Plenarists

Brian L. Due is an associate professor of communication and social interaction from University of Copenhagen, Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics. Brian’s research is grounded in video ethnography, ethnomethodology, and multimodal conversation analysis. He does research on social interaction, space, materials, objects, and technologies focusing on action and perception as distributed achievements. He is co-editor of Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality and has published in journals such as Journal of Pragmatics, Semiotica, Discourse Studies, Space and Culture and Mobilities.

Sari Pietikäinen is a professor of Discourse Studies at the University of Jyväskylä. Pietikäinen’s research has focused on the power of discourse in the construction of knowledge, language and identity categories, and the value of commons, especially in the Finnish Arctic and comparative work in Canada and in Western Europe. Using multiple approaches, including assemblage analysis, nexus analysis, critical discourse analysis, and ethnography, she has tracked shifts in language ideologies, and examined processes of revaluing natural resources in the Arctic, along with the emergence of post-humanist discourses of environment. She has published widely on these topics, including Sociolinguistics from Periphery (2016, with Helen Kelly-Holmes, Alexandre Jaffe, and Nikolas Coupland) and Critical Sociolinguistic Research Methods (with Monica Heller and Joan Pujolar 2018), and is co-Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Sociolinguistics.

Andreas Ventsel is an associate professor of semiotics at Tartu University and a lecturer in Pallas University of Applied Sciences in Tartu. His interdisciplinary research includes semiotics, discourse theory, visual communication, rhetoric and political analysis with a particular focus on the post-structuralist political thought. Ventsel has been the initiator and editor of several scientific journals, and he is the author of the books Strategic Conspiracy Narratives: A Semiotic Approach (Routledge 2020, with Mari-Liis Madisson from the University of Tartu) and Introducing Relational Political Analysis: Political Semiotics as a Theory and Method (Palgrave Macmillan 2020, with Peeter Selg from Tallinn University).

Sally Wiggins is Professor of Discursive Psychology at Linköping University, Sweden. Her research interests focus on the interactional coordination of eating practices in everyday settings, and she is particularly curious about the discursive management of psychological concepts such as food preferences, disgust, and satiety. Much of her work has studied family mealtime interaction though she is currently leading a project examining lunchtime practices in Swedish preschools. She is author of the methods textbook Discursive Psychology: Theory, Methods, and Applications (2017) and co-editor (with Karin Osvaldsson Cromdal) of Discursive Psychology and Embodiment (2021).

Photo: Anna Nilsen