This is the official webpage of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS). NASS home area is constituted by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden.
The purpose of the Association is to promote the advancement of semiotics as an academic discipline and research domain in the Nordic and Baltic countries and within the international semiotic community, fostering academic cooperation and highlighting Nordic and Baltic contributions to the field. For this aim, NASS endorses contact and cooperation between its members, provides information on Nordic, Baltic and international academic activities within the field of semiotics, and facilitates the development of research collaboration and projects across institutional and national borders. We organize a regular, biennial conference circulating in the Nordic and Baltic region.
NASS also publishes a Newsletter with upcoming semiotics related events, new books and journals from both the Nordic countries and beyond.
To get in contact with NASS, please write to post@nordicsemiotics.org
We have a Facebook page, an X (Twitter) account and a LinkedIn profile.
Our latest, the 14th conference of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies, titled “Creativity – Complexity – Intelligence“ took place in Tallinn, Estonia, June 11–13, 2025, along with the 15th Annual Lotman Days. The conference was hosted by Tallinn University School of Humanities and Juri Lotman Semiotics Repository.
The intricate interplay of signs with the processes of creativity, complexity, and intelligence is immersed in all varieties, modalities, and ecologies of meaning-making. Meaning-making is always creative, complex, and intelligent, in both its agreements, alignments, and continuums, as well as its incompatibilities, controversies, and contradictions.
The role of creativity in learning and development, be it in humans or non-humans, is integrative within patterns of emergence, reproduction, and decay in complex systems, such as nature, culture, or the individual mind. Intelligence – be it organic or artificial, individual or collective – manifests in various signs and sign systems and is in time creatively transformed through meaning-making.
Plenary speakers were
- Terrence Deacon, University of California, Berkeley, USA
- Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi, University of Warsaw, Poland
- Aaro Toomela, Tallinn University, Estonia
As customary for NASS conferences, 8 graduate students presenting a paper at NASS XIV were supported financially by NASS. Furthermore, a prize along with a diploma for the best graduate student presentation was awarded at NASS XIV for two student presentations.
See more information about NASS XIV here.
VARIOUS CALLS FOR PAPERS PUBLISHED ON REQUEST
Webmaster: Lauri Linask (post@nordicsemiotics.org)