Multisensuality and Language Across Media, Cultures, and Histories: International Scientific Conference
deadline for submissions:
October 15, 2025
full name / name of organization:
Sprachenzentrum, University of Vienna; University of the National Education Commision, Kraków; Koszalin University of Technology; Pomeranian University in Słupsk
contact email:
Call for Papers
Multisensuality and Language Across Media, Cultures, and Histories International Scientific Conference
When: November 14–15, 2025 Where: Online
“Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words.” — Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments
This online conference explores the connections between multisensuality and language – as spoken, written, visual, tactile, or embodied experience – across cultural and historical contexts, and through diverse media forms.
How do we perceive language through the senses? How is language shaped by sound, touch, vision, or movement? How do linguistic experiences intersect with bodily sensations, emotional intensities, and sensory environments?
We invite proposals from scholars interested in how language and sensation interact in everyday life, history, education, art, film, literature, performance, and media. We encourage interdisciplinary approaches drawing from cultural studies, linguistics, film and media studies, education, history, and related fields.
Topics may include (but are not limited to):
Sensory dimensions of speech, writing, or translation
Voice, tone, accent, and listening as affective or embodied experiences
Tactile and visual aspects of language (e.g., sign language, typography, calligraphy)
Language learning and teaching as multisensory practice
Synaesthetic metaphors and sensory imagery across genres and contexts
Embodied forms of expression combining language with senses
Affective linguistics and the emotional life of language
Language in sensory history or sensory memory
Media, cultural, or historical representations of language as sensory experience
Please send a proposal of max. 500 words and a short bio note (with your affiliation, research profile, and contact details) by October 15, 2025 to the email: multisensuality@gmail.com Notifications of acceptance will be sent by November 1, 2025.
Participation in the conference is free of charge. Selected papers are planned to be published in a scientific journal as a special issue or in a monograph.
The conference will be held online and in English.
For more information, visit: https://multisensualityandlanguage.weebly.com/
Organizers:
Sprachenzentrum, University of Vienna
University of the National Education Commision, Kraków
Koszalin University of Technology
Pomeranian University in Słupsk
Organizing Committee:
Joanna Łapińska, PhD (Sprachenzentrum, University of Vienna)
Natalia Giza, PhD (University of the National Education Commision, Kraków)
Kamila Kalista, PhD (Koszalin University of Technology)
Bernadetta Żynis, PhD (Pomeranian University in Słupsk)
Łukasz Trzeciak, PhD (Pomeranian University in Słupsk)