Medical Humanities: Bridges between Embodiment of Signs and Embodied AI
The fifth (5th) edition of the International Conference Semiosis in Communication: Medical Humanities: Bridges between Embodiment of Signs and Embodied AI is organized by the Petru Maior Faculty of Science and Letters, George Emil Palade University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Science and Technology of Târgu Mureș (UMFST), in participation with:
• Balkan Association for Semiotic Studies (BASS)
• SemioLab – Semiotics Laboratory, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
• Southeast European Center for Semiotic Studies (SEECSS), New Bulgarian University
• Semiotics and Visual Communication Research Lab, Cyprus University of Technology
• Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
The conference will take place in Târgu Mureș, Romania, from 21–23 May 2026.
This conference explores the role of semiosis in communication. Objects of interdisciplinary knowledge par excellence, semiotics and communication are complementary ways of world mastery, of the big game, just like Solomon Marcus (2011) would say. The main objective of the International Conference Semiosis in Communication is to emphasize the importance of semiotic type queries in the communication sciences and to stimulate the exchange of ideas in these fields and areas of academic research. The main theme proposed for this fifth edition of the international conference Semiosis in Communication is Medical Humanities: Bridges between Embodiment of Signs and Embodied AI.
Basically, we propose to participants a return to the origins of the discipline, to the ancient roots of semiotics, to explore and have insightful exchanges of ideas about the new practices of meaning construction that the digital revolution offers us. This allows us to explore how the human capacity to produce signs is rooted in perceptual, affective, and intersubjective experience (Violi 2008, Sonesson 2007, Nöth 2006). Meaning emerges only from this foundation? Are semiosis and cognition grounded in embodied experiences, resulting from the position of the human body at the center of the world of common sense? In the digital age, new practices of meaning-making brought by AI challenge us to reflect (Leone 2022). We must consider whether, and how, AI can participate in semiosis or only emulate its observable outputs through computational embodiment.
The conference is organized in several panels, which address specific topics exploring how digital transformations and artificial intelligence shape interdisciplinary dialogue between medicine, the humanities, and other complementary fields, such as:
• Semiotics of Culture / Cultural Semiotics
• Semiotics and Communication
• Semiotics, Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Dialogue
• Medical Humanities
• Social Semiotics and Multimodality
• Visual Semiotics and AI Imagery
• Mediation and Multimodal Meaning-Making in Digital Environments
• Semiotic Approaches to Fake News and Digital Disinformation
• Political Semiotics
• Semiotic Approaches to the Role of Information and Social Influence in Strategic Competition
• Semiotics of Artificial Intelligence
• Meaning-Making Practices and Creativity in the Digital Age
• Semiotics, Culture and Brand Communication
• Applied Semiotics
In the tradition of previous Semiosis in Communication editions, keynote speakers will be internationally recognized experts in their fields.