional and scholarly writing and rhetoric, and nonfiction. 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 the Ecology of Technics from the Media Ecology Association in 2021. Her article “Susanne Langer, Marshall McLuhan and Media Ecology: Feminist Principles in Humanist Projects” received The Walter Benjamin Award for Outstanding Article from the MEA in 2022. Researching 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 about changing cross-disciplinary writing practices, Write to Engage.
Renee Peterson is an Australian PhD candidate in the School of Media and Communication at the 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, the Behrend Campus. 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, and serves as the Newsletter Editor of the Media Ecology Association. 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 the international radio program Spark on CBC Radio One and SUNY Plattsburgh at the Ethics Institute. She also serves as the social media expert for NBC affiliate WFMJ 21 News.
Elsa Sánchez has maintained an academic and professional career in diverse fields such as Political Science, Philosophy and Education. Her experience as a professor at all academic levels and as a committed speaker on issues related to women, education and culture inform her current work on a master’s degree in the humanities. Her command of English and her understanding of French allow her to participate in international programs, and her dedication as a mother and her participation in volunteerism are evidence of her commitment to the community and her ability to balance family responsibilities with her passion for learning and service. Elsa enjoys both intellectual pursuits and sports such as swimming and boxing, reflecting her ability to balance mind and body in her pursuit of knowledge and well-being.
Zachary Sapienza earned his Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University in 2024, and is an adjunct instructor of communication at Grand Canyon University. He has presented at multiple IGS symposiums and has been previously published in ETC: A Review of General Semantics.
Leonard J. Shedletsky is Professor of Communication at the University of Southern Maine, where he has been teaching in the Department of Communication &aand Media Studies since 1979. He recently taught a course titled, On Bullshit and another titled Dissecting Bullshit. He teaches a seminar, Communicating Fast and Slow. He co-authored and edited a number of books, Meaning and Mind, Human Communication on the Internet, Cases on Online Discussion, Interaction: Experiences and Outcomes, and Cases on Teaching Critical Thinking through Visual Representation Strategies. He has published numerous journal articles. He was awarded recognition by his colleagues and the administration at University of Southern Maine for stellar scholarship and teaching, 2003, 2007 and 2011, and was awarded the Russell Chair in philosophy and education for 2009-2011. He was recognized for teaching excellence in 2018. He has been working with social intuition theory to explore intuition in human communication. Based on this work, he published “Seeing bullshit rhetorically: Human encounters and cultural values” in Res Rhetorica (2018). He edited the book, Rationalist Bias in Communication Theory. He team taught a course to help college students transition into life after college (LILAC). He co-authored “Launching into Life After College” (2022) in Innovative Classroom Environments: International Perspectives in Higher Education edited by Enakshi Sengupta and Patrick Blessinger.
Desislava Stoeva earned a PhD in Multi-Sector Communication from St. John’s University and holds an MA degree in Strategic Communication from Fordham University. She was the recipient of the Top Student Paper Award at the 2023 Media Ecology Association Convention. Her area of research includes media coverage of environmental issues, the use of new technology for sustainability assessment, and communication theories in film. Born and raised in Bulgaria, Desislava often explores the vast cultural and linguistic differences between Eastern Europe and the US through her work.
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 Senior Vice-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 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 Outstanding Research Award and 2024 Leadership in Listening Award.
Daniela Theinová teaches at Charles University in Prague. She is the author of Limits and Languages in Contemporary Irish Women’s Poetry (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Her recent contributions include essays in Études Irlandaises, The Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Irish Writing and The Cambridge History of Irish Poetry. She is member of the editorial board of Review of Irish Studies in Europe and, together with Brian Ó Conchubhair, edits the Pangur Bán Series at Wake Forest University Press.
Christtian J. Travieso has been working in education for 18 years. He started as a school teacher and eventually moved to higher education as an Adjunct Professor of Humanities for Miami Dade College in 2017. Four years ago, he was hired as a Visiting Professor of Philosophy for St. Thomas University, and is now the current Director of the St. Thomas University Honors College. He earned his PhD in Humanities from Salve Regina University.
Laura Trujillo-Liñán is the Vice President of the Media Ecology Association and Director of the Universidad Abierta at Universidad Panamericana. She serves as a professor and researcher in the Institute of Humanities, the School of Communication, and the School of Philosophy at Universidad Panamericana. She holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in philosophy, as well as a PhD in the History of Thought from the same institution, where she developed her dissertation on the concept of formal cause in the thought of Marshall McLuhan and Aristotle. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute of General Semantics in New York City, and member of the Instituto Promotor del Bien Común (UPAEP), the International Communication Association (ICA), and the Asociación Filosófica de México (AFM). She is also part of the Mexican National System of Researchers (SNI). She received the Marshall McLuhan Award from the Media Ecology Association for her book Formal Cause in Marshall McLuhan’s Thinking: An Aristotelian Perspective. She has published dozens of articles and book chapters on Marshall McLuhan, Aristotle, metaphysics, ethics, and media, and is recognized for her academic work bridging philosophical tradition and media ecology.
Aaron S. Veenstra holds a PhDfrom the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is an associate professor and journalism area coordinator in Florida Atlantic University’s School of Communication and Multimedia Studies. His research focuses on political communication, digital media, and social identity. His co-edited volume, The Press and Democratic Backsliding: How Journalism Has Failed the Public and How It Can Revive Democracy, was published by Lexington Books in 2024.
Mauro Ventola is the President of the Center for Ontological Transformation, an institution aimed at promoting the critical refoundation of transformationality in existential ontology, and the founder of transformational ontophenomenology. Previously he was Director of the Center for Psychosynthesis in Naples at the Institute of Psychosynthesis founded by Roberto Assagioli and a member of the Institute’s Executive Board from 2017 to 2020. He graduated in Philosophy from the University of Naples “Federico II” with a thesis in Bioeducational Sciences, furthering his education at the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies (IISF). He has authored around twenty books, including his most recent works: L’Esperienza Transpersonale [The Transpersonal Experience] (with Sergio Guarino, 2021), L’Orizzonte di un Mondo Nuovo [The Horizon of a New World] (with Alberto Alberti, 2020), Al Cuore della Questione [At the Heart of the Matter] (with Marco Guzzi, 2020), and Il Coraggio di Volere [The Courage to Want] (2019). He has also written numerous articles for specialized journals, including the Journal of the Italian Society of Therapeutic Psychosynthesis (SIPT), the Journal of the Italian Institute for the Future (IIF), and the Integral Transpersonal Journal (ITJ). He has lectured in various contexts, including the Integral Transpersonal Institute (ITI), the Italian Institute for the Future (IIF), the International Institute of Educational Psychosynthesis (IIPE), the European Transpersonal Association (EUROTAS). In 2023-2024, he conducted seminars at the University of Florence (NAF [New Philosophical Anthropology] Unit), introducing ontoanalysis as a method that, drawing from Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential psychoanalysis, identifies and qualifies itself as a process of existential authentication.
Yong Yu is a professor of literacy education in the Education Department, State University of New York) at Plattsburgh. Before joining SUNY Plattsburgh, she spent 15 years in China as an English teacher and teacher educator. Her research interests include language learning and teaching, diverse children’s literature, and early field experiences in teacher preparation.
